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Some proclaimed themselves to be bikers for Jesus, while others evoked the spit and shine of the Marine Corps. Some sat stoic while others wept openly. And many jumped up and down as though they were at a football game. But on this it can be agreed: There was no larger group of kindred souls singing wildly off key on Saturday than the men and boys who filled the Bradley Center for the first Promise Keepers rally in Milwaukee in six years. Read more.
The church page has become the front page. Since the 1880s, newspapers have relegated coverage of church news to the back pages. Then came 9/11. "In the 1990s I was covering foreign policy around the world for CNN, and almost every foreign policy issue was explained in political and socioeconomic terms," said Jody Hassett Sanchez, who left "ABC World News Tonight" in 2005 to make long-form documentaries about religion and culture. "But nobody was looking at religion as a motivating factor. Of course, that all changed with 9/11." Read more.
Clara Maria Goldstein says she created the Rabbi Jesus paintings to promote love, understanding and acceptance. But Goldstein admitted her 10 oil paintings are causing just the opposite reaction from some people after Gundersen Lutheran officials asked her to remove her paintings hanging in the hospital entryway because they could be controversial. Read more.
NEW YORK (ANS) — As a nine-year-old boy tending his family’s goats he witnessed his village burned by the Sudanese Army and many killed. Abducted and enslaved in northern Sudan less than a year later, he endured nightmarish treatment by his captors that made him feel like an animal. Read more.
Bishop Robert Morlino has a vision for a new cathedral for the Diocese of Madison that combines spiritual, charitable and philosophical missions in a new building on the site of the fire-ravaged St. Raphael. Read more.
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND (ANS) — I drove to Cambridge, England, on May 7 [1963] to interview Mr. Clive Staples Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters and one of the world’s most brilliant and widely read Christian authors. I hoped to learn from him how young men and women could be encouraged to take up the defense of the faith through the written word. More, read part one. Read part two of this story.
More than 10,000 men and teenage boys are expected to gather at Milwaukee’s Bradley Center next weekend to cheer, clap, sing and pray at the first Promise Keepers rally to be held in the city since 2000. Read more.
THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (ANS) — The Middle East and North Africa are in a state of transformation. The Church has existed in this part of the world since the time of Christ. Around 20 million Arab Christians live in this region. 11 million are Orthodox Christians, 5.4 million are Catholic and 3.6 million are Protestants. But the Church in many Middle Eastern countries is shrinking. In 1900 Christians represented around 20% of the population of the Middle East. That number has fallen to less than 5% today. These numbers are even more striking in the Holy Land.…
For over 50 years new international students and scholars, who arrive at the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison at this time of year, have been invited to a free tour of their new home city offered by residents of the local community and facilitated by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. After visiting some of the most interesting attractions in the city, the tour ends up at the homes of local residents, so internationals get to see how Madison families live. Read more.
Monsignor Paul Swain, vicar general of the Diocese of Madison, will become the bishop of Sioux Falls, S.D., the diocese announced today. Read more.