Author: Gordon Govier

Caring means having intimate and human connection with others. And it can be expressed in multiple ways — from helping an elderly person cross the street to fighting a house fire. But certain parts of America put this into practice more than others. As a whole, Americans have shown their care through charitable giving more and more. According to Giving USA, Americans donated over $390 billion in 2016, up 2.7% from the previous year. But even if you can’t afford to give away your income, there are plenty of other ways to show kindness to others.

Held captive by a determination to keep religion confined to churches and homes, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is demanding the Wisconsin Department of Corrections sever ties with an educational ministry that offers inmates a degree in Biblical studies. Modeled after the 22-year-old seminary housed at Angola Prison in Louisiana, the Wisconsin Inmate Education Association (WIEA) and Trinity International University (TIU) formed a partnership to create Operation Transformation, an educational program offering a Bachelor of Science in Biblical studies to inmates serving life or long-term sentences. After completing the four-year program, the inmates are reassigned to other prisons as “field ministers.”

Sadly, dozens of people die in Madison without a home, a funeral, a service, a remembrance of their lives or even an obituary. The “Longest Night: National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Service” is an opportunity to remember, honor, celebrate and mourn those often-invisible people in our community who have passed away. Houseless individuals, members of local faith communities and representatives from social service agencies, as well as the general public, will come together Thursday, Dec. 21, 3 p.m., for “Longest Night: National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Service” to remember and honor people who died without shelter in Dane County and elsewhere this…

This year, Willow Creek Community Church founder Bill Hybels announced that church volunteers would be ensuring that every single inmate in Illinois would be receiving a special Christmas gift bag this year. It’s part of Hybels’ newfound burden for incarcerated people. “I follow God’s son, Jesus Christ, who was blindingly clear about how I should engage with prisoners,” he told the church. “If I had passed away at 55 despite all that clear training and additionally because I’m a pastor, I would’ve had to explain to God that I didn’t pray for prisoners, that I had never visited one, I…

A program that since 1999 has sheltered homeless families in Madison-area churches and synagogues will end — at least partly because progress is being made finding such families permanent homes. The Road Home’s Interfaith Hospitality Network Shelter Program — the smallest family shelter in Madison — will end this spring, according to executive director Kristin Rucinski. Thirteen congregations currently take week-long turns hosting as many as 14 people, or three or four families. Some 40 other “buddy” congregations provide meals and other help to the sheltered.

This Saturday night the Upper House was filled with hundreds of students to participate in the All Campus Worship Night. The event was organized by an all student leadership team. There are over 30 Christian organizations on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This evening brought students representatives from those organization together with the purpose of worship.

A Downtown Madison Catholic parish doesn’t qualify for a property tax exemption on land where it intends to rebuild a cathedral, a state appeals court ruled Thursday. But a provision quietly tucked into the state budget will soon change that. The three-judge panel affirmed a 2016 ruling by Dane County Circuit Judge Rhonda Lanford that the property failed to meet a requirement for religiously exempt land to be “necessary for (the) location and convenience of buildings” since an arson fire destroyed St. Raphael’s Cathedral in 2005.

Dane County’s only voucher school is outperforming the rest of the Madison Metropolitan School District on most measures, despite serving a student body that is more diverse and more economically disadvantaged than any other school in the district, according to report cards from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. “LCS is making a difference for low-income minority children in Madison,” says pastor Marcio Sierra, whose Lighthouse Church operates the school. “Our goal is to help lower the achievement gap among minority students and their white counterparts in Madison and this report card shows that we are being successful.”

TOWN OF WESTPORT — Rosebud and Duchess seemed anxious to get to work as they heard trees being felled on a recent misty November morning. The pair of harnessed American Suffolk horses would soon be hauling timber out of a wooded area near Lake Mendota. The work, which recalled an earlier era when land was cleared by muscle alone, also seeks to turn the clock back on this parcel of land to oak savanna, now one of the rarest ecological environments in America. Holy Wisdom Monastery is undergoing a years-long project to convert some 30 acres of its property to…

It was a rare moment when the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison had a chance to address two of her passions – economics and Christianity. Chancellor Rebecca Blank talked on Wednesday to students, faculty, and community members at Upper House, an off-campus venue that provides a forum for the exploration of belief and action. In addition to being leader of a public educational institution, Blank is an internationally respected economist and someone who is a regular participant at a local church – First Congregational United Church of Christ near Camp Randall Stadium.