More than 1,000 members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America met in Mahtomedi, Minnestota, to organize against a requirement of the denomination's alliance with the Episcopal Church of America. The controversy, which centers on how bishops are ordained and the beliefs behind the practice, has been a longtime thorn for the union. The protesters, whose organization is called WordAlone, say they like the union with Episcopalians, but want the understanding of a historic episcopate to be nonmandatory.

"That's past, I hope," Daniel P. Coughlin tells the Chicago Sun-Times. "Let's move on." Speaking of the past, The Associated Press ran an excellent history of the chaplaincy and the controversy.

As noted in yesterday's Weblog, the Canadian Jewish Congress is pressing the Ontario Legislature to open its meetings with the Lord's Prayer. The organization is now joined by the United Church, the country's largest Protestant denomination. "I certainly don't want some unbelieving member of the legislature saying my prayer or a Jewish prayer hypocritically," Bonnie Greene, director of the denomination's mission division, tells The Toronto Star.

Jason Sokol's article for the online magazine Feed is a bit of a latecomer to the "sports and religion" article frenzy that occurred around the Superbowl (Christianity Today ran not one but two articles, while Slate and Beliefnet's James Fallows looked at whether God even cares about sports.) Sokol's main point: "More often than not, and despite the players' best efforts, ...