Growing church attendance fuels building

Milwaukee Growing church attendance has sparked a religion-related building boom in southeastern Wisconsin. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent on church construction, expansions and remodeling in the Milwaukee area alone.

Nationally, religious building construction in May totaled $8.8 billion, up from $7.6 billion two years prior, according to government data.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attack caused a spike in spirituality, but area pastors say there is more to it than that. Baby boomers are finding or returning to religion.

Many of the expansions were planned several years ago when church members, flush from stock market gains, donated to building funds, pastors say.

Court: Washington wrong to bar scholarship

Seattle State education officials were wrong to revoke a college student’s scholarship after he decided to pursue a degree in religious studies, a federal appellate court panel has ruled.

In a 2-1 decision July 19, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state policy denying its Promise Scholarships to students seeking a degree in theology “lacks neutrality.” The Promise Scholarship is a program for high school students with good grades who come from poor and middle-income families.

Attorneys for the state had argued that their policy was legally sound and reflected a prohibition in the state constitution against public money being used “for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction.”

Joshua Davey’s scholarship was withdrawn in 1999 when he declared a major in pastoral ministries and business management at Northwest College. The Christian school in suburban Kirkland was founded by the Northwest District Council of the Assemblies of God, according to the school Web site.

School may turn mosque into weight room

Raleigh, N.C. Muslims at Shaw University are fighting a plan that could make a weight room or an office out of the campus mosque built when a Saudi Arabian king gave the historically black school $1 million.

School officials say university president Talbert Shaw has recommended closing the mosque because of a lack of space on campus.

The mosque was built after King Khalid of Saudi Arabia made the million-dollar donation to the university in 1983. The gift was arranged through Urabi Mustafa, a professor who founded the university’s International and Islamic Studies Center and served as an official with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Mustafa helped recruit a sizable Middle Eastern student population to campus and, beginning in 1973, the university began receiving Arab money. In 1981, the Saudi royal family paid for the International Studies Building, which included a mosque on the second floor.

The university no longer attracts as many Middle Eastern students its roughly 100 Muslim students are mostly West Africans and U.S. converts.