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Steve Hayner, former president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, former Madison pastor for a short time, and most recently the president of Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, passed away on Saturday, January 31, 2015, after a nearly year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 66 years old.

Religious believers in the state’s larger metro areas, especially Milwaukee and Madison, have a long history of building bridges across their faith traditions. At the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, for example, leaders gather regularly to discuss the many issues on which they can find common ground. And their members collaborate on a host of initiatives, from feeding the hungry to environmental preservation. Now, over the next year, Wisconsin’s largest coalition of Christian churches hopes to encourage that kind of interfaith dialogue and cooperation in communities across the state.

NORTH LAKE, Wis. — In the days leading up to Christmas, the aging pastor of a small Episcopal church set amid the glacial hills here began to write a parable. It came neither from Scripture nor from yuletide tradition, but rather from the priest’s very different earlier life. The Rev. David Couper, 77, recalled the predawn hours of a March day nearly a quarter-century ago. A fire had broken out at a housing project in Madison, Wis., where he was the chief of police. A police sergeant, hearing about the blaze from a 911 dispatcher, jauntily sang of the apartment…

It’s a giveaway like no other — a massive liquidation that ultimately will help hundreds of people. As the Madison Catholic Diocese prepares to convert much of its historic headquarters into rental housing, it is clearing out thousands of pieces of furniture and other items and donating them to charities and nonprofit organizations.

At a commercial kitchen on Madison’s North Side, workers in hairnets churned out hundreds of oatmeal raisin cookies, cinnamon rolls and morning buns on a recent Friday morning. Two days later, the baked goods were sold in the lobbies of area churches after worship services let out. The program, called Just Bakery, is a relatively new initiative of Madison-area Urban Ministry (MUM), an interfaith social justice organization with a long history of helping ex-prisoners re-enter society. By training and employing people with criminal records, the organization is leading by example, said Carmella Glenn, Just Bakery program coordinator.

Faith and civic leaders will gather Jan. 27 at the Italian Community Center for the fifth annual State of Milwaukee Symposium sponsored by the evangelical Christian group BASICS and the National Christian Foundation’s Wisconsin chapter. More than 200 people are expected to attend the event, whose focus will be “Engaging Leaders in a City Transformation Movement.” Speakers will include Eric J. Swanson, co-author of the 2010 book “Transform a City,” which explores the ways Christian churches can address social problems that plague urban areas.

The five people running for Madison mayor all seem like decent enough eggs with some decent and — Christopher Daly’s proposal for a Madison public bank notwithstanding — realistic ideas for how to make Madison an even better place to live. One proposal sticks out, though, and not necessarily like a sore thumb. In an area where politicians aren’t given to thanking God for their successes and the most-depended-upon “higher power” is frequently government, one candidate suggests Madison city officials might need faith in something more than just liberal orthodoxy to solve problems. If elected, Richard V. Brown Sr. says…

Julaine Appling is often asked if she’s afraid of being on the wrong side of history. The short answer: she’s not. “There’s no right or wrong side of history,” the president of Wisconsin Family Action says in her office. “History’s being made every single day. It’s not predetermined. I’m making history now. So are you. What I am concerned about is being on the right side of truth.”

All its profound religious and historical significance aside, this book is a work of art. The St. John’s Bible — a modern realization of an ancient text — was created well within the lifetime of most of the people reading this. The seven-volume Bible is a work of stunning calligraphy, vibrant colors and illuminations laced with unexpected modernity. Grounded in the Midwest, is also the first handwritten, illuminated Bible to be commissioned by a Benedictine monastery in 500 years. This huge undertaking is the subject of “Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible,” an exhibition at the Chazen Museum of…

Some spectators mistook the procession around the Capitol Square for a festive occasion, thinking the horses were pulling a carriage with newlyweds. It was a much more somber event than that. The carriage was an 1800s hearse with an empty casket in the back. The mourners, about 75 of them, walked to the side in silence, some carrying candles. This was the seventh year a group of local clergy members and others have organized a memorial service to honor people who died without shelter in Dane County and elsewhere in the past year or in recent years. It was held…