It occurred to me last night when discussing world Anglicanism with Fr. J that Christians of Lutheran heritage are often similarly considered to be a sort of world-communion… but I began to wonder how true that is…
My high school German is pretty much kaput, so I largely rely on info I can read in English… But it seems that the Northern European reformed communities that came out of Luther’s protest and reforms do not quite share the same sense of pan-Lutheran unity that the Anglicans do in the sense that as far as I know they do not hold anything comparable to a Lambeth Conference every ten years to discuss different issues and vote on different resolutions, do they?.
I am aware that in the US there are no less than three or four Lutheran Synods – the largest being the ELCA, followed by the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod and then Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod are in the US. The Missouri Synod and WELS are NOT in communion with each other but are in communion with some smaller bodies and part of larger world organizations.
The ELCA is an amalgamation of three synods that came together in 1988 and (at that time) adopted episcopacy… Today they are now in communion with the Episcopal Church.
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How much unity is there now or has there been in world Lutheranism, especially between the old state churches of Northern Europe?
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Are there gatherings similar to a Lamberth style conferences that bring all bodies in communion with each other together?
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How uniform has Lutheran worship been since the reformation? Do they have levels of ritual uniformity like the Anglicans with the BCP? (And yes, I know that example is not great, there is wide latitude there, but the BCP remains a sort of standard.)
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Among Anglicans and Orthodox ties to the country of origin remained important in a real way. Was this the case with the immigrant communities of Europe who began synods in the “New World?” I do note that the Swedish immigrants – coming from a state church that claimed apostolic succession and had bishops – did NOT adopt episcopacy as their government model here in the Augustana Synod (Later merged into Lutheran Church in America which later merged into the ELCA… Does this speak to an understanding that ties with the original church aren’t as important in the same fashion as it was for some other communities?
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I have heard SS’s German and it is very convincing. Nice post. Awaiting responses.
It is of the “Hello-how-are-you?-Nice-day-isn’t-it?” variety. I really don’t know enough German anymore to wade through any serious texts dealing with Lutheran history!
I always thought his frequent outburst of “is outrage!” showed that he actually knew more German than English and, indeed, has some trouble expressing himself in the latter. I, for one, am surprised.
Why you little… ($#&&#$@)
IS OUTRAGE!
SS,
Interesting topic! So I’ll add my two cents worth:
The fundamental issue is identity. I am at a loss to define Anglican identity but I can give an insight into Lutheran identity. Lutheranism, unlike Anglicanism, is a confessional movement. The central documents are contained in the Book of Concord. As with all historical documents, there are differences of interpretation – and, hence, the differences in Lutheranism.
So to your questions:
1. Little to none! Various Lutheran communities have statements of agreement with others but that means little or nothing.
2. NO! There is the Lutheran World Federation (and some other group whose name escapes me at the moment that is more conservative) but I do not think its meetings are anything like Lambeth.
3. Lutheranism, by definition (see above), does not need unified worship. It is agreement in doctrine that matters. Some continue to use traditional vestments and a structure similar to the normative western rite. Others have abandoned any liturgical style and have gone complete Bapticostal.
4. There may be cultural connections but they are external, in the sense they are not of the fundamental nature of Lutheranism. But some of the divisions within Lutheranism are along cultural lines, me thinks.
Just my two cents!
I’m a former Lutheran candidate for ordination, so I know a little about this:
1. Any unity is purely ‘moral’ — there is no binding legal authority between worldwide Lutheran bodies, as there kinda is in Anglicanism. What the Swedes do doesn’t affect any American bodies. Similarly, what the Germans do has no bearing on what the Swedes or Norwegians do, and I suspect what the Norwegians do has no bearing on the Swedes. I do think that the Scandinavian Lutheran churches have bishops in apostolic succession.
