Boston Conference Debates Full Communion Between Lutherans and Episcopalians
Episcopal News Service. April 15, 1999 [99-044]
Tracy Sukraw, Editor of The Episcopal Times, the newspaper for the Diocese of Massachusetts
(ENS) It might be a bold step for ecumenism, but full communion between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Episcopal Church is also a natural development, according to speakers at a March 23 program at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
With voting delegates to the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly preparing to consider a revised proposal for full communion this August, the program was a timely occasion for Lutherans and Episcopalians to hear about and discuss together the process that could lead to a whole new relationship between their churches.
"If we really are agreed on the essentials of the Christian faith, if we have full interchangeability of ordained ministries, if we have a full sharing of the Eucharist, if our leaders understand and recognize in each other sufficiently compatible doctrinal terms so that we trust one another theologically and are confident in working together -- only then will full communion be given the momentum to carry out common mission," Bishop Christopher Epting of the Diocese of Iowa told the assembly of about 50 Lutherans and Episcopalians from around New England. Epting chaired the Episcopal Church's participation on the Lutheran-Episcopal team responsible for drafting the proposal, titled "Called to Common Mission" (CCM).
"It is often said, why can't we do a lot of this now? Well, we can. The point is, we haven't, historically. So full communion will give us the impetus to do some of the things that we probably already do together," Epting said.
Sponsored by the congregational studies and Anglican, global and ecumenical studies offices at Episcopal Divinity School, the program also featured the Rev. Dr. Don S. Armentrout, an ELCA pastor and associate dean and church history professor at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee; retired Church of Sweden bishop Krister Stendahl, who is a former dean and professor emeritus at Harvard Divinity School; and the Rev. Jane S. Gould, the Episcopal chaplain at the Lutheran-Episcopal Ministry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.).
Decades of Lutheran-Episcopal dialogues resulted in a 1991 proposal for full communion called the Concordat of Agreement. The 1997 General Convention of the Episcopal Church overwhelmingly approved the Concordat, but the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly narrowly defeated it that same year, asking for a revision that would address reservations expressed by Lutherans.
Much of the ELCA opposition was and remains focused on acceptance of the historic episcopate, a succession of bishops dating back to the earliest days of the Christian church. The Episcopal Church has maintained it, but most Lutheran churches outside of Scandinavia did not.
"In the history of the church there has been a lack of reconciliation at the level of the episcopate," Armentrout said, reminding the gathering in his lively presentation that Lutheran churches did not dispense with the historic episcopate on theological grounds, but did so because of the practical consequences of the Reformation. "You cannot go through Luther and find a diatribe against the episcopate. You cannot find it in the Lutheran confessions. It's not there. We simply in the 16th century dropped the historic episcopate because the majority of bishops did not come into the Lutheran movement. They remained as Roman Catholics. What is being asked of us, as I understand it, now, is to be reincorporated into the historic episcopate. I would argue for the historic episcopate not on the basis of apostolicity, but on the basis of catholicity. I would argue that to be reincorporated into that historic episcopate is a move in the right direction for unity," Armentrout said.
Stendahl urged Lutherans to seek the means for reconciling their doctrine with episcopal polity in article seven of the Augsburg Confession -- the 1530 Lutheran confession of faith. "If there is basic agreement on the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments, then all the rest is secondary, not that important," he said. "We have nothing against the fact that the Episcopalians think that [the historic episcopate] is more important than we do. Why should we? That would be a kind of tit-for-tat, secularization of theology. We need to liberate our Lutheran freedom according to the Augsburg Confession," he said. "It is enormously important that the episkope not be used as an excuse for lack of courage," he said.
Epting said that CCM "really continues to hold up those areas where we have yet to find some agreement in trying to find a way forward." Among the changes found in it is a provision that the ELCA may be brought into the historic episcopate through other Lutheran bodies of the world, such as the Church of Sweden, which have maintained it, as well as the Episcopal Church.
CCM also acknowledges that the succession of bishops is only one way through which the church's apostolic succession is expressed. "One of the great breakthroughs in this dialogue has been speaking of the apostolic succession in a much broader sense. The apostolic succession is much broader than simply the historic episcopate and is guarded by, in addition to the episcopate, the apostolic Scriptures, the ancient creeds, the celebration of the sacraments," Epting said.
In addition to the fact that it is shorter and uses more accessible language than did the Concordat, other changes include a more direct emphasis on common mission, as well as the ministry of all who are baptized. And it does not require the ordination of deacons, since the threefold ordained ministry of bishops, priests and deacons is not present in the ELCA as it is in the Episcopal Church.
"The initial take that we [on the drafting team] had when the document went out was that it is a good document, that it was improved, that it would probably pass and perhaps pass very strongly," Epting said. "Our desire certainly would be that when it goes to the Churchwide Assembly that it would pass by 85 percent or more. Sixty-seven percent would probably not be good. We don't want to leave behind internal chaos as a result of this movement," he said.
"One reason why the Episcopal Church has not had wide distribution of this document yet is because it is kind of a moving target. Until the Churchwide Assembly votes, we won't know exactly what we have to do on our side in 2000," he said, referring to next year's General Convention of the Episcopal Church, where a proposal approved by the ELCA would be considered. "There is Lutheran opposition, and I have to recognize that I live in the peak of a lot of that opposition in the upper Midwest. I also recognize that there is a good bit of support among Lutherans across the country. It's hard to get a reading as to where the votes are going to fall, and I'm not sure anyone would be able to predict that at this point. I'm still hopeful," he said.
Before program participants gathered for small group discussions, Chaplain Jane Gould offered what she called the "grassroots perspective" of M.I.T.'s 26-year-old Lutheran-Episcopal Ministry, or L.E.M.
"L.E.M. is a model for sustained life together, abiding together in respectful, sometimes rocky, relationship. L.E.M. is a model for full communion," she said. The ministry, which she staffs along with an ELCA chaplain, offers joint worship, fellowship meals, Bible study and mission project opportunities for an international group of 20 to 30 M.I.T. students each week.
"In addition to our formal study, I think the important thing is the informal education, where the students really have to be able to teach their own tradition to others, which means they really need to be able to own and claim their own tradition. ...The questions that get asked and the conversations that we have come out of being in sustained, committed relationship." She quoted paragraph 14 of CCM, which calls on the people of both churches "to receive and share this relationship as they grow together in full communion."
"It seems to me that that's the commitment we have at M.I.T.," Gould said.
With such collaborative ministries between Lutherans and Episcopalians already going on, she said, some wonder why an official process for full communion is necessary. One reason is that there are not many examples of where Lutherans and Episcopalians are working in a close relationship. "If we want to incarnate unity in Christ, that isn't good enough. And my sense is that parishes -- as significantly more conservative entities than chaplaincies and certainly places that are less likely to engage in innovation -- need an institutional push to engage in this kind of work. I'd also say that we desperately need institutional coordination for communication and collaboration that is called for in CCM," she added.