wfn.org | Anglicans and Lutherans in Canada endorse proposal for full communion

[ENS@ecunet.org]

2001-180

Anglicans and Lutherans in Canada endorse proposal for full communion

by James Solheim
jsolheim@episcopalchurch.org

     (ENS) Meeting at adjacent college campuses in Kitchener-Waterloo, the 
Anglican Church of Canada's General Synod and the national convention of the 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada overwhelmingly endorsed a proposal for full 
communion between the two churches July 6.

     Similar to an agreement in the United States between the Episcopal Church 
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that was inaugurated in January, 
the Waterloo Declaration commits the Canadian churches to wide-ranging 
cooperation in mission and provides for the interchangeability of clergy while 
maintaining individual identity, structures and governance.

     Delegates to the General Synod greeted the vote with a standing ovation and 
then burst into singing the Doxology. Archbishop Michael Peers said that the vote 
was the result of 30 years of "personal association, of being together, and 
commitment to this enterprise." He then received from Lutheran representatives 
gifts of bread and wine as "symbols of the feast that we share." Shortly after 
the vote, Peers received a phone call that the Lutherans had also passed the 
resolution "overwhelmingly."

     In his presidential address the day before, Peers called the relationship 
with the Lutherans a "profound blessing" and said that the decision in favor of 
full communion was done in "a particularly Canadian way--allowing for convergence 
rather than insisting on it. That is what friends do." He added, "This is not a 
merger in which two partners lose their identity in the creation of something 
new. We each remain free to be who we are." 

     One potential result, Peers said, is "a greater transparency" in which "we 
will learn more about who we are as Anglicans even as we come to know more 
intimately our Lutheran friends." He expressed particular thanks for "the prayers 
and encouragement of others in our worldwide communions have helped us 
enormously."

     Bishop Christopher Epting, deputy for ecumenical and interfaith relations, 
joined two of his predecessors--the Rev. William Norgren and the Rev. David 
Perry--and Professor J. Robert Wright as part of the Episcopal Church's 
delegation to the historic occasion. "It was a privilege and honor to join our 
Canadian sisters and brothers at the festive banquet and joyous eucharist marking 
this next step in their journey together as Anglicans and Lutherans in full 
communion," Epting remarked.

Seeking reconciliation 

     Peers spent much of his presidential address on hundreds of lawsuits brought 
by indigenous people who claim they were abused in residential schools run by the 
churches for the government. The lawsuits threaten to bankrupt the church, unless 
the government provides some relief as co-defendant.

      "A sense of urgency rises out of the costs of the litigation we continue to 
face," said Peers, who complained that there is "a lack of clarity" in dealing 
with the government, making it difficult to "move ahead." He added,  "There is a 
need to make decisions about our future, but we are in a place where that feels 
enormously perilous."

     In the meantime, the church is seeking reconciliation with indigenous 
peoples. "Healing and reconciliation cannot be forwarded by a refusal to deal 
with our history," he said. 

     Noting that "the work of healing has hardly begun," Peers said that "it will 
be the work of generations to come."

Facing realities

     Preaching at the opening service of General Synod, Bishop Steven Charleston, 
dean and president of Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts and a member of 
the Choctaw Nation, said that he came as an indigenous person himself "to bring 
you a message of enormously powerful healing." Urging the delegates to deal with 
the reality of their situation, he observed that "you are not turning away from 
your past and pretending that it never happened" but instead "are facing the 
realities which are not unique to Canada at all, but are in fact the realities of 
relationships among peoples of all cultures in every continent on the face of the 
earth."

     Charleston said that the Canadian church was helping its members to look at 
each other not with fear but "with an amazing, astounding degree to hope… with a 
sense of community that is of absolute importance to the rest of the world…. What 
I see so clearly in my eyes is a church that is not teetering on the point of 
ruin, but just standing on the threshold of glory."

--James Solheim is director of Episcopal News Service.