The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America did more at their convention than affirm homosexuality. The delegates also voted to extend full pulpit, altar, and every other kind of fellowship with the United Methodist Church.
The chief legislative authority of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) adopted a full communion agreement with the United Methodist Church (UMC) on Thursday by a 958-51 vote.
Under the agreement, the two church bodies express a common confession of Christian faith; mutual recognition of Baptism and sharing Holy Communion; mutual recognition of ordained ministers for service in either church; and a common commitment to evangelism, witness and service.
The two denominations also agree to freely join worship and exchange members; engage in common decision-making on critical matters; and lift criticisms that may exist between the churches.
According to the ELCA website, the church is also in
full communion with the Reformed Church in America, United Church of Christ, and the Presbyterian Church USA, Moravian Church, Episcopal Church in the USA. Full communion means that the ELCA and these church bodies share:
a common confessing of the Christian faith;
a mutual recognition of Baptism and a sharing of the Lord’s Supper, allowing for joint worship and an exchangeability of members;
a mutual recognition and availability of ordained ministers to the service of all members of churches in full communion, subject only but always to the disciplinary regulations of other churches;
a common commitment to evangelism, witness, and service;
a means of common decision making on critical common issues of faith and life;
a mutual lifting of any condemnations that exist between churches
This goes far beyond being willing to give each other Holy Communion. Since the ELCA and these other church bodies generally practice open communion that is hardly an issue. But this means, for example, that a Lutheran congregation in the ELCA could have a Methodist or a Presbyterian or a graduate from a UCC seminary as its pastor.
The ELCA is saying that it agrees with and will no longer criticize Calvinists AND Arminians AND the social gospel AND pietists AND moralists AND congregationalists AND episcopalians AND liturgists AND anti-liturgists AND people who believe in sacraments AND people who don’t believe in sacraments. So what is left that is distinctively LUTHERAN in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America?
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