Author: Gordon Govier

A Downtown church is renting the recently renovated Orpheum Theater to put on a free Christmas concert Saturday featuring a 150-voice choir. “We wanted to make a gift to the Madison community and a gift of what we consider to be the story of Christmas,” said the Rev. Carly Kuntz, the lead pastor at First United Methodist Church.

Last June, just before summer break, I met with groups of young African-American males during my student listening tour. I visited each of the Madison high schools in an attempt  to find the cultural and academic pulse of young black males. I needed to hear for myself how they felt about what’s being said — and thought — about them in our community. Those discussions were one part of a much larger conversation I had engaged in with several hundred local African-Americans since writing “Justified Anger” one year ago. My personal essay for the Cap Times called on Madison to…

A group of activists and religious leaders told a standing-room only crowd at the state Capitol the goal to decrease Wisconsin’s prison population from about 22,000 to 11,000 by the end of 2015 is still achievable. WISDOM, a statewide faith-based coalition, released its blueprint to end mass incarceration in Wisconsin during a presentation on Wednesday.

Church plants often begin modestly, and the work is tough. One recent study found that about 20 percent of church plants fail in the first three years. Alas, that turned out to be the fate of theMadison Alliance Church, which began in September of 2011 with a once-a-month service at The Comedy Club on State.

Leaders in Dane County’s predominantly black congregations are seeking more involvement in education, law enforcement and the upbringing of black children, a group of clergy from the African American Council of Churches said Wednesday.Read more of this story:

VERONA, Wis. -A lost wedding ring was found underneath the gutters of Verona’s old Wildcat Lanes by a volunteer cleaning up what is now the Sugar River United Methodist Church. The ring belonged to Justin Blair and had been missing for eight years.

In light of the grand jury decision handed down tonight in in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, MO, I think it is of utmost importance that all Christians, but specifically white evangelicals, talk a little less and listen a little more. Or, put another way, maybe some need to spend less time insisting that African Americans shouldn’t be upset and spend more time asking why some are.

I don’t begrudge Bishop Robert Morlino speaking his mind or his efforts to implement his conservative brand of Catholicism in the Madison Diocese. It’s a religiously free country, after all, and if you don’t like the shepherd, you aren’t obligated to be part of the flock.

A federal appeals court Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by a Madison-based group of atheists and agnostics that sought to end tax-free housing allowances for clergy members. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said the Freedom From Religion Foundation lacks legal standing to challenge the IRS rule because it has only a general grievance against the rule and has not suffered a personal injury due to it.

The Ebola crisis gripping West Africa is a deeply personal and tragic one for the Rev. Julius Brent, pastor of Hope in Christ Assembly in Madison. Three weeks ago, his youngest brother, an ambulance driver in the Liberian capitol of Monrovia, died of the disease. He was in his late 20s.