2. Nope. No lambeth like thing.
3. I think Lutheran worship has been more stable than even Anglican, because Lutherans are inherently conservative folk (although you’d find a lot of ‘contemporary worship’ in Lutheran churches in the US in recent years). The ELCA has the green Lutheran Book of Worship, which is a lot like the BCP in terms of content and function. (I’ve been attending an Anglican church, and I’m always pleased that the BCP containes the liturgical cadences of my childhood.) It is a (anti-Catholic) Lutheran principle that “forms and rites do not need to be the same in all times and places” (paraphrasing something from the 1500s), but, that said, Lutherans are a liturgical bunch. Or have been until those f*ing guitars found their way into services…
4. I think it is. Where I grew up, different Lutheran parishes were still known by their ethnicity — not formally, on the sign, but 1st Lutheran was Norwegian, Bethany was Norwegian, Augustana Lutheran was Swedish, another was German, another was Icelandic. That’s breaking down as there is more and more intermarriage. (I’m serious; it’s all northern European intermarriage, but intermarriage it is.) But I don’t think it’s nearly as serious or severe as in Orthodoxy.
As to number 4, and how I know this I have no idea since I have no connection to Lutheranism whatsoever (I think I read too much “convervative blog for peace” and wikipedia), the Swedes who came here to America had some bad feelings concerning the Swedish king and nobility for some reason or other and since the Swedish episcopacy, like their counterparts in England, has such a strong connection to the monarchy and upper class snobbery they had no desire to countinue it here in America.
Also Sweden (and the daughter church in Finland) is actually the only Lutheran church to claim aposolic succession. Norway (which along with Iceland used to be part of Denmark) used to call the pastors in chrage of dioceses “diocesian administrators” or something along those lines for a century or two before renaming the office title “bishop”.
William Tighe wrote about this in the comments section of the old Pontifications… The Swedish Lutherans that is. He points out that AS was well broken early on, and all problematic teaching aside, couldn’t be understood to have been retained…
The Swedes, the Finns, and their offshoot missions in Africa continued at lest the form of the practice. The Swedes who arrived in the US, simply did not, and were congregational with presbyterian style ordination since arrival. For a time Krister Stendahl (sp?) who was a retired bishop in Sweden actually taught at Harvard…
I remain curious how uniform or similar Lutheran liturgical services were within individual countries as well as between churches… I have seen footage of some non-ELCA folks who still use ad orientum posturing, and understand that to have been rather common in Denmark up until the last century.
… Also Sweden (and the daughter church in Finland) is actually the only Lutheran church to claim aposolic succession…
But Lutheranism as a whole does not have a theological reason for retaining Apostolic Succession or the office of bishop. Many high-end Lutherans will argue for retaining bishops but along historical lines. It is not an issue for laypeople and most see it as an underground attempt to move them back to Rome. In Australia, most Lutheran congregations will not use catholic in the Creeds: they use Christian instead. This, of course, is not the official position of the Lutheran Church of Australia but old habits are hard to break.
Re: worship. In Australia there is, in theory, a hymnbook and a collection of authorized liturgical orders. But there is much local tinkering with the liturgy to the Baptist side. None, to my knowledge, use Eucharistic vestments apart from the stole. Some have abandoned all liturgical vestments. Very few would not use ad orientum. Yet it is not an issue: an even smaller number would have a Communion Service weekly. The main architectural feature is the pulpit!
There are movements of liturgical renewal (along with a renewal in Confessional identity) within the US. But there is nothing like it in Australia. Most would consider themselves closer to their Reformed brethren than Anglicans.
Hello, brothers & sisters!
Let me chime in a bit on this: World Lutherans are increasingly aware of one another, and conversations among Lutheran churches, both regionally (Nordic/Baltic, North & South American, African, etc.) are becoming more regular and frequent. The Lutheran World Federation, which is a loose association of most Lutheran churches in the world, is trying to define and understand itself more as a “communion” than just an association. By that, it means it understands the true unity of the church to be in the proclamation of the gospel and that unity is a “sacramental” gift of God.
The Nordic Lutheran churches (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark & dependencies, Finland, Estonia & Latvia) have a bishops’ conference and often consider issues together, even though each church is autonomous. Most of those countries are moving more or less slowly toward separation of church and state, so the churches’ concerns are mostly internal. But all coexist in institutional harmony, and sometimes (as in the case of the Church of England) have a common ecumenical policy.
