MC News
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin student is suing her college, saying her free speech rights were violated when she was forced to stop handing out Valentine’s Day cards with Bible references. The conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Milwaukee on behalf of Polly Olsen, a student at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.
Rev. David Smith, the former pastor of the Faith Community Baptist Church, is well-known on Madison’s south side for his passion for ministry and community-building. But after more than two decades there, he will be starting a new chapter on the other side of town as the new pastor of the north side Madison campus of Door Creek Church in the Sherman Plaza Shopping Center. The grand opening will take place on Sunday, Sept. 9.
Over the last three decades, some of the country’s most influential voting blocs have been labeled by the faith that can drive their votes. But not all religious practices predict a voting pattern, some voters say. Jill Doering, a voter who attends a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod church in Lake Mills, put it this way: “It’s easy to put all Christians in a box,” she said. “We’re all individual voters, so whenever you want to put voters inside of a box, you’ve taken away their individual concerns and issues they think most strongly about.”
As the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal continues to escalate, Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino has aligned himself publicly with some of the church’s most outspoken critics of Pope Francis, including a former Vatican diplomat to the U.S. who has called on the pope to resign.
Madison-based InterVarsity announced today that the campus ministry will focus on establishing Christian fellowships on 2,500 college campuses in the next 12 years. As more than 1,500 InterVarsity campus staff ministers, along with student and faculty leaders, return to campuses this fall, their focus is on the 2030 Calling, which states: Longing for revival, we catalyze movements that call every corner of every campus to follow Jesus.
A U.S. bishop has claimed that a “homosexual subculture” exists within the “hierarchy of the Catholic Church,” which is leading to the mass child sex abuse scandals. U.S. Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin, wrote in a pastoral letter on Saturday that there is “justified anger” being directed at Catholic leadership over the Pennsylvania grand jury report, released last week, which revealed how 301 priests who abused over 1,000 children over decades were protected by the institution. Morlino said that the abuse detailed in the 1,300-page report is “sickening,” but insisted that it is not just pedophilia that is the…
EL TRIANGULO, Honduras – From Mount Horeb to Honduras, volunteers from local churches made a 2,000 mile trip this June to do something good for people they’ve never met. “We know that when people see Americans coming, something great is going to happen,” said Nugget Cubas, head driller for Living Water International Honduras. In less than one week, the group from Immanuel Lutheran Church, together with Living Water International, built a well, the lifeline a community needs to live.
James Morgan was incarcerated when his mother died. An interfaith chapel was his refuge. On Sunday night, panelists came to New Life Church to argue for teh importance of having a designated “sacred space” in the Dane County jail renovation project.
MADISON, Wis. – Being in jail is temporary by definition, but what if inmates could have access to a spiritual space that would help in that transitional period from behind bars to back on the streets? Well, that could be a possibility with a new $76 million renovation project that’s working to consolidate the three Dane County Jail buildings to fit under one roof. Part of that consolidation is the consideration of adding a sacred space where inmates can fulfill their spiritual needs.
CHICAGO (RNS) — When six synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America elected female bishops in May, they set a record for the most women chosen in one year to lead the mainline Protestant denomination’s geographical subdivisions. Among the six were the denomination’s first African-American female bishops: the Rev. Patricia A. Davenport, elected May 5 to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, and the Rev. Viviane Thomas-Breitfeld, elected the next day to the South-Central Synod of Wisconsin.