Kairos History
In 1975, Tom Johnson, an attorney and Catholic Cursillista from Miami, Florida, attended an ecumenical Cursillo gathering in Atlanta, Georgia. Though delegates came from several denominations representing Cursillo Weekends, this Atlanta gathering was heavily Lutheran.
Tom Johnson had been imagining a Cursillo program in prison for some time. During the Atlanta meeting Tom learned some of the delegates were planning a prison weekend in Iowa. Tom approached Iowa delegate, Pastor Gene Hermeier, and asked permission to attend. One week later, Tom was observing a Cursillo weekend in an Iowa prison. Excited by the experience, he returned to Miami determined to begin Cursillo Weekends in Florida prisons. That first Weekend was held at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida, in the fall of 1976.
By 1978, six or seven states were presenting a Cursillo short course in Christianity in various prisons. The national Cursillo office in Dallas surveyed these prison Cursillos and determined they should be ecumenical as well as supervised by a central authority. They also felt the format should be modified to better meet inmate needs. Cursillo asked the Florida group to design such a program. The first ministry Weekend known as Kairos was presented in 1979. Following that first “Kairos Weekend,” the Cursillo organization asked other areas doing Cursillo Weekends in prison to stop using the Cursillo name and join Kairos.
Kairos dates its history back to that first Weekend at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida, in September of 1976. Kairos is now active in 34 states and in the countries of Australia, Canada, England, Costa Rica, Honduras, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Kairos prison ministry is active in over 300 institutional sites as well as 35 Kairos Outside ministries for women whose sons and husbands are in prison. Kairos currently has requests for programs in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Nigeria, and several other countries.
Kairos does all this with a paid staff of nine people and over 35,000 volunteers who pay for the hundreds of Kairos Weekends we present each year. Recidivism studies in Florida and South Carolina found that the Kairos experience brought a drop in recidivism of about one-third when compared to a control group.
By bringing the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ into prison, Kairos is widely recognized as a highly effective program to positively change inmate attitudes and behavior.
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