Author: Gordon Govier

A typical Sunday night at Chief’s Tavern is pretty quiet — a few regulars, having a beer and watching the game. But if those regulars had stopped in at 7 p.m. on the first Sunday in March, they likely found their east side pub unrecognizable. On that night, some 50 Lutherans from a nearby church crowded the tables, drinking pints and singing “Amazing Grace,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Be Thou My Vision.” The atmosphere was noisy and fun, accompanied by acoustic guitar and djembe bongo drum. Some people danced, most clapped. “When the Saints Go Marching In” inspired…

MONONA — The seventh and eighth grade students at Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Monona walked solemnly down the middle aisle and out of the sanctuary of their church last week after portraying living Stations of the Cross. The school has been acting out the stations — visual descriptions of the events leading to Christ’s crucifixion — in front of other students in the school and the community for at least seven years, according to teachers’ estimates. It’s a tradition that is also carried out in some other Catholic schools in the area.

Rebecca Blank, the newly selected UW-Madison chancellor, is a labor economist and once served as co-director of the National Poverty Center. Blank is a member of the United Church of Christ and chaired the committee that wrote, “Christian Faith and Economic Life,” a statement adopted by the general synod of the UCC in 1989. In 2009 she talked with Sally Steenland about the recession, failures of the market, populist anger, and the role of faith communities during this time of economic turmoil.

Robert Enright is locked in an existential battle with a dead, but very influential, German philosopher. Friedrich Nietzsche equated forgiveness with weakness, calling it “sublimated resentment.” That way of thinking persists today in our culture, where power and winning are celebrated, and showing mercy to those who have done us wrong is seen as condoning their crimes. But that thinking is quite the opposite of what drives Enright, a UW–Madison professor of educational psychology.

The fabric of a community is woven together out of many strands. But one of the most important is the church. That was my thought after reading a Christianity Today Gleanings report that said that Americans are far more connected to their church than any other institution. The report was discussing the latest findings from a Rasmussen survey.

Seconds after white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday, Samuel Schultz shot out of his Madison apartment and ran more than a mile to St. Paul’s University Catholic Center on the UW-Madison campus. Dozens of his Catholic classmates were gathered around a television there, alternating between excited chatter and solemn prayer as they waited for the name of the new pope to be announced.

The last few months have not been kind to high-profile athletes. Lance Armstrong, Oscar Pistorius, Suzy Favor Hamilton — all have taken big falls. The collapse of such once-storied athletes has been painful to watch and has led to increased scrutiny and skepticism of anything said by athletes, said Casey FitzRandolph, a three-time Olympian and 2002 gold medalist in 500-meter speed skating. Read more of this story.

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama emphasized the need to get immigration reform accomplished this year in a meeting with a diverse group of faith leaders at the White House on Friday, including former Madison resident Stephan Bauman, president of World Relief.

The phone call came unexpectedly three months ago to Joe Schoeneman, a town of Oregon man whose kidneys were failing due to a heredity disorder. “Well, I’m just going to get right to it,” the caller said. “I had myself checked. I’m a match.” Schoeneman couldn’t believe it. He’d spent more than a year waiting for a kidney on a national transplant list, to no avail. Now, out of the blue, someone he barely knew had just offered him one of his. The caller was Paul Sever, 52, a retired deputy U.S. marshal who lives in the village of Oregon,…

(Madison, WI) — The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has announced a briefing focused on reconciling non-discrimination policies with religious liberties. Staff and students of Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship have been invited to submit statements on incidents where universities have attempted to restrict the religious liberties of student groups in the name of non-discrimination.