Corpus Christi mega-congregation is giving away goodies on Resurrection Sunday, The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. voted 97 percent to 3 percent on Sunday to leave the Episcopal Church , according to The Living Church.

The vote, 703-19, was announced early Monday afternoon. Asked by one of my colleagues for comment on Monday evening, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori indicated she was unaware of the developments. As soon as I get something from her office, I’ll post it.

Gotta love this story.

An alumnus of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas is angry because there’s a highly-offensive religious reference on his diploma.

Oddly enough, he’s not mad about the word Trinityappearing at the top in big fancy letters. “Trinity,” according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is a:

“traditional Christian doctrine…commonly expressed as the claim that the one God “exists as” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or as the claim that there are three divine persons “in” God, or as the claim that God “exists in three Persons”.

[The name Trinity appealed to the school's Presbyterian founders, in part, because the school was created after three smaller Presbyterian schools merged. But the founders hardly unaware of the religious significance of the term.]

The alumnus is also unbothered, apparently, by the reference on his sheepskin to Fernando Martins de Bulhões, also known as St. Anthony or San Antonio. Yes, before San Antonio was a Spur or a city or a Riverwalk, he was a Catholic Saint.

So why is the alumnus in a dither? Because the diploma contains the phrase “in the year of our Lord” to indicate the date the degree was earned.

Here’s what the AP says.
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MUNFORDVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A truck crossed a Kentucky interstate median and hit a Mennonite church van headed to a wedding, killing 11 people, state police said Friday.
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Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say President Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to Harris Interactive.

And 24 percent say he may be the Anti-Christ…

Which reminds me of how Mitch McConnell jokingly described the Democratic presidential primary back in February 2008:

The nomination fight between Clinton and Obama featured a “New York senator who was born in Illinois and an Illinois senator who was apparently born in a manger,” McConnell said.

File this under interfaith outreach, Southern-style.

An Episcopal Church in Billy Graham’s backyard will host a spring equinox service led by a Wiccan priestess, the Asheville Citizen-Times reports.

It’s a lesson I learned a long time ago. When the New York Times and other East Coast publications say they’re quoting Scriptures (especially Christian Scriptures), trust, but verify.

Maureen Dowd, the acid-tongued New York Times columnist clobbered Democrat Bart Stupak, who had downplayed the influence of the nation’s nuns when it comes to abortion and health care legislation. Then Dowd spoke approvingly of U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, who has sided with the nuns on the health care bill:

As Bob Casey, an abortion opponent who helped negotiate the abortion language in the Senate bill, observed, quoting Scripture: ‘They care for ‘the least, the last and the lost.’ And they know health care.”

Q. So where, precisely can one find ‘the least, the last and the lost’ in the Bible?
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ABC Action News has all the details. Read all about it here.

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Episcopal Church has approved the election of a lesbian assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

The announcement Wednesday makes the Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore the second openly gay bishop in the Anglican global fellowship.

Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno says the approval demonstrates the Episcopal Church does not discriminate based on sexual orientation.
Glasspool was elected last year, but needed the full church’s approval to be consecrated in May.

The Episcopal Church, which is the Anglican body in the United States, caused an uproar in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Episcopal conservatives have formed a rival church, the Anglican Church in North America.

Pope to visit England, Scotland in September

By ROBERT BARR
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI will visit Scotland and England in September in a four-day visit combining preaching and diplomacy, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday.

British officials described it as an unprecedented “papal visit with the status of a state visit,” though some of the usual trappings laid on for a visiting head of state will not be offered to the pope. An earlier visit by Pope John Paul II in 1982 was a pastoral visit only.
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As Washington editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, I’m on a bunch of e-mail lists, including the list for MoveOn.org.

Today, they sent me an amazing video. Essentially, they’ve figured out a way to insert the e-mail receipient’s name into the body of a video.

In this case, mine. [If you go there, just click on the "Not on Facebook" option and it will take you straight to the video...]

Wow.

A Utah politician from a prominent Mormon family who was running for Congress paid a woman $150,000 in 2002. Why? Well, it concerns this earlier incident in a hot tub with a girl who was 15. The politician was 28 at the time. Or 30 — depending on whether you believe the church-owned Deseret News or the Salt Lake Tribune.

Nudity was involved.

So far, the story sounds like a thousand other (non-Mormon) sordid tales involving sleazy politicians.

But then things get really, really unusual — from a journalism standpoint. According to the church-owned Deseret News’, own story:

“The Deseret News learned of the allegations against Garn just before the GOP primary election in 2002. Garn sat down and spoke about the incident with Deseret News reporters and editors.

At the time, Garn and now-U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, were in a tight primary race seeking the Republican nomination for the 1st Congressional District and Garn was the Utah House majority leader, a position he has, again, achieved.

Deseret News editors decided not to run a story about the indiscretion at that time, since the GOP primary was only weeks away and the incident had occurred years before.

The editors decided to wait to see if Garn advanced in the primary before deciding to publish a story or not.

Because Garn lost that primary, and so was also retiring from the Utah House, the newspaper never published a story.”

Let’s review the facts. The church-owned paper finds out about a huge scandal involving a prominent Mormon politician. Editors decide to kill it — to wait and see how the Republican primary goes before deciding whether to pursue it.