Novosad, Nancy

Promise Keepers : Playing God

Known for their emotionally charged football stadium rallies, Promise Keepers calls men to be "responsible" husbands, fathers, and citizens, but preaches a radical extremist subtext that challenges individual liberties and promotes intolerance and public piety as political virtue. Brandishing an absolutist agenda that requires personal submission and accountability, Promise Keepers seeks to build God's own army, confronting and "purifying" secular life and society.Working from the Promise Keepers' broad agenda covering ideology, gender, race, sport, war, mythology, economics, and psychology, Nancy Novosad reveals how a movement designed as the vehicle for radical social change and religious conversion made its way from the messianic fringes of the right to America's fifty-yard line.