Promise Keepers contained contradictory models of manhood that coexisted in creative tension

Evidence

Both Cole and Oliver were popular writers and speakers within the movement, suggesting that Promise Keepers encompassed varied and even contradictory models of manhood. Cole, for example, favored masculine “toughness,” but he also critiqued men who wielded their domestic authority in unbending or abusive ways, and he gave a nod to female equality by suggesting that women were “joint heirs” in the home. Oliver, meanwhile, hedged on his egalitarianism by calling out the “‘lunacy’ and ‘ridiculous assumption[s]’ of those who have ‘jumped on the gender-same bandwagon.’” In this way, men could find within Promise Keepers both a justification for traditional masculine authority and a defense of an emotive, egalitarian, reconstructed Christian manhood. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 351