Lutherans, Anglicans Urged Toward Communion
Episcopal News Service. December 15, 1983 [83222]
NEWBURY, Eng. (DPS, Nov. 15) -- An international Anglican-Lutheran working group has urged the two communions to continuing moving toward "full communion" even if all the implications of that concept are not completely known at this time.
Meeting here Nov. 28-Dec. 2, Church representatives from Canada, England, the United States, Namibia, Norway, Sweden, Tanzania and West Germany said in their report that full communion goes "beyond sharing the same altar", and "implies a community of life, an exchange and commitment to one another in respect to major decisions on questions of faith, order, and morals." Among possibilities existing when Churches are geographically close, they noted, are "common worship, study, witness, evangelism, and promotion of justice, peace, and love."
The working group identified five issues Lutheran and Anglican Churches must agree upon before reaching full communion: authority in the Church, the Gospel and its implications, justification/salvation, the sacraments, and the ministry and its ordering. Full communion, the group stated would include the sharing of the sacraments "subject to such safeguards as ecclesial discipline may properly require"; bishops taking part in consecration of bishops of other Churches; the exercising of liturgical functions in each other's congregations, and having "recognized organs of regular consultation and communication."
The joint working group had been asked by the Anglican Consultative Council and the Lutheran World Federation to assess the results of the dialogues proposed by specific working groups in Africa, Europe and the U.S., to make recommendations on how Anglicans and Lutherans might achieve full communion and to suggest procedures that would assure closer cooperation. The report now goes to the two parent bodies for official transmission to the Churches.
An international Lutheran-Anglican dialogue was carried out from 1970 until 1972 and reached substantial doctrinal agreement which has been carried forward in regional work. In the United States, "Interim Eucharistic Sharing" was approved in September, 1982 by the Episcopal Church and three Lutheran Churches in the U.S. That same month, the European regional dialogue approved a report that spelled out doctrinal agreements and convergences between two communions.
The sessions here were chaired by Archbishop Edward Scott of the Anglican Church of Canada and Swedish Lutheran Archbishop Olof Sundby. Anglican members of the working group are: Bishop John Gibbs of Coventry, England; N.S.Hamupempe, Namibia; William A. Norgren, Episcopal Church Center; F. Ntiruka, Tanzania. The Lutheran members are: Bishop James Crumley, Lutheran Church in America; Per Lonning, Strasburg, France; Bishop Sebastian Kolowa, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania. Participating consultants were: G.B. Braund, Anglican Consultative Council; Gunther Gassman, Lutheran World Federation; Christopher Hill, Lambeth Palace; C. H. Mau Jr., general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation and William Rusch, Lutheran Church in America ecumenical officer.