Hollywood Christians?

The readers of the monthly Christian Life are no friends of show business. Drinking, smoking, dancing, card-playing and movies they consider the Devil's traps. Last week the July issue of their aggressively fundamentalist magazine brought them up short with an article called "The Truth about Hollywood."

Under that heading Editor Robert Walker told about a group of movie folk who had become "born-again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ." Among Christian Life's galaxy of "sincere and effective soul-winners": Stars Jane (The Outlaw) Russell and Roy Rogers, Starlet Colleen Townsend. Colleen, said the article, had underscored her conversion by leaving the "secular movie industry," which has "been one of Satan's most effective weapons for corrupting the morals and misleading the youth of the world." None of the others, however, had yet heard a similar call.

Christian Life's readers lost no time in letting Editor Walker know where the Devil had trapped him. Wrote the Rev. Roy I. Bohanan of New London, Conn.: "Print more . . . Let's have a story on the Bartenders' Christian Fellowship, or the revelation of a" Prostitutes' Christian Association . . . but not into Christian homes." Sighed Kenneth D. Barney of Scott City, Kans.: "The wishy-washy, lukewarm professed believers who insist movies are not wrong for Christians will now have a new argument." Henry Pucek of St. Louis, Mo. pointed to a recent magazine picture of Jane Russell in an "unChristian pose," and asked: "Is this the priesthood which Miss Russell feels that God has called her to?"

Mrs. Derrall Bodenhamer of Macomb, Ill. was simply puzzled: "I didn't know there were Hollywood Christians."

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