The Jerusalem Statement

Yesterday we posted about the schism in the Anglican Communion, in which a global alliance consisting of 85% of the world’s Anglicans broke renounced allegiance to the Church of England because of its liberalism.

We have global Anglicans. We also have global Methodists. In each case, Christians from the whole world, led by churches from poor and developing nations, are repudiating the theological and moral liberalism of the mainline, Western, affluent denominations.

I wonder if we could have other kinds of global denominations–including global Lutheranism–that could bring back the mainline into something closer to orthodoxy and that could be the basis of a different kind of ecumenical movement. “Ecumenical,” after all, basically means “global.” Only this new kind of ecumenism would not proceed by eliminating doctrinal distinctives but affirming them, while providing a united front against secularism.

I want us to consider the Jerusalem Statement of 2008, which the Global Anglicans put forward as the new definition of Anglican identity. Here are its 14 points:

We rejoice in the gospel of God through which we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because God first loved us, we love him and as believers bring forth fruits of love, ongoing repentance, lively hope and thanksgiving to God in all things.
We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.
We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.
We gladly proclaim and submit to the unique and universal Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humanity’s only Saviour from sin, judgement and hell, who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve. By his atoning death and glorious resurrection, he secured the redemption of all who come to him in repentance and faith.
We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.
We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.
We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.
We gladly accept the Great Commission of the risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, to seek those who do not know Christ and to baptise, teach and bring new believers to maturity.
We are mindful of our responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, to uphold and advocate justice in society, and to seek relief and empowerment of the poor and needy.
We are committed to the unity of all those who know and love Christ and to building authentic ecumenical relationships. We recognise the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration.
We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters. We pledge to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us.
We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.
We rejoice at the prospect of Jesus’ coming again in glory, and while we await this final event of history, we praise him for the way he builds up his church through his Spirit by miraculously changing lives.

So how might this statement be Lutheranized, so as to challenge the hegemony of the Lutheran World Federation, which is the world face of Lutheranism but is dominated by Europe’s liberal state churches and the ELCA?

We would want to strengthen #2, including the inerrancy of Scripture.

We would swap out the 39 Articles for the Book of Concord in #4.

We could say how we rejoice in our Lutheran sacramental and liturgical heritage in #6, though the Augsburg Confession Article VII might not let us prescribe one single form.

We would reject the doctrine of apostolic succession in #7, stressing that to be apostolic means to hold to the teachings of the apostles in Holy Scripture and including a succinct summary of our convictions about the pastoral office.

There are traces of social gospel that we would want to scrub.

(Did I miss anything?)

Other than that, this has some good things to say that we could go along with. Such a statement, even if Lutheranized, is not nearly enough, of course, for a doctrinal confession, nor could it be used for any kind of pulpit or altar fellowship. But it might have its uses. At the very least, it could distinguish “global” churches from the “provincial” churches that seek to conform to the secularized West.

Illustration: Cross Globe Icons by Dawn Hudson via PublicDomainPictures, CC0, Public Domain.