Promise Creepers Cult (October 6, 1997, by Mike Doughney) Written two days after the Promise Keeper gathering in Washington, DC, this article was the basis for the subsequent article published in the Body Politic.

Subject:      Re: Promise Creepers Cult
From:         mike@mtd.com (Mike Doughney)
Date:         1997/10/06
Message-ID:   <61a3aa$f1d$1@news2.digex.net>
Newsgroups:   alt.religion.scientology,alt.atheism,
              alt.support.ex-cult,talk.abortion


In article <616e7r$3n5$1@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>,
William Barwell <wbarwell@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> wrote:
>In article <19971004204300.QAA09275@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
>JimDBB <jimdbb@aol.com> wrote:
>>Does anybody know if the Promise Keepers have received tax-exempt status?
>>
>> As somebody pointed out, this is a frightening cult developing.  I
>> received an 
>> email from them as a result of my earlier post on her.  they, of course,
>> insist that they are not a cult.  Does this sound familiar?
>
<snip>
>
>The leaders of Promise Keepers are larded heavily with far right
>ex-military men who believe that the PKs must eventually arm themselves
>for the end of the world and the collapse of civilization.
>
>It is possible, that like Scientology, the PK leaders do not tell new
>members all their beliefs and plans until they are sure that the new
>member can be trusted to accept such things, until they have been well
>imdoctrinated.  Most likely, the problem eventually will not be just the
>PK members, but more radical members who wish to go further.  We may see
>either radical offshoots like we see from the militias, or more radical
>inner organizations like Scientology's OSA, Scientology's dirty tricks and 
>KGB department.  Since PK has a much larger number of members than
>militias or cults like Scientology, it is well worth keeping an eye on
>this bunch.

The Promise Keepers event this past weekend may well have been the
largest single religious indoctrination session in history.  In those
six hours, in the hot sun and (for the most part) forgetting to eat
lunch, men were broken down completely and then given explicit
obedience instructions.  They may have been instructions to follow
God's word, but those of us who bother to think through such things
know that God's word is delivered only by religious leaders.

I'm very distressed that there are no coherent dissenting voices
getting any real exposure in American media, and if anything, the few
statements that do appear seem to be completely out of touch with the
reality of PK spokesmen's statments and rally images.

We have NOW leaders saying that PK is bad for women, while PK wives
only insist that it's good for them.  We see images of topless
lesbians, another extreme image that gets airplay but doesn't make
people think.  And no voices are heard explaining why PK is a movement
that will eventually grow to demand submission from everyone who
isn't a white-male Christian of their flavor - whether through
governmental control or group action.

Fact is, PK is as political as the song sung during the rally's climax
- "I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb."  We on the outside all know that
this song (see lyrics at http://www.elpasoanvil.org/hanvil9704.htm)
has obvious political overtones and is a call to mass action, but like
a PK rally, the call to political action is not overt, but implied.
And I last heard this song being sung by Operation Rescue blockaders
on the steps of a women's health center, so obviously it's a favorite
among those who think any action, even illegal action, is just fine to
advance their cause.

PK is not a political movement - it is a cultural movement.  It will
become political in due course, or as you suggest, other groups will
come forward to do the political work.  As an analogy, consider PK the
act of changing out the hardware, while politics is the software.
Current hardware is not capable of running Christian-based theocratic
fascism.  Should PK pull off the reforming of American culture that
they seek - and I think that they, aided by the slow cultural changes
of the past two decades, are well along in this process - they may
well replace the hardware of American culture with a system that will
support a fascist regime.

As for the cultic thought-reform methods being used, the coercive
non-consensual nature of what actually happens at these rallies may be
a weak point at which criticism could be directed.  Unfortunately
though, I'm finding that these methods are acceptable and woven into
the practices of a very large number of churches, and in most forms
aren't even noticed by the general public.  I'm seeing repetition,
fatigue, misdirection and deception - to name just a few examples -
used on the streets in front of women's health clinics, to control
anti-abortion blockaders, in plain view of everyone, and few object on
those grounds or even notice.  These actions are seen as political
actions, acts of speech or religious expression that should somehow be
"protected," rather than the exercise and practice of group control by
leaders through coercive means that they actually are, and attempts to
direct that control against those that dare disagree by purchasing a
legal service.

I fear that this kind of group action will be extended to other
aspects of our culture, and freedoms that people take for granted.
I suspect, and the Washington Post survey also suggests, that PK may
well be attracting corporate executives and business owners.  What
would happen if discrimination against gays or women became overt
practice at thousands of workplaces, in open defiance of the law?
Governmental enforcement would be irrelevant, in the same way that,
for instance, abortion becomes increasingly unavailable despite its
legality or laws protecting access as the result of group action
making the service of abortion too costly to provide.

