Resolution Complicates ELCA-Missouri Synod Relations

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Rev. H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), said a St. Louis convention resolution The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) passed July 20 "saddens me a lot." The LCMS said, "We cannot consider them [the ELCA] to be an orthodox Lutheran church body."
"Obviously this will complicate our relationship," Anderson told The Post-Crescent newspaper in Appleton, Wis., July 21. The ELCA, with 5.13 million members, and the LCMS, with 2.6 million members, are the two largest Lutheran churches in North America. The LCMS is organized into 35 districts.
"We were not expecting it, because to our knowledge no formal study of this issue had been presented to the [LCMS] assembly," said Anderson. "For me it's a little hard to take seriously a doctrinal statement with no formal study."
"With both of us trying to emphasize evangelism, it is poor witness to the world when one spends time questioning whether the other is orthodox," Anderson told the Appleton paper. "That cannot be attractive to people trying to learn more about Jesus Christ."
"There is a great deal we could do together, and much we have done together. My hope is that this won't interfere. I guess that is up to the Missouri Synod," the paper quoted Anderson. The two churches work together through such organizations as Lutheran Disaster Response, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Lutheran Services in America and Lutheran World Relief.
In a formal statement after the vote, Anderson said, "The ELCA seeks to keep open every possible door of cooperation with our LCMS sisters and brothers. We look forward to the prospect of constructive dialogue on mutual concerns in the coming months and years."
The Rev. A.L. Barry, LCMS president, who died in March, filed a report on three formal discussions the two churches conducted since the Missouri Synod's previous triennial convention. The LCMS resolution quoted part of his observation:
"The LCMS indicated to the ELCA that in light of its theological direction we cannot consider them to be an orthodox Lutheran church body, and they expressed their feeling that precisely because we do not agree with their ecumenical agreements they regard us in a similar manner."
The LCMS convention in 1998 asked Barry to express the Missouri Synod's displeasure with the ELCA's ecumenical direction -- finding agreement with Christian churches that do not hold to the Lutheran Confessions.
The ELCA is in "full communion" with the Episcopal Church, USA, Moravian Church in America, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reformed Church in America and United Church of Christ. The ELCA also approved the international Lutheran-Catholic "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification."
With 94 percent approval, the Missouri Synod convention amended its "not orthodox" resolution by adding a resolve: "We of the LCMS recognize that many of our brothers and sisters in the ELCA remain faithful to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we resolve to reach out to them in love and support."
The resolution also directed the LCMS president and five vice presidents to evaluate "current cooperative pastoral working arrangements with the ELCA" and to bring "results and recommendations" to the next convention in 2004. The two churches cooperate in many campus and chaplain ministries.
The 2001 convention elected the Rev. Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of the LCMS Texas District, to become the Missouri Synod's next president in September.
After the convention adopted the resolution by a 2-to-1 margin, Kieschnick said, "I am sure every delegate, no matter how he or she voted, would ask the good people of the ELCA not to read into this resolution any sense of smugness or self-righteousness on the part of the Synod."
Kieschnick said, "This action, borne of love and concern, was deemed necessary in order to bring to light the significantly different perspectives our two church bodies have on certain theological issues and current-day practices.
"The adoption of this resolution changes nothing about the Missouri Synod's commitment to continued dialogue with the ELCA, with the very real hope and fervent prayer of one day resolving the differences that separate us," he added.
The Rev. Ralph A. Bohlmann, former president of the LCMS, said the convention resolution may be taken by some as an insult, and it may have been intended by some as an insult to the ELCA. The original use of "not orthodox" in Barry's report was "evidently not a heated comment from either church body about the other," he said.
Use of the word "orthodox" invites definition, said Bohlmann. "Orthodoxy" means "right teaching," he said.
"We don't teach the same things presumably on issues like the role of women in the church or the nature of ecumenical involvement," said the former president. The ELCA ordains women as clergy; the LCMS does not.
"If you're going to include that kind of thing in your teaching, then you don't consider each other to have orthodoxy," said Bohlmann. "I think that's probably all it meant. It took on stronger meaning."
On July 19, Anderson brought greetings to the LCMS convention. "I deeply regret the distance that has grown between us, and I realize that I one day will have to answer to God for my own inadequate efforts to bridge that gap," he said.
Noting his plans to retire later this year, Anderson told the convention, "I am now coming to the last months of my life in active ministry. I am sorry that I am closing that ministry without seeing the separation of thirty years ago healed. But I trust God, and I trust you and my own church body to find a way."

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