Group Life

For almost five years the northern Presbyterians (membership: 2,500,000) have been trying to build their new fortnightly Presbyterian Life into a journal of wide church appeal. With a $160,000 annual subsidy from church funds, the editors turned out a newsy, well-written publication which manages to cover developments inside the church without neglecting issues of broader Christian interest, e.g., the Point Four program, the problems of church-state relationships, the persecution of Protestants in Colombia. Until two years ago, however, circulation hung around the 80,000 mark, about par for a religious paper in the U.S. but scarcely what its founders had hoped for.

To increase distribution, the 1950 General Assembly authorized group subscriptions to congregations at $1 per family (regular subscriptions: $2). The plan caught on. Subscriptions increased so quickly that the publishers had trouble expanding their circulation staff fast enough. Last week the editors announced that circulation had passed 600,000, to make Presbyterian Life far & away the best-selling Protestant religious magazine in the world. Nearest rival: the interdenominational Christian Herald (375,000). Among Roman Catholic periodicals, only Columbia (circ. 768,000) is larger.

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