Religion: Calling All Christophers

• Share

"While the good people have been taking care of themselves, the bad people have been taking care of everybody else." With such arresting catchphrases, 47-year-old Father James Keller speaks and writes on behalf of the growing lay movement he has started. Its name: "The Christophers" (Christ-bearers). Its aim: "to bring Christ into the market place." To this end, Roman Catholic Father Keller and a Manhattan staff of four spend some $5,000 a month culling the press for outstanding examples of Christian influence exerted in line of duty, and sending it to a mailing list of some 51,000 real and potential Christophers.

Since 1939, Father Keller (Men of Maryknoll, with New York Timesman Meyer Berger) has been urging Christian laymen to use their jobs to spread their faith—even if it means changing their jobs. Today he spends about a third of his time speaking to churches, schools and civic groups throughout the country, trying to get people into education, government, writing or labor-management—the four fields in which he feels a Christian's influence is most needed. "You're good people," he likes to say, "but there aren't many of you in these professions."

Within five years Father Keller expects to increase his Christophers to a million. He will also add to his files many more such cases of Christopherism as that of the businessman who took a cut in salary to go to work on a magazine that "breeds paganism"; the salesgirl who changed over from hat-selling to bookselling; the housewife who began writing letters of protest against all un-Christian material in the press, radio or movies.

Father Keller's Christophers made news last week that will be heard even in such secular strongholds as the offices of authors' agents and cinemoguls. They announced a prize book contest baited with enough cash to make big-league authors sit up & take notice—$15,000 for the first prize, $10,000 for the second and $5,000 for the third, with all rights to remain with the authors. Manuscripts (to be submitted by Nov. 15, 1948) may be fiction, biographies or whodunits; the only stipulation is "that they be in accordance with Christian principles and not against them." Book publishers and moviemakers have told Father Keller that they are hungry for just the kind of plain Christian writing the Christophers' contest is designed to produce.