MC News
Climbing a giant ice cream sundae dressed in a tutu while gripping a snake instead of a rope sounds hard but was comparatively easy for the members of Fish Sticks, a Christian improvisational comedy group based in Milwaukee. Both in the depiction by three of the group members and the conclusion drawn by the other member who was out of the room as the audience shouted out details of what they wanted enacted, the Fish Sticks proved adept at translating each aspect with a combination of gestures and gibberish. For laugh-til-your-jaw-aches entertainment, it’s hard to top a good improvisational comedy…
The family is the cornerstone of our culture. When the family is not healthy the culture is in trouble. Chuck Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship, has spoken and written often about the troubled family backgrounds of many of the men he has counseled in prison. The Christian church is supposed to be a bulwark against the erosion of the family. But in recent years we’ve heard that divorce rates are as high amongst the families of the church as amongst the families outside the church. Now, though, there is new research that clarifies the picture.
To judge by what has happened in Wisconsin over the past month, the transition to the new normal is not going to be easy. But change is coming like a tsunami, development consultant Jerry Twombly told a group of non-profit representatives Friday. “Everybody on the planet knows what’s happening in Wisconsin, but what’s happening in Wisconsin is happening everywhere,” Twombly said, referring to the state budget crunch that prompted a budget fix from governor Scott Walker followed by four weeks of demonstrations at the state capitol. While union supporters rally in response to the budget bill, non-profit organizations also have…
A court decision that requires UW-Madison to fund religious worship activities for student groups will stand after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the university’s appeal on Monday. In September 2010, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the university violated the First Amendment by refusing to fund activities of the student group Badger Catholic involving prayer, worship and proselytizing. The decision affirmed a lower court ruling.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is a bad Christian for standing up to government unions, according to the Religious Left. Religious Left author Diana Butler Bass, writing for The Huffington Post, is the most explicit in faulting Walker’s ostensibly simplistic evangelical beliefs. Butler revealed that Walker belongs to a nondenominational church with “boilerplate” evangelical theology about sin and salvation, with apparently none of the statist political demands that the Religious Left believes are more central to faith.
A Community Forum on the impact of projected state budget cuts on programs for children and families offered a scenario on what may be facing many more non-profits in the new economy ahead. The scenario is not encouraging.
No one has better articulated the political moment in Wisconsin than the student in my discussion section who raised his hand and asked if he could please join the walk-out. When I replied that rebels don’t ask permission, he said: “I just want to do what’s right.” This interaction embodied for me the discrepancy between the mood on the streets and the national conversation. While the media have reduced 70,000 protesters to labor activists, while the governor has cast his effort as a revival of Ronald Reagan’s union-busting, and while would-be presidential candidates have been weighing in, this conflict remains…
Here is the audio of an interview between Mike Powers of WNWC and Fred Grossenbach of Madison Christians regarding the “Funding Your Vision in the New Economy” workshop coming up. It’s 14 minutes long and there’s just audio.
The Wall Street Journal reports non profit organizations are taking a hit as state and local governments tighten their budgets. Strapped Cities Hit Nonprofits With Fees (online.wsj.com) Facing budget gaps and an aversion to new debt and taxes, states and local governments are slapping residents with an array of new fees—and some are applying them to nonprofits. That marks a sharp departure from long-standing tax exemptions mandated by state law or adopted on the theory that churches, schools and charitable organizations work alongside governments to provide services to the community. Check out “Funding Your Vision in the New Economy,” a workshop…
In the recent struggle between Scott Walker and the public sector unions, many people have asked where Catholic social teaching stands in this debate. The “both/and” nature of Church teaching yet again finds Catholics on both sides of the argument. While the Church offers “no technical solutions” (Caritas in veritate 10) it does provide the principles upon which to frame the debate.