MC News

Madison is not a news desert, like so many cities, journalist Judith Valente observed last week during her Upper House presentation on The State of the Media Today & What We Can Do About It. Madison area residents are served by more than one newspaper as well as multiple broadcast news outlets. But even cities that have newspapers are not well-served when distant corporate owners are obsessed with the bottom line. “When profits aren’t there, reporters lose their jobs and truth suffers,” she said.

PLOVER, Wis (WSAW) — On Tuesday afternoon, more than 100 community members arrived at the Springs United Methodist Church in Plover to say their final goodbye to a building that has been considered an icon in the village for several decades. Upon arrival at the vigil, the congregation was surprised to learn that the original church bible was recovered from the debris unharmed. This was the second time the bible has survived a massive church fire with their congregation.

A local Lutheran church was given the go-ahead by the McFarland Plan Commission on Feb. 18 for an expansion and site design work. Risen Savior Lutheran Church, 5001 Holscher Road, sought permission for a 4,817-square-foot addition to the west side of its building. Congregation President Chris Fredrick said the church would use the additional space for a fellowship hall, classrooms, kitchen and restrooms. The current building of 5,044 square feet is primarily worship space.

Two University of Wisconsin professors, who co-edited the book, The Warfare Between Science and Religion, subtitled it, “the idea that wouldn’t die.” As in, warfare, what warfare? Ronald Numbers is the Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine Emeritus at the UW, and Jeffrey Hardin is the Raymond E. Keller Professor and chair of the Department of Integrative Biology. Numbers grew up in the Seventh Day Adventist Church and now describes himself as an agnostic. Hardin said he’s been a Christian believer since middle school. The two met through the UW’s Department of Religious Studies and were co-founders…

Some United Methodist congregations are facing the prospect of severing ties with the denomination after the church’s decision-making conference doubled down on rules that ban gay clergy members and same-sex marriage. “Certainly that would be part of our conversation,” said the Rev. Jenny Arneson, pastor of the Sun Prairie United Methodist Church, which has about 750 members and about 250 more who participate in services and programs. “How do we stay within the denomination or do we make a move?”

A little more than three years after it moved into a much larger location, Holy Cross Lutheran School has expanded again. A wing of the school on the Far East Side has been extended, doubling its size. It went from five classrooms to nine — each measuring about 1,000 square feet — plus two locker rooms. “It’s cool to watch our school grow,” eighth-grader Mae Collyard said.

At 4:00 in the afternoon on April 30, 1959, the Federal Communications Commission granted permission for a new radio station to begin broadcasting in Madison at 102.5 FM. About half an hour later the new station – WRVB – signed on the air. The radio station was the fulfillment of a dream for a Christian Radio Ministry in Madison for local businessman Paul Stewart. Stewart and many others in the community prayed and worked and prayed some more before the station was finally a reality that April afternoon sixty years ago.

One young woman’s lengthy battle to spread the Gospel at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College is now dragging into its fifth year. Since 2014, Polly Olsen has handed out Valentine’s Day cards with biblically themed messages to students and staff on campus. During that time, she has often been met with resistance in the form of the school’s public assembly policy, which forbids the “displaying of signs or mass distribution of literature with offensive content or that is likely to or intended to cause a disruption.”

The children wanted to talk to Candace, alone. They were students at a Wisconsin school, where, according to the Rev. Rod Armon, there had been a crisis. He didn’t say what kind of crisis or where it occurred, only that it warranted sending counselors to aid the troubled and traumatized. Armon, pastor for pastoral care at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Portage, is the handler for Candace, a 2½-year-old golden retriever trained as a comfort dog for Lutheran Church Charities.

Theology at its most basic is words about God, taken from the Greek theos (God) and logos (word). Speaking and thinking about God, in an informed way, is something we can all do and were encouraged to do when Fleming Rutledge spoke at Upper House in Madison last week. Rutledge, in 1977, was one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. After serving in parish ministry in the New York area for 22 years, she is now an acclaimed writer and lecturer. And a theologian. But not an academic theologian, she said, noting…