The YWCA sponsored an open forum Tuesday to create a local discussion on the national topic of the Promise Keepers movement.

About 35 members of the Iowa State and Ames community attended the forum that was held in the Pioneer Room in the Memorial Union from noon to 1 p.m.

“We have men in our community who have attended Promise Keepers rallies as well as people who have not, and we thought an open forum would be good for discussing the issues,” said Judy Dolphin, executive director of YWCA of Ames-ISU.

A Promise Keepers event on Oct. 4, 1997, brought thousands of men to the Mall in Washington, D.C., but Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, criticized the rally as the work of “the same old pantheon of religious-political extremists we’ve been fighting for decades.”

The controversy over the Promise Keepers movement stems from allegations that it is biased against women and homosexuality, and that it puts males in the power position of the family.

Dolphin said the YWCA is an organization of individuals who have no group position on the topic, so it can provide a variety of views.

“We figured, ‘Why not take a national issue and bring it home?'” Dolphin said.

Along with Dolphin, the forum included four panelists and one facilitator.

The panelists were Lynn Prior-Miller, a Promise Keeper; the Rev. Beverly Thompson-Travis, campus minister for United Christian Campus Ministry; G.P. Foote of Campus Crusade for Christ; and Karl Koch, pastor of the University Lutheran congregation.

The first speaker, Prior-Miller, said the movement is devoted to seven commitments: to live a life that honors Jesus Christ, to maintain moral and ethical purity, to build strong families and marriages, to support their local church, to reach beyond racial and denominational barriers, to love God first and to establish and pursue relationships with other men.

But Thompson-Travis said the first time she saw footage of one of the rallies, she felt there was distinct competition between the men, even though they were supposed to be worshipping.

“When the men were shouting ‘We love Jesus, yes we do, we love Jesus how ’bout you,’ it struck me as trivializing my idea of the gospel,” Thompson-Travis said.

Karl Koch, a panelist, said he thinks the Promise Keepers are spurred by “a sense of fear and threat of the changing roles of men and women.”

Koch said when the movement uses words such as reclaim and retake when referring to the traditional male roles, they are sending a mixed message of patriarchy.

A woman professor of engineering at ISU said she was scared of the backlash the movement could cause. She said the Promise Keepers are trying to force women “back into the kitchen.”

Panelist G.P. Foote has been quoted as saying that the purpose of the movement is “the values of family and marriage and relationship with God — not money, power and position.”

Promise Keepers was founded in 1990 by then-University of Colorado Football Coach Bill McCartney, according to the “Official PK Web site.” McCartney’s original philosophy was gathering thousands of men together for the purpose of Christian discipleship.