Understandably, with the focus of attention directed to recent events in Rome, this news story has been substantially overlooked - particularly (to no one's great surprise) by the secular media: one of the largest members of the Lutheran World Federation — the 6.1 million member EECMY — has broken fellowship with the Church of Sweden and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, raising the possibility of a "north - south" division along the same geographical and theological lines which now, de facto, divide the Anglican Communion. At the centre of the gathering storm, and the immediate cause for this split, is the acceptance of same-sex marriage by the ELCA and the Church of Sweden.
It is understood that third world Lutheran bodies are seeking wider fellowship with the more biblically orthodox LCMS, the confessional Lutherans of the Missouri Synod. These developments themselves and the longer term implications and possibilities of this kind of realignment are ... interesting, shall we say?
A full report from George Conger [here]
Back in the fractured world of Anglicanism, it has been announced that the Presiding Bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church has been invited and will attend the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury [here] - immediately raising questions as to the attendance of primates from Anglicanism's Global South.
The EECMY purports to ordain women. So long as that continues, it will be an insuperable obstacle to what Lutherans call "Altar and Pulpit Fellowship" between them and the Missouri Synod.
ReplyDeleteI did wonder; thank you for the clarification.
ReplyDelete