Readers & Religion

Topping 1,000,000 circulation for the first time with its August 10 issue, Presbyterian Life announced proudly last week that it now reaches the "largest number of Christians assembled in one list since the birth of Jesus." Apace with the resurgence of religion in the U.S., the church-sponsored, slick-paper biweekly in less than ten years has grown into the world's biggest paid-circulation religious magazine and has helped to make sweeping changes in the economics and editorial approach of religious journalism.

Most copies of Presbyterian Life are sold directly to churches, which undertake to sign up members of the congregation at $1 a year (v. $2 for individual mail subscribers), thus can sell advertising space (1956 ad revenue: $402,000) on the basis of audited circulation. The magazine is put out by a ten-man lay staff under onetime Holiday Staffer Robert J. Cadigan, aims at general family readership with sharp picture layouts and easy-to-take text pieces.

Using the same circulation system and editorial approach, Methodist-sponsored Together will probably pass a million by its first anniversary in October. As indicated by the growth of such other middlebrow religious magazines as the monthly Catholic Digest (circ. 884,820) and the weekly Lutheran (176,100), the U.S. religious press has at last learned to treat subscribers as readers first, churchgoers second. Said Together Publisher Clark: "We feel we are reaching some of the marginal millions on the periphery of church interest."

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