tempt to reinstate old-fashioned patriarchy and rob
women of hard-won rights. Other women’s groups
criticized NOW for such a sweeping attack and rec-
ognized the family-values agenda as helpful to
women. Gay rights and pro-choice groups attacked
the Promise Keepers’ antiabortion and antigay
stances. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson and others
feared that the organization could divert black vot-
ers away from the Democratic Party.
At the other end of the political spectrum, funda-
mentalist Christian groups attacked Promise Keepers
for not being doctrinally specific, for welcoming Ro-
man Catholics, and for being merely “feel-good”
Christianity. None of this criticism was particularly
heard by PK members. If anything, the movement’s
leaders responded much more to charges of com-
mercialism.
Impact The main goal of the Promise Keepers was
to change the style of male spirituality, to help men
become more confident as Christians, sharing their
faith with other men and becoming more aware of
their roles as fathers and husbands. There were real
efforts to bridge the color divide, and speakers from
the black community were frequently invited to con-
ferences. Branches of Promise Keepers were formed
in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Sociologists
and church historians are still assessing its lasting
impact.
By the end of the decade, the Promise Keepers
movement was in decline. Although rallies contin-
ued, their attendance dropped. The agenda to form
a huge network of accountability groups never mate-
rialized; many local churches were happy to send
their men to rallies, but not to have the groups as
part of the church network. With the growth of male
spirituality, the felt need for a movement like Prom-
ise Keepers lessened. However, the movement con-
tinued into the next century.
Further Reading
Brickner, Bryan W.The Promise Keepers: Politics and
Promises.Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 1999.
Explores the ideology of the evangelical move-
ment.
Clausen, Dane S., ed. The Promise Keepers: Essays
on Masculinity and Christianity.Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 2000. A varied collection of academic
essays on the movement, some critical, some sup-
portive.
Gutterman, David S.Prophetic Politics: Christian Social
Movements and American Democracy.Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 2005. Gutterman ex-
plores four Christian social movements, includ-
ing the Promise Keepers.
Novosad, Nancy.Promise Keepers: Playing God.Am-
herst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2000. A feminist
critique of the Promise Keepers movement.
Williams, Rhys H., ed.Promise Keepers and the New
Masculinity: Private Lives and Public Morality.Lan-
ham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2001. Essays exam-
ine the movement in the contexts of history, gen-
der, and race relations.
David BarrattSee also Farrakhan, Louis;Iron John; Million Man
March; Religion and spirituality in the United States. Proulx, Annie
Identification American fiction writer
Born August 22, 1935; Norwich, Connecticut
Proulx’s fiction described the beauty of remote areas of
North America and celebrated the courage and tenacity of
ordinar y human beings.
It was not until Annie Proulx published her first
novel in 1992 that she was recognized as a writer of
major importance. Her characters are always in-
volved in a struggle for survival, often against nature,
which though magnificent is also unforgiving, and
often against equally merciless human beings. How-
ever, Proulx’s grimly realistic assessments of the hu-
man condition are expressed in such exuberant
prose, lightened with such flashes of humor, and
brightened by so many evidences of the strength of
the human spirit that they are ultimately more opti-
mistic than pessimistic.
InPostcards(1992), the main character flees the
family farm in backwoods Vermont because he has
accidentally killed his fiancé. Over the next four de-
cades, he wanders throughout the West, periodically
reporting his activities in postcards sent to the fam-
ily, whose lives prove to be as precarious as his. When
Postcards won the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award,
Proulx became the first woman writer to be so hon-
ored.
The hero of her second novel,The Shipping News
(1993), is a bumbling journalist who, after his wife’s
death, moves to his ancestral home in a remote688 Proulx, Annie The Nineties in America