A Brief History of Kairos

In 1975, Tom Johnson, a lawyer and Catholic Cursillista from Miami, Florida, attended an ecumenical Cursillo gathering in Atlanta, Georgia. Though delegates came from several denominations doing Cursillo weekends, this Atlanta gathering was heavily Lutheran.

Tom Johnson had been imagining a Cursillo program in prison for some months. When he heard some of the delegates actually planning a prison weekend in Iowa, Tom approached the Iowa delegate, Pastor Gene Hermeier and sought permission to attend. One week later, Tom was observing a Cursillo weekend in an Iowa prison and knew that he found a calling. He returned to Miami determined to begin weekends in Florida prisons.

The first weekend was held at Union Correctional Institution at Raiford, Florida in the fall of 1976. It was called Cursillo.

By 1978, six or seven states were doing Cursillo in prison. The national Cursillo office in Dallas, Texas surveyed these prison Cursillos and determined that they should be ecumenical, they should be under a central authority and that the format should be significantly altered to better meet the needs of those in prison. Cursillo asked the Florida group to design a program for that particular application.

After the first Kairos was presented in 1979, Cursillo requested those who were doing Cursillo in prison to quit the practice. Most of those districts became associated with Kairos.

Kairos dates its history back to that first weekend at UCI at Raiford, Florida. Kairos is now active in 25 states, England and Australia. The ministry is active in 165 prisons and has 11 Kairos Outside ministries for wives and mothers. More than 95,000 incarcerated men and women have been introduced to the Christian community that is Kairos and the current rate of introduction exceeds 10,000 per year.

Kairos is widely recognized as the most effective program available to positively change basic attitudes of the incarcerated.