Author: Gordon Govier

A 50-hour national prayer event will stop in Fitchburg later this month. Awaken the Dawn, a movement of worship, prayer and missions, has mobilized a nationwide movement to hold worship events in every state on the same weekend. McKee Farms Park will host one of the two events in Wisconsin, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28 and Saturday, Sept. 29. The other, an overnight event, will be held at Crimson Way Church in Elm Grove.

For several months now, the S.S. Morris African Methodist Episcopal Church, a traditionally Black congregation on Madison’s east side, has been running services in Spanish every Sunday at 2 pm. For leaders of S.S. Morris, as well as members of the community who belong to the church, making sure they were serving as much of the community as possible has been the driving motivation for the move. “It’s growing,” said AME Pastor Karla Garcia. “We have people from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Puerto Rico. The Hispanic culture in Madison is very diverse and includes many different cultures. So…

F is for faith, which is the dominant aspect of the daily lives of the six women who call the Sisters of Mary Morning Star convent, affiliated with Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Monona, home. Much of the day is spent in silence and solitude to allow the women to develop their relationship with God. Sister Mary Thomas said the sisters are awake at 4:45 a.m. and begin the day with the three divine offices. There is time to privately read scripture, silent prayer and studying philosophy or theology.

Not having enough food in the house to feed the kids is stressful. But it’s also stressful to drive or use public transportation long distances to get to a food pantry and stand in line for an hour, said Jenny Czerkas, operations director at the faith-based organization Selfless Ambition. Selfless Ambition hopes to ease that stress and bring food to families by placing food pantries in schools. Eventually they hope to open 25 pantries, and are opening the first at Glendale Elementary, 1201 Tompkins Drive, this fall.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin student is suing her college, saying her free speech rights were violated when she was forced to stop handing out Valentine’s Day cards with Bible references. The conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Milwaukee on behalf of Polly Olsen, a student at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.

Rev. David Smith, the former pastor of the Faith Community Baptist Church, is well-known on Madison’s south side for his passion for ministry and community-building. But after more than two decades there, he will be starting a new chapter on the other side of town as the new pastor of the north side Madison campus of Door Creek Church in the Sherman Plaza Shopping Center. The grand opening will take place on Sunday, Sept. 9.

Over the last three decades, some of the country’s most influential voting blocs have been labeled by the faith that can drive their votes. But not all religious practices predict a voting pattern, some voters say. Jill Doering, a voter who attends a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod church in Lake Mills, put it this way: “It’s easy to put all Christians in a box,” she said. “We’re all individual voters, so whenever you want to put voters inside of a box, you’ve taken away their individual concerns and issues they think most strongly about.”

As the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal continues to escalate, Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino has aligned himself publicly with some of the church’s most outspoken critics of Pope Francis, including a former Vatican diplomat to the U.S. who has called on the pope to resign.

Madison-based InterVarsity announced today that the campus ministry will focus on establishing Christian fellowships on 2,500 college campuses in the next 12 years. As more than 1,500 InterVarsity campus staff ministers, along with student and faculty leaders, return to campuses this fall, their focus is on the 2030 Calling, which states: Longing for revival, we catalyze movements that call every corner of every campus to follow Jesus.

A U.S. bishop has claimed that a “homosexual subculture” exists within the “hierarchy of the Catholic Church,” which is leading to the mass child sex abuse scandals. U.S. Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin, wrote in a pastoral letter on Saturday that there is “justified anger” being directed at Catholic leadership over the Pennsylvania grand jury report, released last week, which revealed how 301 priests who abused over 1,000 children over decades were protected by the institution. Morlino said that the abuse detailed in the 1,300-page report is “sickening,” but insisted that it is not just pedophilia that is the…