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MADISON, Wis. – As the current common council met for the last time Tuesday, members unanimously voted to make discriminating against atheism, and others who do not believe in God, illegal. “This is important because I believe it is only fair that if we protect religion, in all its varieties, we should also protect non-religion from discrimination. It’s only fair,” ordinance sponsor District 18 Alderwoman Anita Weier said.
Liz Drilias was about 3 years old when she came home with a small palm plant from Sunday school at St. Jude the Apostle Parish in Wauwatosa. That day, like today, was Palm Sunday. Though her memory of this event is fuzzy, Liz has been told the plant was in a foam coffee cup of dirt. “I really remember after it was split into four plants and they were around 2 feet tall. I later went to Sunday school at St. Bernard’s, so I’m not sure if any of the other kids at St. Jude still have their plants,” said…
Two Wisconsinites have had an opportunity to spend time with Pope Francis in Rome this week, one a Milwaukee priest facing a deadly illness, the other a farmer there as part of an agricultural delegation.
The outcry over a Wisconsin Amish family ordered by a court to leave their home is fueling a legislative push for a religious exemption from building codes requiring smoke alarms and other modern devices. Republican state Rep. Kathleen Bernier said Wednesday she plans to insert language in the state budget bill to carve out an exemption for “longheld religious beliefs” in the Urban Dwelling Code’s permitting rules on electrical devices and indoor plumbing.
I spent four days at InterVarsity’s Multiethnic Staff Conference in Orlando, meeting with 320 staff members of all ethnicities and hearing stories of reconciliation from campus. Together, we experienced apologies and forgiveness, listening and lament, celebration and hope. As I was flying from Orlando back to Madison—still processing the conference’s content—a young Black man, Tony Robinson, was shot and killed in my home town.
The day after a white Madison police officer fatally shot an unarmed, biracial 19-year-old after an altercation on Madison’s Near East Side, Michael Johnson was worried. Johnson had been in Ferguson, Missouri, last August in the days after a white police officer killed an unarmed black 18-year-old, and the city broke out in heated protests, some of which turned violent and destructive. Johnson, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, said he “kept having these images of Ferguson in my head” on Saturday. “It was the fear of what this city could look like,” Johnson said. But…
RACINE — It was in a dream that Ben Johnston-Krase first received the message that would lead him to redirect his life. In the dream, he was called to set up a new church and when he got to where the church was to be, it was a farm.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, 47, is facing new scrutiny as the flavor of the month in Republican presidential politics. Among various disputes in play, he’s an evangelical Protestant and thus needs to be prepared for skeptical questioning about religion and pesky “social issues.” But actually, we know little about Walker’s religio-moral thinking. A quick Internet search turned up only a couple unsatisfying interviews with him about this. There’s much ground left to explore.
Midway through the Sunday Mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Dodgeville, the service took a sharp turn toward fundraising. Monsignor Daniel Ganshert, the parish priest, told parishioners that for years, people in the Madison Catholic Diocese had been praying for more men to be called by God to the priesthood. The Holy Spirit has responded, Ganshert announced jubilantly. There are now 33 seminarians, or priests-in-training, up from six in 2003 when Bishop Robert Morlino arrived.
Conversations are the starting point of change. TED Talks are one form of conversational change agents. Another, Q Commons, came to Madison this past week at the Upper House, a new meeting place on the University of Wisconsin campus to talk about issues.”We live and work in a great city, so much great stuff happens here,” said John Terrill, Upper House director, as he opened the evening. “Q is an opportunity to think and dream, how can we achieve more.” The event Thursday evening featured three nationally known speakers on video, interspersed with three live, local speakers.