Author: Gordon Govier

In a large privately-owned apartment building right in the middle of the University of Wisconsin campus, a second-floor food court has given way to unique new meeting space called the Upper House. The Upper House is not a ministry, or a think tank, or just a meeting space, but it has elements of each of them. It’s designed to be a place for conversation about important issues, including religious issues and community issues.

At All Saints Cathedral in downtown Milwaukee, just inside the entrance, stands an imposing structure of oak and bronze. Surrounding a small altar and carved image of Christare 104 niches designed to hold the cremated remains of members of the local Episcopal diocese. Wisconsin churches have been constructing these columbaria in and around their buildings for decades without controversy — until last year.

A news report that the Family Christian Stores chain has filed for bankruptcy is positive for customers of the affiliate store on Madison’s east side. The report in Christianity Today says that the chain made the move in order to keep from having to liquidate and close their stores. Presumably that will preserve Madison’s sole remaining Christian book store, located at 1746 Eagan Road, in the Princeton Club Shopping Center near East Towne Mall.

As a teenager, Don Rupp would listen to Paul Harvey News and dreamed of one day anchoring a national newscast. “That dream became a reality when Northwestern Radio (including WNWC in Madison) began a satellite music network. I anchored hourly news reports of ‘Faith News,’” he said.

Plainfield, Iowa — Before Scott Walker stood on a national stage, he crawled beneath the wooden pews and white steeple of First Baptist Church. His father preached and his mother ran the Sunday school in this Iowa farm town too small to have a stoplight. Growing up in the parsonage next door — in the shadow of the church — Walker learned his first lessons in faith, politics and living a life on public display. His religious upbringing set a course for the governor’s later life and may boost his presidential bid among evangelicals in this early caucus state.

Steve Hayner, former president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, former Madison pastor for a short time, and most recently the president of Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, passed away on Saturday, January 31, 2015, after a nearly year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 66 years old.

Religious believers in the state’s larger metro areas, especially Milwaukee and Madison, have a long history of building bridges across their faith traditions. At the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, for example, leaders gather regularly to discuss the many issues on which they can find common ground. And their members collaborate on a host of initiatives, from feeding the hungry to environmental preservation. Now, over the next year, Wisconsin’s largest coalition of Christian churches hopes to encourage that kind of interfaith dialogue and cooperation in communities across the state.

NORTH LAKE, Wis. — In the days leading up to Christmas, the aging pastor of a small Episcopal church set amid the glacial hills here began to write a parable. It came neither from Scripture nor from yuletide tradition, but rather from the priest’s very different earlier life. The Rev. David Couper, 77, recalled the predawn hours of a March day nearly a quarter-century ago. A fire had broken out at a housing project in Madison, Wis., where he was the chief of police. A police sergeant, hearing about the blaze from a 911 dispatcher, jauntily sang of the apartment…

It’s a giveaway like no other — a massive liquidation that ultimately will help hundreds of people. As the Madison Catholic Diocese prepares to convert much of its historic headquarters into rental housing, it is clearing out thousands of pieces of furniture and other items and donating them to charities and nonprofit organizations.

At a commercial kitchen on Madison’s North Side, workers in hairnets churned out hundreds of oatmeal raisin cookies, cinnamon rolls and morning buns on a recent Friday morning. Two days later, the baked goods were sold in the lobbies of area churches after worship services let out. The program, called Just Bakery, is a relatively new initiative of Madison-area Urban Ministry (MUM), an interfaith social justice organization with a long history of helping ex-prisoners re-enter society. By training and employing people with criminal records, the organization is leading by example, said Carmella Glenn, Just Bakery program coordinator.