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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 16.05.2003 |
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| Canadian Lutherans and Anglicans Bring the Gift of "Full Communion" to the LWF Assembly |
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A Dialogue with ELCIC Bishop Raymond Schultz and Anglican Primate Michael Peers
In June 2001, in Waterloo, southwestern Ontario, Canada’s largest Lutheran body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), and Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) formally entered into full communion. Full communion, under “The Waterloo Declaration,” is not a merger or union. There is mutual recognition of each other’s rites - services, sacraments and clerical orders - but the two national churches maintain their individual identities, character, structures and governance. As preparations get underway for the July 2003 Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Tenth Assembly to be hosted by the ELCIC, the experience of full communion is brought to the fore as the two Canadian churches plan together to welcome the global Lutheran communion to Winnipeg.
Michael McAteer, former religion editor with the Toronto Star, moderated a dialogue between ELCIC National Bishop, Raymond Schultz and ACC Primate, Archbishop Michael Peers. Excerpts of the conversation follow:
McAteer: Bishop Schultz, perhaps you could briefly explain how [the process of full communion] started?
Schultz: The coming together in full communion did not begin in Canada. It started with churches in Europe. Then we developed a kind of made-in-Canada process. After a series of meetings in which we came to some common agreements on issues, it was determined by our two churches that we were ready to move into - I wouldn’t call it an experimental relationship - but an interim sharing of the Eucharist where we began to have a life together and to take a look at how that was working out.
McAteer: How is full communion working?
Schultz: It’s working [in Canada] because there is the opportunity to make responses based on situations that arise. The most obvious example is that our two churches are exchanging clergy so that clergy for each denomination are serving congregations in the other. And, it’s working in many kinds of local events at the grassroots. Where once Lutherans would have a study event together or would discuss an issue by themselves, now none of that planning is done without their Anglican sisters and brothers. At the national level, we are preparing for the Tenth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Winnipeg and members of the Anglican church sit on our planning committees. We are very much partners in that planning and Archbishop Peers will be one of the honored guests at the Assembly.
Peers: What Bishop Schultz says about the particularly Canadian way we’ve approached [issues] and are approaching them is very important. We made a number of specifically Canadian choices. One of them was that if we want to encourage local initiative and local getting to know each other, the leadership must give some encouraging signals and do some modeling. So the bishops have been meeting together once a year, for about eight years now. We meet at the same time and in the same place, and have some common time together discussing issues, and [share in] worship. That means, for example, that within a person's first year as bishop he or she will not only meet every bishop of their own tradition, but also every bishop of the other tradition. We have a group that’s working on the implementation of our agreement - what are its implications and how should we proceed in some specific situations? For instance, in Winnipeg, there is a congregation which is jointly served by an Anglican priest and a Lutheran pastor. As well, the largest Anglican church in Regina has called a Lutheran pastor as its rector and it just sort of happened. Bishops on both sides are quite content with this; so are the congregations, so there’s lots of initiative locally. Obviously geography has lots to do with it. There isn’t a Lutheran church in the province of Newfoundland so the three Anglican dioceses in Newfoundland have a much thinner experience of this new reality than in some other places, especially in the west.
One of our great advantages in this particular ecumenical dialogue is the widespread sense among lay people that when we are worshipping in the church of the other we feel at home in many ways. One is the character of the worship but the other is the character of the welcome.
McAteer: Any unanticipated problems?
Peers: I think we anticipated ones that didn’t show up. There are Anglicans who, for this reason or that, have difficulty recognizing this other body as a church close enough to what they think church is. And I would be astonished if there weren’t a couple of Lutherans somewhere who had the same opinions in reverse. But not in any way that has as yet become a problem big enough to have to call for outside help.
McAteer: Bishop Shultz, are there Lutherans who view full communion in a negative light?
Schultz: I think it is a relatively small minority. Some of it is probably just xenophobia. My experience has been that we’ve been working issues out very well. One of the issues that we’ve discussed among the bishops is how we orient clergy to each other’s denomination because at the beginning we were just parachuting them in. There are some differences, more in local traditions than in actual church polity. In Saskatoon a Lutheran, an Anglican and a United Church seminary are working towards a common theological union on the campus at the University of Saskatchewan. There’s a joint Anglican-Lutheran commission which has an agenda of issues. Near the top of that agenda is the role of deacons in our respective churches. Lutherans decided a few years ago that this was an appropriate order of ministry to have but there was considerable ambiguity about the role of these folks in our church. We thought the Anglicans had it all worked out until we talked to them and discovered there is considerable ambiguity there too.
McAteer: There are several quite thorny issues within the Anglican church at the moment. One of them is the blessing of same-sex unions. If the [ACC] as a body approved the blessing of same-sex unions, how would Lutherans receive it?
Schultz: It certainly would be a thorny issue if we were to move in any direction different from our present position. Unlike the Anglican church, where such a decision can be made on a diocese by diocese basis, in the [ELCIC] that would have to be made on a national basis. The position of our church right now is that we do not bless same-sex unions. What we have underway is a commitment to be hospitable and open in membership in our congregations and to engage in a series of caring conversation workshops at the local level.
On the July 2003 LWF Tenth Assembly
McAteer: How significant is the Assembly?
