In January when Promise Keepers announced its official plans for a "Sacred Assembly" in the nation's capital, media and other observers were naturally curious. Why pick Washington, D.C.? Randy Phillips, President of Promise Keepers had plenty of clichés ready, and insisted that his group was merely "humbling ourselves before God and pleading for His mercy." Aside from the claim that their god had called the Promise Keepers leadership to hold the event in Washington, Phillips assured the public that "the key word for this event is 'repentance'," and that no political agenda was at work.

While "Coach" McCartney has been enthralled by the bizarre theological teachings of relatively obscure men such as James Ryle, other names linked to the Promise Keepers are well know for their involvement in fundamentalist Christian political activism. James Dobson, founder of the giant Focus on the Family group, is the "Bible discipline" guru of the religious right. Focus publishes the Promise Keepers manifesto, Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper. And Dobson is one of the group's links to the semisecret Council for National Policy (CNP), an elite policy-making body for religious-right causes. CNP is perhaps the most important linchpin in the religious-right movement today. Its membership includes hard-line christian Reconstructionists like Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony, Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association, Henry Morris of the Institute for Creation Research, Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson of Christian Broadcasting Network, and Richard de Vos of Amway fame. Another Focus on the Family official active in Promise Keepers is E. Peb Jackson, the group's Senior Vice President of Public Affairs.

Bill Bright is another Promise Keepers luminary whose tenure in evangelical and theopolitical movements predates even Dobson. Bright started Campus Crusade for Christ in 1951. Today the organization has an annual budget of over $100,000,000, and thousands of "crusaders" who distribute tracts like the "Four Spiritual Laws" and "witness" on high school and college campuses. 

In 1967, Bright began efforts to cash-in on antiestablishment sentiments and opposition to the Vietnam war by co-opting youth energies and promoting a disingenuous campaign he packaged as "Revolution Now." Sara Diamond wrote in Spiritual Warfare that Bright's fraudulent "revolution" was "geared specifically toward thwarting the efforts of the movement against the Vietnam war and supporting Bright's friend Governor Ronald Reagan in his attempt to contain massive campus disruption..." Bright also poured money into other kabuki groups such as the Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF) which tried to mimic the terminology and trappings of student cause organizations. Bright explained his bogus plan to one journalist: 

Christian World Liberation Front was, in the beginning a front organization for Campus Crusade - Only about half a dozen of us were aware of what was happening and it was a test. There was a powerful radical movement among the students then, and we were trying to figure out which route to take, whether we as a movement should adopt a radical counter-culture approach on campus in order to be all things to all people that we might win them for Christ.

Bright was also present at the creation of the modern Christian fundamentalist right, as a participant in the little-known Third Century Movement. His group also poured over one billion dollars into evangelistic projects from 1974 through 1976, including a glitzy "Here's Life, America!" revival campaign funded with help from Texas billionaire Nelson Hunt. Today, Bill Bright is know for his involvement with groups such as Washington for Jesus, Christian Embassy, and the Council for National Policy. He is also a winner of the million-dollar Templeton Prize in Religion, a gift established by financier Sir John Templeton. 

Promise Keepers founder Coach Bill McCartney "accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior," according to his official PK bio-sheet, during a meeting of another Bright group known as Athletes in Action.

Ronald Blue, a Promise Keepers national board member is another link to religious-rights causes. The founder of a financial planning firm, he serves as a Director for Gary Bauer's Family Research Council, a religious group which lobbies against abortion, gay rights, liberalized divorce, and other causes. He is also a Board Member for Campus Crusade for Christ. 

Billy Kim is a Promise Keeper Conference speaker linked to the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC), an evangelical radio operation based in the Philippines. Sara Diamond notes that FEBC personnel boasted of their work with groups like the CIA in the days of cold-war politics, and the firm's evangelism received enthusiastic approval from Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. 

Diamond also says that FEBC is a propaganda outlet which also targets evangelicals in the United States. "In reams of fund raising and promotional mailings, FEBC perpetuates the theme of a world polarized between good and evil, Christianity and communism..." 

FEBC represents one of the most sophisticated evangelical outreaches to penetrate the Asian portion of the so-called "10/40 window," that religion of the earth dominated by Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist (i.e. non-Christian) cults. 

A number of Promise Keepers leaders have ties to extreme Reconstruction and Dominionist movements including the controversial Coalition on Revival. They include "Bishop" Wellington Boone, John Perkins, E.V. Hill, and Joseph Garlington. The Coalition on Revival was founded in 1984 by Jay Grimstead. The group sees its mission as "building a Christian Society" which is eager to "have God's will done on earth." The Coalition remains an elite network of local pastors who have joined "together around the large dream of Christianizing their own city and state... to form themselves into the 10 committees for Law, Government, Economics, Education, Medicine/Family, The Media, The Arts, etc." 

Garlington has served as a Promise Keepers "worship leader" during the group's rally in Pittsburgh's Three River Stadium. E.V. Hill has been with COR since 1986, gave the inaugural prayer for President Richard Nixon in 1973, and headed up a group known as Clergy for Reagan. 

While operating a ministry in Pittsburgh, Garlington was an early guest on Pat Robertson's 700 Club program. At that time he was also active in the "Shepherding-discipleship" movement - which proved too much even for Robertson. According to Christianity Today (Oct. 10, 1975), the latter became concerned with the more threatening and cultish aspects of the movement, particularly its emphasis on "cell groups" where member's lives were under the total control of a "shepherd." Robertson declared that "the so-called 'submission-shepherding' cult is vastly worse than anything I could have conceived of... In these cells, each member is under total domination by the shepherd. The shepherd can forbid the husband and wife from living together, and have (sic) done so, and can delay the visit to a doctor (and did so with a married girl who became pregnant.) They have absolute control over all finances and spending and issue the same threats that are issued under voodoo and witchcraft..." 

Another figure linked to Promise Keepers is D. James Kennedy of Florida's Coral Ridge Ministries. Like PK Board Member Jack Hayford, Kennedy is linked to extreme charismatic, evangelical outreaches including Trinity Broadcasting Network which has specialized in promoting the apocalyptic eschatology of evangelists like Oral Roberts, James Robinson and Kenneth Copeland. Kennedy was also one of the "inner circle" behind Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority group formed in 1979 and in 1984 affiliated with a group called Coalition for Religious Freedom, a "front" for Rev. Moon's Unification Church. Dr. Kennedy is also involved in the Council for National Policy.

Despite claims that Promise Keepers is not a "political organization," the group's leadership is identified and active in religious right groups; PK literature also focuses on issues which clearly have a political dimension. A Bill Bright publication sold by Promise Keepers, for instance, warns the godly men about the "homosexual explosion," lack of prayer in public schools and even the teaching of evolution in classrooms. "Coach" McCartney, while excoriating followers on the need for "reconciliation," has spoken at Operation Rescue events (he called abortion a "second Civil War") and joined the board of Colorado for Family Values which sponsored the bigoted Amendment 2 to the Colorado Constitution, a measure striking down civil rights protection for gay men and lesbians.

Whereas groups like the Christian Coalition have an explicit and overt political agenda, Promise Keepers perform a slightly different function. With its top-down structure of command leadership and "accountability groups," Promise Keepers views itself as the "Godly army" prophesized in Bible verse, and in the utterances of men like James Ryle. Its call for men to "assert godly leadership" in families, churches, communities and the halls of government is a political call. And just as any army requires general and foot-soldiers, the Promise Keepers "army of god" will deliver the troops for fighting a holy war, in homes, stadiums and precincts.