Religion: Gospel Cartoonist

Familiar to many a U. S. newspaper reader is the late Heywood Broun’s annual Christmas fable (see p. 35). New York commuters know well the editorial, “Is There A Santa Claus?,” which the New York Sun has run at Christmas for 42 years (see p. 47). This week, the Chicago Daily News prints a cartoon (first published in 1934) which is on its way to like renown (see cut). The cartoonist: Vaughn Richard Shoemaker,* Chicago political satirist (famed for his mousy little character, “John Q. Public”) and an ardent Christian.

“Shoe” Shoemaker was self-converted in 1925, joined an Assembly of God church. Since then, he has never started a day at his drawing board without praying, reading from the Bible. But he discovered that “when you become a Christian, you’re all alone in the world—especially if you work in a newspaper office.” Cartoonist Shoemaker took to lunching once a week with a friend who had also been converted. Their lunches expanded, soon became a Gospel Fellowship Club, which today has 800 members in Chicago, 1,200 in other Midwest cities.

The Chicago Fellows meet for 50¢ lunches at the Brevoort Hotel on Tuesdays, listen to speeches on “How I Came to Jesus,” enjoy a half-hour of “Christian fellowship.” Most of the Fellows are white-collar workers, with a scattering of executives like Board Chairman James Lewis Kraft of Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corp., Vice President Frank Flagg Taylor of Continental Illinois Bank. Still spark plug of the club is Cartoonist Shoemaker, who contributes drawings to the club paper, lately packed a Tuesday meeting by demonstrating the “Shoescope,” a $1,500 contraption which projects his cartoons, as he draws them, upon a screen. The Shoescope is a great attraction in Chicago churches, in which “Shoe” shows it about once a week. A prime favorite is Shoemaker’s 1938 Pulitzer Prizewinner, “The Road Back”—a soldier marching to World War.

*Not to be confused with Manhattan’s Rev. Samuel Moor (“Sam”) Shoemaker, second in command in the U. S. Buchmanite movement.