With his back to the U.S. Capitol, Randy Phillips faced a sea of evangelical men who had traveled from all over the country to pray, sing and recommit themselves to their families.
It was an autumn Saturday in 1997, and Promise Keepers, a fast-growing conservative Christian men’s ministry that some warned was a covert political project, had gathered at its biggest event ever. “Why are we here?” Phillips, then the organization’s president, asked the hundreds of thousands of men in attendance. “Is it to demonstrate political might? No. Is it to demonstrate masculine strength? No. Is it to take back the nation by imposing our religious values on others? No.” The crowd roared with approval.
This weekend, a much smaller group of Promise Keepers gathered in Tulsa at a very different moment for evangelicals — with less decisive answers to those questions. Headed by a new young CEO, the group is leaning into partisan politics where it once eschewed them, and equipping men to do battle not only with their own spiritual weaknesses but also with a secular culture that speakers portrayed as uniquely hostile.
“They want American men to be weak, put into corners, afraid of your own shadow,” right-wing activist Charlie Kirk said at the two-day conference, which drew about 2,000 men. “If men, and Christian men, start to recommit to the truths of the promises of the Bible, this country can and will be saved.”
Kirk’s speech went on to mock the concept of preferred pronouns and criticize pandemic lockdowns. He, like other speakers at the Daring Faith conference, also described the rise of transgender identities as a particular threat, raised the specter of men losing their jobs for speaking openly about their beliefs and pushed back on the concept of “toxic masculinity.”
The appearance at the conference of high-profile political conservatives like Kirk is a sign that the conservative media stars who rose in the Trump era have ambitions beyond the political sphere. In 2021, Kirk launched TPUSA Faith to influence pastors and other Christians to “counter falsehoods and illuminate the inextricable link between faith and God-given liberty,” according to its website. Several speakers who were at the conference are associated with TPUSA Faith, including John K. Amanchukwu, a pastor and activist who told the crowd that Democrats were “a bunch of punks and perverts.”
“If you’re not planning to vote, repent,” said another speaker, Allen Jackson, a pastor in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, stopping short of instructing the men how to vote. Other speakers included Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and the state’s governor, Kevin Stitt, who both spoke on a panel about Christians and political engagement.
Evangelical Christians have been a reliable Republican voting bloc since the 1980s, but they have historically been averse to hearing overtly partisan messages in spiritual settings. That has been shifting in recent years, as some high-profile conservatives, like Kirk and others at the conference, have characterized political engagement as a pastoral obligation. Some pastors who have leaned into preaching on topics like abortion and gender issues have seen their churches boom in a time of broad declines in attendance.
“The pulpit is a perfect place to have these conversations,” Joe Kennedy, a former high school football coach who in 2022 won a Supreme Court case over praying on the field, said in an interview after his appearance onstage.
Founded by a former college football coach in the 1990s, Promise Keepers was once one of the largest and most influential evangelical ministries in the United States. Men at revival-style events in stadiums across the country committed to seven promises, including obedience to God and commitment to one’s marriage. Though it has held other smaller gatherings over the years, the group’s profile declined drastically after the 1997 event, essentially fading into a relic of the Clinton era.
Now, the group is trying for a resurrection for the Trump era. New ideas include downplaying the organization’s previous emphasis on combating racism and building relationships across racial boundaries.
“Frankly, that’s what got Promise Keepers to begin its decline,” Shane Winnings, the group’s new CEO, who is a former police officer turned evangelist, said in an interview before the event. Christians should not be racist, he added, but “we’re not going to become the next social justice movement.”
To some leaders of Promise Keepers’ first iteration, the contrast between the two eras is jarring.
“It’s not the same Promise Keepers as the Promise Keepers of the ’90s,” said Mark DeMoss, who sat on its board and served as its spokesperson in that era, adding that back then, an activist like Kirk would not have been allowed to speak at a Promise Keepers event.
“Promise Keepers was launched to help men in their marriages and their families, not to elect the next president or the next Congress,” DeMoss said. “There’s no such thing as a Republican marriage or a Democratic marriage.”
At the event in Tulsa, the all-male crowd included fathers and sons, small groups of friends, and church groups from neighboring states. Signs for women’s restrooms were papered over to designate them for men. Over lunch at nearby restaurants Saturday, men discussed their family histories, their struggles and their hopes.
Kevin Richard, 34, attended the event with his 16-year-old son. Richard works as a production operator on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, an environment he described as spiritually challenging: rife with “vulgar and derogatory” language, with few fellow Christians for moral support.
Richard was looking forward to a session featuring Joshua Broome, a former (and repentant) porn actor who spoke on a panel about masculinity, and hearing from Kirk, whose debating skills Richard admires.
“Anything that can help us become men who are bold in our faith,” Richard said, “I try and lean towards that.”
Several speakers demonstrated the extent to which politics and conservative Christianity have blended on stages like Promise Keepers’. Jim Caviezel, an actor known for his outspoken support of former President Donald Trump and flirtation with the QAnon conspiracy, delivered a fiery speech Saturday culminating in an impression of Ronald Reagan’s 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech, adapted to include references to abortion and sex trafficking. At one point, several men in the audience yelled, “America for Jesus!”
The organization’s first leaders pursued the goal of a big tent by emphasizing their openness to all comers, no matter their theological or political sensibilities. They wanted events “to be a place that all men would be welcome, all — A, L, L — regardless of religious background or political background.” Phillips, the organization’s former president, said in a recent interview. He now leads another men’s ministry in Texas.
Promise Keepers in the 1990s “wanted as many men as possible to come through the gates and participate in this movement,” said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian who has written about evangelicalism and masculinity, including the Promise Keepers movement. “They intentionally did not lead with a kind of partisan political posture at all.”
In the 1990s, the group had vocal critics who noted its opposition to abortion and support from Christian right leaders including James Dobson. The National Organization for Women, which protested the National Mall event in person, passed a resolution at the time calling the group “the greatest danger to women’s rights.”
The organization’s current leadership says it needs to adapt to survive in a landscape that includes many competing men’s ministries, masculinity influencers and Christian conferences that include attractions like monster trucks.
“I don’t think we’re successful until we’re relevant again,” said Ken Harrison, Promise Keepers’ outgoing chairman. “I don’t think we can be relevant without a younger face that understands our culture.”
As Warren Miller and Ron Hulstein, both 79, waited for the conference to begin Friday, the men started chatting and sharing what had attracted them to the event. Miller likes Kirk — “He doesn’t back down” — but Hulstein hadn’t heard of him.
Hulstein had attended several Promise Keepers events in the late 1990s, where he made lifelong friendships, leading to regular meetings with a group of men who pray and volunteer together. “To me, that was the greatest thing that came out of the Promise Keepers,” he said.
The two men said the organization had lost something over the years. “All of us guys are getting a little older,” Hulstein said.
Miller agreed. “Sooner or later, you got to let the young guys take over.”