Schultz: The Assembly theme is "For the Healing of the World." Well, unless somebody only reads the tabloids in the supermarket, it’s not very difficult to realize that this world is in desperate need of healing. We have gone through some of the most amazing times in world history. We’ve seen balkanization reoccurring, we’ve experienced ethnic warfare in Africa, we are addressing environmental issues that are life threatening to entire species, including humanity. Almost everywhere you turn there are things eating away at the fabric of what it means to be a common humanity. [Healing] is such a big topic that it has been sub-divided into ten smaller topics [for the Assembly] in order that it is even possible to talk about it.
McAteer: What sort of role would you like the Anglicans to play in the Assembly?
Schultz: From our experience they play at least three levels of roles. On the local level, the Anglicans in Winnipeg are working in partnership with us to be Assembly hosts. Their local diocese has been extremely helpful in making people and other resources available to us. Then beyond that level, the Primate and other members of the Anglican Communion are invited to be official visitors to the Assembly. As official visitors to the Assembly they have a voice. They can participate in the entire event and have the opportunity to contribute to not only the discourse that goes on but also the deliberation that will feed into the final responses to the theme. And then on the global level, because there has been this history of communion between the worldwide Lutherans and worldwide Anglicans, we have a long relationship that goes back a considerable length of time, and so there has been ongoing consultation between these two church bodies.
McAteer: Archbishop Peers, what sort of a role would you like to see the Anglicans play in the Assembly?
Peers: I’m certainly delighted, though not surprised, to hear that the Diocese of Rupert's Land, (the Anglican Church in Winnipeg) is taking a significant role in the work of organizing and local planning. I think that many people here would have the sense that a worldwide event is taking place in this city and in this diocese. And it is an event for our very closest friends and neighbors within the Christian world so we want [the Assembly] to be as good as it can be and we want to help. It will serve to do a lot of things. For one, many people will meet many people. And when that happens, things are never quite the same again. On a personal note, 30 years ago when I was a priest in this city we had a Lutheran congregation come and join us in our building and we’ve lived together since. So there are some experiences here that can be shared. There is just no overemphasizing what happens when people meet. When people meet, there is the possibility of life, growth, learning and change. When Bishop Schultz says that there’s a movement from federation to communion in Lutheran discourse, there is a very strong movement in Anglican discourse to move from communion to federation because of some peoples’ sense that there are such serious divisions looming in places like Sydney in Australia.
McAteer: Do you expect some vigorous debate from delegates to what has been the North-South issue? Between churches in the developing South and churches in the affluent North?
Schultz: What I know for sure, is that there certainly is a difference between the churches in the south and the churches in the north. And some of that is positive experience and some is not. The churches in the north are the churches with money. The churches in the south are churches with membership growth, evangelism and enthusiasm. Churches in the south tend to reflect the attitudes of the missionaries who evangelized them so in some cases they still reflect very much the ethnic origin of the people who came and started the first churches. There are cultural differences as well. But to move this on to another dynamic, because we have people also moving around the world the issue gets even more complicated. We have expatriate churches from the south whose members are now living in countries like Canada and they bring a set of attitudes and church practices that are not like the present experience of the churches they came from but from the period of history when they emigrated. And, yet they’re also different from the rest of our mainline churches in Canada. Probably the most major topic of debate will be around economics, because many of the southern churches exist in countries that are poor and are not the countries that make the rules about globalization and international trade treaties.
McAteer: Archbishop Peers, with your experience of international church gatherings do you have any advice on where the Assembly’s focus should be?
Peers: One of the most challenging tasks is to be able to provide a setting in which people who come from the "north" and the "south" can actually converse. One of the difficulties about these things is to relate our unity in the faith and in the gospel to the diversity in our culture, politics or economics.
McAteer: Bishop Schultz, after all the debates and speeches have ended, what do you hope comes out of the Assembly?
Schultz: One of the things that I hope to see will be a healing experience for the participants as well. The folks that are coming to this Assembly are often lonely voices. They’re often dealing with what appear to be insurmountable issues. You know, when somebody has terminal cancer, healing doesn’t just involve curing. It involves the process of helping that person to be spiritually whole so that they can endure what they are going through and end their life in faith and hope. I see the people in our church as agents of healing in a world that is often very cancerous. The task is enormous. And so whether the world ultimately will be dramatically changed and whether it’s possible for 60 million Lutherans worldwide in concert with other Christians to stem the tide of globalization and the juggernauts of economic and military progress, I don’t know. But what I do know, is that in the communities where they live and work and to the extent that they have opportunity to address the world, these are people that are going to be talking about reconciliation and wholeness, who are going to address the entire spectrum of what it means to be a human being, and the relationships that people need to carry on in that regard.
McAteer: These sorts of gatherings also must be very encouraging for church leaders who must at times get discouraged about where the world and society are heading?
Schultz: It’s like a Sacrament. The reason that we give people bread and wine in Holy Communion is so that they can actually taste and feel the presence of the living Christ. You know, we follow an incarnate God, a God who was flesh and blood, who you can touch and feel, one who lives in relationship with you. So this coming together and to be able to experience each other and see that these seemingly insignificant activities of ours, actually are shared by people around the world, is such a powerful experience that it is indescribable.
Peers: [Such] gatherings, always bring a combination of support and challenge. One of the challenges is to our sense of "poor us", our self-pity, when we hear about the much more desperate situations of other Christians. Even more complicated is the shock when we speak of what we believe are our real assets, real contributions, real achievements, and then somebody raises profound questions about them and we are jolted. Of course, this sort of experience is accessible to many people nowadays; people who are on the “net,” for example, but nothing will ever replace the impact of flesh and blood human contact.
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