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Two well-known advocates clashed over organized religion’s benefits and harms to an audience packed into the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union Theater Thursday night. Dinesh D’Souza, president of King’s College and a religious advocate, said religion gives people a sense of the sublime and offers them “a cosmic purpose.”
Outreach magazine has compiled statistics on the largest and fastest growing churches in the U.S. A number of cities and states have multiple churches on the list. Wisconsin has only one. The only “mega-church” in the Badger state, according to Outreach magazine, is Elmbrook Church in surburban Milwaukee.
MONONA — Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Parish in Monona is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. In 1950, St. Bernard Parish on Atwood Ave. in Madison saw such tremendous growth that Bishop William P. O’Connor announced that a new parish would be formed in Monona to serve the growing number of Catholics in the area.
Everything is marked down Friday and Saturday at the Boomerangs Resale Shop, at 1133 N. Sherman Avenue, to celebrate the store’s second anniversary. Boomerangs opened in 2008 as an outreach of Door Creek Church. Residents of the north side around the Northgate Shopping Center have enthusiastically embraced the store, according to manager Craig Gielow. “They tell us that the north side needed a store like this, and that it’s a blessing to be able to get high quality merchandise at low prices,” he said.
If the Bible said, “Ye must do something about global warming,” as well as, “Ye must be born again,” Katherine Hayhoe’s job would be easier. But Hayhoe believes “love your neighbor as yourself” speaks clearly enough. Hayhoe, the wife of a pastor and faculty adviser for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter at Texas Tech University, is a professor of Geosciences and one of the nation’s leading researchers on global warming. Hayhoe told an audience of about three dozen at the Overture Center, in a lecture presented as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival, that the evidence for global warming…
They started lining up at three o’clock this morning (one confirmed report said midnight) in order to receive the free dental care and medical care that was offered through the Touched Twice Clinic hosted by Calvary Gospel Church and Crosspoint Church. The two churches are located next to each other on Commercial Avenue, just west of I-90-94. The Touched Twice Clinic is a zero-budget, church-based method of addressing the medical, physical, and spiritual needs of the community’s most needy population. Clinics have been held in Madison since August, 2004. About 2,000 people participated in this clinic, according to Scotia Leonardson,…
The holiest and most contentious spot of ground on this globe is without a doubt the tract at the southeast corner of Jerusalem’s Old City, known to the Jews and Christians as The Temple Mount and to Muslims as Al Haram al-sharif (the noble sanctuary). A recently published book project that tells the story of this place, put together by a team of Jewish, Christian and Muslim authors, calls it The Sacred Esplanade. Three of the key writers, representating each of the monotheistic religions, were in Madison last night for a presentation arranged by the Lubar Institute for the…
President Barack Obama visits Madison for a get-out-the-vote rally on the Library Mall, the first visit to the University of Wisconsin campus by a sitting president since Harry Truman’s administration. It’s all about politics, of course, but as the president was on his way to Madison the New York Times put up a story from the previous day’s visit to New Mexico, where a woman asked the president about how he became a Christian.
One dozen young adults from eight Madison area churches have joined the Madison Masters Commission (MMC), now in its second year at Bethesda Church, 3245 E. Washington Avenue. For four students its their second year, eight are enrolled new this year. “It’s a school of discipleship and the idea is transformation,” says Brian Bougher, a pastor on Bethesda’s staff and the director of MMC. “The program aims to teach the students to live as Jesus did by combining Biblical study with practical ministry opportunities.”
In four weeks, Joni Eareckson Tada celebrates her 61st birthday, an incredible milestone for a quadriplegic. Currently recovering from treatment for breast cancer, Joni still lives in southern California and remains quite active in ministry. She has a strong link to Wisconsin.