We freethinkers and allies face what I think is a grave threat, and I
see few solutions. 

Secularism doesn't make for pretty pictures for the evening news.  If
there ever were pretty pictures, perhaps they come from the America of
my childhood.  Democracy, pluralism, religious diversity, and the idea
that people were free and had rights despite what they might think,
were values that we shared in the face of the Communist totalitarians.
Our shared icons, in the form of the U.S. flag, Declaration of
Independence, Bill of Rights, and the monuments to our past leaders in
Washington, were visible symbols of those values. And I learned these
values in 8 years of Catholic primary school!

Today, what do we have?  A movement that insists that those leaders,
along with some nebulous group dubbed the "Founding Fathers," were
Christians and intended the United States to be a Christian nation -
rewriting history to suit their needs, or more accurately, calm their
fears by providing a feeling of historical inevitability.  Over two
hundred years of American secularism is thrown out the window, and the
Supreme Court is seen as the enemy, as its actions seldom support the
theocratic view.  They produce logos that place our flag behind a
Christian cross, or replace the flag's stars with a cross, to drive
home the new order: "God's law" displaces man's law.

When they come to Washington, it is to establish their church in a
place ringed with monuments to people they are painting as Christian
saints.  It is to take that space, those symbols, for themselves,
excluding all others if not targeting them for intensive conversion.
During the climactic last hour of the rally, my partner and I - she an
unrepentant pagan bisexual - were surrounded by a group on our Mall,
led by a pastor, who prayed (preyed) over without our consent.  They
unsuccessfully attempted to join hands and surround us on all sides so
as to not let us leave, but they were unable to complete their circle
in the crowd.  She openly shared with them her beliefs and lifestyle,
all we received in return was to be treated not as people with
differing viewpoints but as objects to be converted, by force if
necessary - squarely in the middle of the Mall! 

I also believe that we're being done in by technological advances,
mainly that of cheap global bandwidth.  Today we listen to the radio
news, and the stories we hear are of fatal traffic accidents on the
other side of the planet that can fit in a few seconds; discussion of
real issues gets ghettoized on NPR, but only if you're lucky.  Three
hundred channels are delivered to our living rooms, and in the chaos,
to get above the noise, editors are forced to deliver pretty pictures
and not talking heads.  We end up with pretty pictures of people being
emotional for all the wrong reasons in the middle of a large beautiful
choreographed TV show interspersed with a few brief seconds of a
talking head saying that they don't like it because <insert group
here> might be affected eventually.  This won't work.

Meanwhile, technology favors the religious.  They can hold a huge
event with attendees a mile away from the stage, but each individual
there can see captioned video of every moment on Jumbotron
screens. Bill McCartney boasts that they were managed to obtain the
Jumbotrons despite the fact that they were supposed to go to a Rolling
Stones concert.  Why is this important, and why is it likely that the
PK organization paid a massive premium for the units?  Because the
Jumbotron is key to asserting control over each individual in the mass
event.  People must see the captions to sing along, they must see the
emotional outpouring and the demonstrations of cracking under and
submitting happening on the stage, if they are to fully participate -
loudspeakers are not sufficient to achieve the emotional impact
necessary for conversion and indoctrination.

Technology also enables milleu control, so that a person could live
their entire life viewing many channels of sanitized Christian media.
Just go to the Promise Keepers web site, and you'll see advertised
there  the "Sky Angel" DBS TV and radio system which is billed as
carrying a future all-PK TV channel.  The service is packaged in such
a way as to exclude secular television channels from their basic
service. 

Religion as practiced by PK will produce a single minority bloc which
will, if unopposed by sophisticated means, become the root of a
dominant political force in this country.  The left hasn't even
figured out what's going on.  We have Geraldine Ferraro saying that
she "doesn't understand these guys" on CNN, and we have our allegedly
Democratic President endorsing the PK's "family values."  The left as
we know it is toast, so don't expect political maneuvering as we've
known it to moderate the PK influence.

Wearing atheist jewelry and complaining about a few obscure lumps of
rock in a San Francisco park isn't opposition to the encroaching
Christian theocracy; whimpering about tax exemptions for churches
doesn't cut it either.  A massive movement to reaffirm this country's
commitment to pluralism and freedom, combined with clear messages with
emotional content defining and reintroducing America to its
traditional basic values, might make some difference.  But I have
plenty of reason to be pessimistic.

Germany teaches its children not to blindly obey; why haven't we?
-- 
-------------     Copyright (c) 1997 All Rights Reserved.     --------------
-----    "I am Promise Keeper of Borg.  Prepare to be assimilated."    -----
Mike Doughney   ----   mike@mtd.com   ----   http://mtd.com   ----   PP-ASEL