Why Did A Hate Group Guru Lead Dallas Promise Keepers In Prayer?

DALLAS, TX — It can be a beautiful thing to experience people living out their faith.

In some ways, that's exactly what close to 30,000 men did last weekend at AT&T Stadium in Dallas. That's an impressive number of Christians all in one place, and didn't even take into account the number of folks watching the event online. It's the first real in-person event the Promise Keepers have held in nearly two decades.

Presented over two days, the stated mission of the gathering was to renew the spiritual strength of men and inspire them to become better members of their families, neighborhoods and society.

So why was a hate group there? According to The Christian News organization CBN, one of the presenters leading prayers at the conference was Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, a prominent member of the Family Research Council. CBN reports that Boykin "challenged" the men present to become leaders — as in activists.

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"It's time," Boykin implored, "for you to stand up and be the warrior that God called you to be." But it's not hard to guess what crusade Boykin has in mind.

The retired general has been booted from other events because of his anti-Muslim rhetoric, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has long labeled the FRC a hate group because of its attacks on the LGBTQ+ community while using completely discredited junk science to do so. How can you preach God's love out of one side of your mouth while preaching hate out of the other?

So let's reset this table.

There's something wonderful about watching people live out their faith(s). In America, where freedom of religion is still the law of the land, that means Muslims, Jewish people, agnostics and atheists are all regarded as equal and deserving of respect.

You see, it's more about having a moral code than which moral code you have. As an agnostic once said, "I don't require the threat of Hell or the promise of Heaven in order to do what I know is right."

That's absolutely true. And while we all have heroes who might include people such as Mother Teresa, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bishop Desmond Tutu, there are those equally deserving of admiration who were most decidedly not Christian — Mahatma Gandhi, for instance. And it's worth more than a mention that Jesus himself was a Jew, not a Christian.

Living by a code of morality puts a person in profound alignment with his or her reality. It's a way of becoming grounded and planting your flag on a hill you believe is worth defending. And that's all well and good until someone convinces you that someone else's flag on a nearby hill threatens yours —which takes what should be ways in which people can coexist in compassion and weaponizes it for political gain.

As an Irish American, it was not lost on me that the bloody conflict of my ancestral homeland was not rooted in Christians fighting against non-believers. It was between Catholics and Protestants who so disagreed over issues related to the same savior that decades of horrific violence engulfed the country.

It's always a good thing to be called to higher moral purpose, to listen, as President Abraham Lincoln pleaded in his first inaugural address, to "the better angels of our nature."

The entire passage from that speech says so much about why we're a nation of many Christians, but not a Christian nation. It also reminds us why the separation of church and state as envisioned by our forefathers was a stroke of wisdom.

"We must not be enemies," said Lincoln, who remains the face of the Republican Party. "Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

That's living by a moral code, and it's a promise worth keeping.

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