Anglican Communion News Service

(ENI) Anglicans and Lutherans in Canada are deepening their links and may be in full communion by the year 2001.

On 25 May the Anglican Church in Canada's (ACC) general council gave overwhelming approval in principle to a declaration intended to lead to closer ties with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) approved a document - "Called to Full Communion" - at its convention last year, and the Church is already preparing to make the necessary changes to its constitution. A study guide prepared by a joint working group of the two Churches will "assist Lutherans and Anglicans in Canada to assess the proposals for full communion between" the two churches. Anglicans and Lutherans, clergy and laity, are urged to study the material together where possible.

The guide includes a draft declaration which would bring the Churches into full communion. In July 2001 ACC's general synod and the ELCIC's national convention will meet in Waterloo, Ontario, to vote on the declaration. Already steps have been taken towards closer relations. An exchange of official observers has been initiated at meetings of the governing bodies of the two Churches.

The ELCIC's national magazine, Canada Lutheran, reports that the Lutheran National Church Council has matched an Anglican initiative by officially declaring that "lay people of the Anglican Church of Canada moving to a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada are to be received with the same status (baptised/communicant/confirmed) which they held in the ACC. The intention is to have Anglicans received into a Lutheran congregation by a process equivalent to that used for Lutherans transferring membership from one congregation to another."

According to the Anglican News Service in Canada, "full communion" does not represent a merger of the two Churches, but means that each recognises the other's rites, services, sacraments and clerical orders. It could result in much greater sharing of resources and personnel, especially in thinly populated parts of the country.

The Anglican Church has about 750 000 active members and 2000 active clergy in 1850 parishes and 30 dioceses across the country.

The ELCIC has about 200 000 baptised members and about 650 clergy in 642 congregations.