Lutheran Unity in America
By John Hoyum
As I’ve previously written, the NALC is to one degree or another the inheritor of the ecumenical legacy of its predecessors. This has some drawbacks: it seems that older Lutheran concepts of church fellowship are correct, and the quest for Christian unity between confessional traditions overextended itself in the interest of full communion and doctrinal reconciliation. Lutherans ought to uplift the chief article of justification by faith alone. Likewise, the true presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper is one of Christ’s greatest gifts to his church and it should be our privilege to confess this truth with conviction.
But, since the time of Muhlenberg, it has always been the hope of Lutherans on this continent that they forge unity across ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differences. Great progress toward unity was achieved during the nineteenth-century – especially with the rejection of Schmucker’s version of American Lutheranism. The Common Service (1887) also cultivated an English liturgy for use by all American Lutherans. But the twentieth-century, with its turn toward the English language, saw the consolidation of Lutherans in large, merged bodies. This, as readers will understand, has had significant drawbacks.
But this doesn’t mean that hopes for Lutheran unity are misplaced. Indeed, it would seem that the NALC has a responsibility to other Lutherans before anyone else. The close collaboration with the ACNA certainly has yielded many benefits, and hopefully to both bodies. But the NALC has also rightly pursued discussions with the LCMS and the Lutheran Church––Canada (LCC). These talks have produced a book on law and gospel and a joint statement on scripture. Rightly, the goal of these discussions has not been the establishment of altar and pulpit fellowship – which at this point would surely be premature and counterproductive.
The Question of LCMC
But considering the legacy of the ecumenical movement – and the post-ecumenical situation – it’s perhaps time to reconsider the question of Lutheran unity. For example, the rather murky relationship between the NALC and LCMC is something that should at least be clarified. Many pastors are rostered in both churches; and many congregations are affiliated with both for one reason or another. At least in practice, the NALC and LCMC are in what Lutherans used to call altar and pulpit fellowship – I’m sure the term “full communion” would be scoffed at by our low church friends in LCMC. As they probably should.
The NALC is, as a body, authorized to make and break church fellowship agreements. I was corrected on a previous post concerning this question: the NALC has established full communion with the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY). Not much about this can be gleaned from the NALC’s notoriously bad website about this agreement. LCMC, no doubt, cannot speak on behalf of the association’s constituent congregations on such things as communion or church fellowship. It is, after all, only a collection of independent congregations.
The usual pushback that I’d expect to hear from NALC Lutherans about getting closer to LCMC are high-minded and well-intentioned questions about the authentic Lutheranism of many in LCMC. Inasmuch as LCMC perpetuates stories of the NALC’s imposition of the historic episcopate (stories which aren’t true), the NALC tells stories of LCMC pastors who don’t like baptizing infants or who only occasionally use the verba at the Lord’s Supper.
The usual narrative I hear from friends in LCMC is that LCMC exists because of Called to Common Mission, the ELCA’s full communion agreement with the Episcopal Church. While that may well have been the precipitating factor in its creation, I don’t see why this need be some sort of obstacle to collaboration between LCMC and the NALC over twenty years later. Our churches, pastors, and lay people have a shared history with regional and cultural variations. But, as the Augsburg Confession reminds us, unity is not to be found in ceremonies which needn’t be the same everywhere. It is enough (satis est!) for the unity of the church that there be unity in faithful proclamation of the gospel and administration of the sacraments.
LCMC will of course rightly observe that requiring episcopal ordination as a condition of ecclesial unity violates evangelical and confessional principles. The NALC will likewise point out that a low doctrine of baptism and questionable practices surrounding the distribution of the Lord’s Supper violate those same principles. And perhaps the decentralized nature of LCMC will make any sort of litigation of these issues impossible, since LCMC doesn’t understand itself to be a synod in any traditional sense.
Some Clarifications
But if the NALC and LCMC are concerned about accountability to fellow Lutherans, then they are one another’s closest neighbors. For lack of a better characterization, they inhabit the conservative center lane of Lutheranism, with the churches of the defunct Synodical Conference to the right, and the ELCA to the left.
A few clarifications would be in order if this is the case. To the concern of LCMC concerning the episcopate, the office of bishop in the NALC does not – at least to my mind – violate AC VII because it isn’t serving as the condition for a full communion agreement like CCM. It is retained for practical reasons like many Lutheran churches at the time of the Reformation did – especially the state churches of Scandinavia. One could argue that the episcopate has a bad track record among American Lutherans, and that the organizers of the immigrant synods of the nineteenth-century were right not to have bishops. But that’s a separate question from what is enough for church unity.
On the other hand, there’s the questionably Lutheran practices and ideas which have crept into many churches. The truth is that a great deal of complaining from the NALC side about LCMC’s downgraded Lutheranism is grandstanding. Both churches tolerate un-Lutheran and un-evangelical practice. Both have significant church growth contingents that minimize Lutheran distinctives for the sake of evangelism – or in the NALC’s case, an explicit fixation on “discipleship” initiatives. Renewal of Lutheran identity is going to be a two-way street.
Furthermore, groups like the Augustana District in LCMC work hard to promote confessional Lutheranism within LCMC, and their efforts shouldn’t go unrecognized. Clarifying some of these questions might dispel some of the mythology which has grown up over the last twenty years. Moreover, I don’t think it’s particularly useful to think about our differences in purely inherited terms, like LCMC being the pietist association and the NALC being the concoction of elitist east coast pastors who dress up as Anglicans on Sundays. None of this helps consider more pressing questions of the present – and especially not the question of Lutheran unity.