The German Lutheran churches have their own issues, but among the various Landeskirchen there is basically harmony: an overarching national Protestant church includes the Reformed and Union churches on a an equal basis with the Lutherans (who have their own subsidiary organization, too, the United Ev Lutheran Church of Germany). There are a smattering of tiny conservative Lutheran free churches there too. All of the “established church” Protestants of Germany, Lutheran and Calvinist alike, share worship and communion, theological faculties, and all sorts of structural relationships. Ecumenical issues in Germany are colored by the fact that there are two large official church structures there, Protestant and Catholic respectively, and not a range of denominational choices as in the US, where some Protestants (notably Lutherans & Anglicans) find dialogue with Catholics and the Orthodox easier and more congenial than with more radical Protestants. The either/or nature of German state Christianity makes both sides more defensive and protective of their turf.
Everywhere else in the world, Lutheranism was carried either by settlers or missionaries. These different modes of transmission have produced different kinds of churches. Some immigrant churches were pretty homogeneous (Germans to Brazil and Australia); others are multi-ethnic, which was a challenge to unity in itself (the US and Canada are the prime examples). In other lands, where the faith was brought by missionaries, the church has been more easily indigenized, though there are still strong ties between Lutheran churches in developing countries and those in the industrialized nations. Indonesia has, for example, over a million Lutherans, and maintains close ties with Australia. The new marvel is the Ethiopian Lutheran church, which has just shot into the top rank of largest Lutheran churches of the world.
Lutherans have always seen fidelity to the Lutheran confessions (really, the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s catechisms) as being enough to establish unity and fellowship. Some Lutheran churches (of which the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod in the US is the largest and most influential) have a more rigid definition of “fidelity” to the confessions that includes ways of understanding them, and as a consequence are not member churches of the LWF. For them, the International Lutheran Council is a sort of parallel organization. The LWF leaders and the ILC leaders meet regularly to keep at least in friendly contact. Note: some national churches (Australia) belong to both groups, something the LCMS does not encourage.
But no international Lutheran body has ever claimed to regulate unity or establish binding guidelines for faith or order or structure. The closest we have come to that is that there is a clear movement within the LWF to urge the churches that still don’t ordain women to move toward doing that. And back in the old anti-apartheid days, the all-white branch of South African Lutheranism had its membership suspended.
There have been rumblings within the LWF membership of disagreements analogous to those in world Anglicanism, but they have not yet broken out into open conflict. Part of this is the Lutheran inclination to expect local autonomy and considerable variation in polity and worship. The LWF only meets in General Assembly every seven years, and there was some North/South tension in Winnipeg in 2003. The next Assembly will be in Stuttgart in 2010.
Certainly the slow movement of the American and European Lutherans toward ordination of gay and lesbian clergy is a matter of concern to some Southern Hemisphere Lutherans. But the greatest visible division among world Lutherans still is on women’s ordination, though the churches that oppose it are in the minority.
On worship, Lutherans worldwide generally maintain a liturgical tradition that stresses the structure of the historic Mass, though with variations. Increasingly, weekly celebration of Holy Communion is the norm, but that depends also on regional emphases. In Europe and North America, Lutheran liturgical materials increasingly reflect an awareness of the global dimension of Christianity.
On episcopacy, Lutheran terminology is more varied than Lutheran practice, though indeed some Lutheran churches are more hierarchical in structure than others. But having rigid structures for oversight are not the same as calling the overseers “bishops.” Some of the most “episcopal” Lutherans are also among the most democratic. Lutherans generally don’t believe the historic tactile apostolic succession is important, if they believe it exists at all, in any church. They put greater stock in the apostles’ legacy being present in proclamation and sacrament than in persons. But Lutherans are also conservative and traditional, and often consciously “catholic,” so bishops are not in themselves anathema to most Lutherans–though the ones for whom bishops are objectionable, are quite vehement about it!
Anyway, that’s more than enough for one post. I’m writing a book about world Lutheranism I expect to finish next year–I teach church history at a Lutheran university in the US.
Best regards,
Guy