General Convention Faces Historic Decision on Full Communion with Lutherans
Episcopal News Service. June 6, 1997 [97-1789]
The Rev. Walt Gordon, Communications Officer for the Diocese of Minnesota
(ENS) After 30 years of Episcopal-Lutheran dialogue, a moment of historic decision looms with the approaching General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in July, and the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), also in Philadelphia, in August.
The two national legislative bodies will vote on whether to approve the Concordat of Agreement between their churches, bringing two of the country's major mainline denominations into "full communion."
While the outcome is still anybody's guess, early indications suggest that the Episcopalians will approve the ground-breaking accord, while approval by the Lutherans is less assured.
In either church, however, as the summer season of decision arrives, the issue is a favorite topic at diocesan and synod meetings, in church newspapers, on on-line discussion groups and in national satellite teleconference debates.
Some observers are convinced, in a convention that faces a number of very contentious issues, this decision is a very positive attempt to forge a whole new relationship between two churches.
What is full communion?
According to the Lutheran-Episcopal Joint Coordinating Committee, full communion means a sharing of the gifts that have shaped the identity of the two churches for 400 years, and a commitment to sharing the challenges of mission at every level of the church's life.
For Episcopalians, the gift to be shared is the historic episcopate, tracing the line of bishops back into the apostolic era as a means for handing on the faith and ministry of the church catholic from generation to generation and guarding the unity of the church.
Lutherans bring the gift of their church's historic emphasis on catechesis and apostolic doctrine, as represented in the Augsburg Confession. The two churches are of one mind in recognizing the pivotal importance of apostolic succession, even though this commitment to keep faith with the teaching and practice of the apostles has been expressed in different ways.
No structural merger is involved, at either the local or national levels, but clergy of one church would be able to celebrate the Eucharist and administer the sacraments in congregations of the other denomination, according to the worship forms and teachings of that denomination.
What steps will General Convention take to bring this about?
Three resolutions will come before the 72nd General Convention. The first is to accept "as a matter of verbal content as well as in principle" the Concordat of Agreement and to agree to make those legislative, canonical, constitutional, and liturgical changes necessary to implement the full communion envisioned by the Concordat.
The second resolution temporarily suspends the "Preface to the Ordinal" which dates from the 17th century. (The text can be found the Book of Common Prayer, p. 510, especially the end of the second paragraph.) This allows the Episcopal Church to immediately recognize the validity of the orders of all present Lutheran clergy.
The third resolution provides that Lutheran pastors and bishops wishing to serve temporarily in the Episcopal Church would not have to make any further declaration of faith and obedience beyond the ones they made at their own ordinations. In other words, their Lutheran ordination vows would be respected.
The Lutheran Churchwide Assembly would also vote on several resolutions. One would be identical to the first resolution voted on by the Episcopal Church. The others would be specific to the Lutherans and would be the vehicles for implementing the first resolution.
The Concordat's concept of full communion without institutional merger suggests a new model for ecumenical cooperation throughout Christendom, one stressing a shared Christian identity, teaching, and sacramental ministry.
Under this model, the Lutheran Churchwide Assembly also will be voting on a proposal for full communion with three U.S. church bodies in the Reformed tradition: Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, and the Reformed Church in America.
In an April interview, the Rev. H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the ELCA, said that he expected a majority of that church's "voting members," as the assembly's delegates are called, to favor the Concordat but did not know whether the document would receive the two-thirds majority required for reception by the ELCA.
"The mind of the church requires more than a majority because it relates to a constitutional change," he said. "I do favor the two-thirds majority provision. It is important that we do not receive the Concordat proposal unless we feel clearly that the church is calling us to go ahead with it."
Anderson said there was no clear way to take the pulse of the church on this issue. The synods chose their voting members to the Churchwide Assembly last year, and candidates' positions on the Concordat were an issue in the voting in some synods.
"However," Anderson said, "voting members to our Churchwide Assembly take very seriously the idea that they are not instructed delegates; rather, they are expected to listen to the discussion and debate and to vote according to their conscience, so the vote will be influenced by the debate and discussion in the months leading up to the Churchwide Assembly and at the Churchwide Assembly itself."
The most troublesome issue for those Lutherans who are uncomfortable with the Concordat is the role of bishops envisioned in the agreement. In an interview, Anderson said that there are two reasons for this, one sociological and one theological. "
The theological reason is that Lutherans tend to focus on the part of the tradition that relates to the creeds, and the confessions of faith. Doctrine has been so fundamental that our identity was constituted in our teaching. Some of us fear that when we start talking about the role of bishops we are not putting teaching first, but rather adding a structural requirement to our understanding of what is essential to the church."
The sociological reason, he said, "is that many Lutherans in this country came here out of rejection of, and resistance to, state church structures in Europe, and they have placed their emphasis on 'the whole people of God."'
The Concordat proposes that, in the future, consecration of Episcopal and Lutheran bishops would include participants of both churches, effectively integrating Lutherans into the historic episcopate. And Lutherans would agree to elect bishops for life even though they will continue to elect for specific terms of office in a synod.
While there does not seem to be any widespread or systematic opposition to the Concordat within the Episcopal Church, many of those who do oppose it do so out of a fear that the suspension of the ordinal and the immediate recognition of Lutheran orders betrays the Episcopal Church's Anglican commitment to the historic apostolic succession of bishops. And some object because Lutheran clergy are still allowed to preside at Episcopal Eucharists even before all Lutheran bishops are part of the historic episcopate.
In an introduction to the Concordat, the committee said, "The conviction that underlies this endeavor is that each of the two churches has received a gift, not of its own deserving and certainly not for its own possession, but as the free gift of God's grace.... Both the Anglican emphasis on the historic episcopate and an ordered ministry, and the Lutheran emphasis on a full understanding of the doctrine of the faith, need to be appreciated as gifts, given by God with the intention that the gift be shared with one another...."
When the first dialogue participants gathered some 30 years ago, their first goal was to work at understanding each other's positions and addressing each other's concerns. As the theological and ecclesiastical barriers to unity were removed, a new vision of what full communion might mean began to emerge, leading most of the participants to a genuine excitement and readiness for action. The official dialogues produced several landmark documents of theological agreement that led to a decision in 1982 for interim sharing of the Eucharist by the two churches and a final dialogue that produced the Concordat in 1991.
This history has been repeated over the past three years as the two denominations have begun in earnest to discern where the proposed Concordat of Agreement might lead. The bishops of the two churches, in particular, emerged from their first-ever combined meeting last October energized and excited.
At that joint meeting, held at a conference center in the Pocono Mountains, international voices reminded the bishops that the world also was watching the Concordat discussion. Archbishop of Canterbury George L. Carey praised the effort "for sending a message to both the Lutheran and Anglican communions that different ways of living together are possible." Carey said the experiment showed that "it is possible to go... from denominational cooperation to a life of common fellowship, decision-making and oversight."
Prof. Gunther Gassmann, a German Lutheran who was head of Faith and Order for the World Council of Churches, told the joint meeting of bishops that full communion must be expressed "first of all by a new and mutual awareness of the people in the churches that they belong together. And when they belong together more visibly than before as members of the one body of Christ, they will live in a new spiritual relationship of mutual care and common praise."