Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
January 17, 2001
Lutherans, Episcopalians celebrate full communion
Agreement enables groups to share mission, clergy and churches
The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America inaugurated a new life together Jan. 6 with a national celebration of full communion.
Some 3,500 members of the two churches filled the Washington National Cathedral, renewing their baptismal vows and sharing the eucharist in a two-hour service that blended both liturgical traditions.
ELCA Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson presided at the liturgy and Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold preached the sermon.
"Our formal declaration of full communion is just the beginning of the journey," Bishop Griswold said. "Where we will be led God alone knows."
Full communion allows the 7.7 million U.S. Episcopalians and Evangelical Lutherans to share clergy and churches and engage in common mission. It is not a merger, however, and each church will retain its own structures and worship style.
The dialogue that led to full communion began in 1969. In 1982 it led to an interim agreement for eucharistic sharing, allowing members of each church to share in the other's eucharist as they worked on remaining issues that needed to be resolved in order to enter into full communion.
The presiding bishops and ecumenical officers of their churches spoke about the impact of the full communion agreement at a press conference Jan. 5 at the College of Preachers next to the cathedral.
Bishop Griswold described it as enabling the two churches to "speak with one voice to a broken world."
"If the churches are going to preach a Gospel of reconciliation, they have to be better able to be reconciled among themselves," he said.
Bishop Anderson said that besides deepening the relationship and collaboration of Lutherans and Episcopalians, the full communion agreement "can be an encouragement to other church bodies who are in one way or another working toward some fuller relationship. It says it can be done."
The church officials declined to predict specific future directions of full communion or how concerns of some members about the new relationship will be resolved.
"God is a God of surprises," he added. "Our tidy little plans may get stretched beyond imagining."
He said that "communion is an organic relationship, not a document," and he hopes that "any fears or anxieties will be resolved over time" as members of the churches grow in that relationship.
In the final years before the adoption of "Called to Common Mission," their formal full communion agreement, the critical issue was how to achieve a full mutual recognition of ministries.
The world Anglican Communion, to which the U.S. Episcopal Church belongs, requires the ordination of all priests and bishops by other bishops already ordained in historic succession.
While some Lutheran churches have continued having their pastors ordained by bishops in the historic episcopate, others have not, and Lutherans do not see the historic episcopate as an essential mark of the church. They regard the difference between pastors and bishops as one of jurisdiction, not ordination.
Under "Called to Common Mission," the Episcopal Church has temporarily suspended the application to the ELCA of the Anglican Ordinal's prohibition against exercise of ordained ministry by anyone not ordained by a bishop in the historic episcopate. That allows "full interchangeability and reciprocity" of all ordained ministers without requiring current ELCA ministers to undergo some form of reordination.
The ELCA, in turn, has pledged that at future installations of its bishops, Lutheran bishops in the historic episcopate will participate in the laying on of hands and invocation of the Spirit, and all future clergy ordinations will be presided over by a bishop.
The Rev. Daniel F. Martensen, the ELCA's chief ecumenical officer, told Catholic News Service after the press conference that for ELCA, it was "a very delicate question" to come up with a way to affirm the historic episcopate as "a sign of our connection to the apostolic period" and at the same time not deny the Lutheran tradition that this is not a necessary mark of the church.
Recently the ELCA has entered into full communion agreements with the Moravian Church and three churches in the Reformed tradition - the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ. Rev. Martensen said the agreement with the Episcopal Church, however, was the first entry of the ELCA into communion with a church which regards the historic episcopate as a necessary part of its structure.
