Taking a joint stride toward unification of the nation’s Protestants, leaders of the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America celebrated a hard-won “full communion” agreement in a solemn ceremony Saturday in Washington National Cathedral.
Nearly 3,500 worshipers witnessed what Frank T. Griswold, the presiding Episcopal bishop, called the affirmation of “their common mission as two households of faith.”
The pact, 30 years in the making, means the churches agree their beliefs are common enough to share clergy, sacraments and missions on a regular basis.
Not everyone is pleased. Many Lutherans, especially, say the “Called to Common Mission” accord has worked to divide rather than unite.
The agreement joins the country’s largest Lutheran denomination, with 5.2 million members, with 2.5 million Episcopalians. It does not include the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which opposes such accords and has 2.6 million members.
Coming at a time when membership in many mainline Protestant churches is slowly declining, the agreement is expected to have the fastest impact on rural areas with limited resources.
But in Chicago and other urban areas, church leaders say, it still opens the door to a wealth of possibilities.
Rev. Andrew Leahy, who has preached for 11 years at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Chicago Heights, offers a morning mass every Thursday for an Episcopal congregation just six blocks away. The arrangement began in November, shortly after the priest of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church left.
Now the way has been paved for Leahy to serve officially as a part-time priest at St. Ambrose as well.
“The opportunity for two separate denominations to recognize each other as two equal partners in this ministry is a good sign for the world to see,” Leahy said. “There really are no differences theologically.”
Despite the churches’ similarities, reaching the agreement was not easy.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is based in Chicago, narrowly defeated a similar proposal in 1997, with the procedure for installing bishops the main sticking point.
Lobbying by prominent Lutherans such as Chicago scholar Martin Marty and H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, helped pass the measure in 1999.
When the Episcopal Church in turn approved the agreement last summer, another link was forged among millions of mainline Protestants joined in full communion pacts. The Lutheran church already had reached such an agreement with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and the United Church of Christ, for example.
Such connections are heartening to Christians who believe the New Testament’s call for one church means they must try to present a unified front to the world. Efforts to unify Protestants began before World War I and were popularized after World War II, but many attempts have fallen short of the goal.
Both churches in the current accord trace their origins to the 16th Century, when they split from Roman Catholicism. The Lutherans have a direct connection to the Protestant Reformation launched when German monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. At the heart of his gospel was the doctrine that Christ’s own righteousness is imputed to those who believe, and on that ground alone, God accepts them.
The Episcopal Church has its roots in the reign of Henry VIII of England, who established himself as head of the English church in 1534. Protestant reforms of the church would be introduced after the king’s death, and the denomination was formally organized in the U.S. in 1783, when church representatives met in Maryland to create the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.
The service Saturday, for which processions of clergy wore colorful vestments of white, red and gold, highlighted the churches’ shared belief in the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist.
Griswold, Chicago’s former Episcopal bishop, said in his sermon that he hoped their example “will lead to ever widening and deepening relationships of shared life and mission with other churches of the Reformation as well as the Church of Rome and the churches of the East.”
He cautioned, however, that the formal declaration of full communion was just the beginning of a journey, much like that of the three wise men who followed a star to Bethlehem.
“Where we will be led God alone knows,” Griswold said. “There must have been times along the way when the wise men rued the day they had left home and yearned for the familiarity of their libraries, just as the costliness of full communion … may make us yearn for the safety of our old singularities.”
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Anderson served as the main celebrant Saturday, the Epiphany holiday.
Among the leaders planning to attend from Chicago were Episcopal Bishop William D. Persell and Kenneth R. Olsen, bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Discussions are under way in Chicago about how the accord will be implemented. A majority of the talks so far have focused on developing new churches in the suburbs and combining current ministries.
“We’re exploring several areas in existing congregations and possibly sharing facilities in some of our new mission starts,” Olsen said last week.
Olsen said he could not rule out any mergers of churches in the area but added that none are planned.
Victor Scantlebury, assistant bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, said both churches are planning a joint local service this month in celebration of the agreement.
Although Episcopal services tend to be more formal than Lutheran services, as well as using different styles of music, clergy members said the contrast is not always marked. It also varies by region.
“If you came to my church and the Episcopalian church on Sunday, you would find things almost exactly the same,” Leahy said. “That’s one of the reasons Lutherans and Episcopalians are able to get together, because we do have this broad understanding of what a Sunday service looks like.”
Such common ground is not sufficient for the agreement’s vocal critics.
“We as Lutherans have always confessed the only thing necessary for a church is Christ himself,” said Rev. Mark Chavez, executive director of the Word Alone Network. “Anything else required for the unity of the church is just out of bounds.”
His group particularly opposes the new requirements for ordaining pastors and installing new bishops.
Historically, Lutheran pastors could be ordained by other pastors or bishops, Chavez said. The new agreement requires ordinations to be performed only by bishops who are part of the “historic episcopate” stretching back to the early Christian church.
“This was approved largely in ignorance,” Chavez said of the accord. “We will refuse to conform to the requirements of the agreement, and we will be ordaining seminary graduates, and the ordination will not be done by bishops.”
Out of his organization’s 130 member congregations, two are in Illinois. The 1,100-member Messiah Lutheran Church in Joliet is one of them.
“My opposition has nothing to do with whether this is a Christian church or the sincerity of their faith,” said Rev. David Nygard. “Historically, Lutherans have walked away from the idea of the historic episcopate.”
Nygard said he hoped for a new vote on the agreement.
“So many people in our local area from different Lutheran churches have said to me that they didn’t even know this was going on,” he said.
Scantlebury suggested most people who oppose the accord do so out of fear of losing their church’s identity.
“We are trying to explain it’s not a matter of losing identity, it’s working together,” the Episcopalian said. “They forget the mission we are called to do is lift up the identity of Christ and not individual congregations.”
Olsen agreed. “People don’t adhere much to labels anymore,” he said. “They want to know, `What can this church do for me and my family?’ This is a unique time.”
Rev. Scott Moore, interim pastor at St. James Lutheran Church on Chicago’s Northwest Side, said he thinks change in local congregations will come slowly.
“Things don’t happen overnight, and I think there are some congregations who might not experience what this agreement means in the next 50 years,” Moore said. “I think this is going to affect congregations that are struggling, and might not be able to support a full-time pastor. The agreement is planning for the future.”