Spotlight on Lutheran Church-Canada | One Body

Julien Hammond

Friday, August 9, 2024

buff and brown church against a blue cloudy sky

Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Bruderheim, Alberta, a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Canada (LCC). The Winnipeg-based church includes 300 congregations across Canada. Wikimedia Commons.

Spotlight on Lutheran Church-Canada

by Julien Hammond

The last two articles of “One Body” have focused on Catholic-Lutheran relations in Canada, and beyond, through the lenses of:

the development and reception of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine on Justification (https://slmedia.org/blog/jddj-milestone-challenge), and

the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, a member of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) (https://slmedia.org/blog/jddj-milestone-challenge).

Close readers of both articles will notice references made to a Christian community of Canadian Lutherans that is neither a member of the Lutheran World Federation nor a signatory to the Joint Declaration. These are Christians belonging to Lutheran Church-Canada (LCC), which I am pleased to spotlight in this month’s blog.

LCC was founded in 1988 out of the St. Louis-based Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), after the latter withdrew from North American Lutheran church merger talks. By their own reckoning:

Ministry during World War II helped the Canadian church recognize its national identity and in 1988, most of the LCMS congregations in Canada left the [Missouri] synod to form an autonomous body called Lutheran Church–Canada remaining in church fellowship with the LCMS. LCC has 300 congregations from British Columbia to Nova Scotia and a membership of almost 60,000. Its head office is in Winnipeg and its current president (elected in 2017) is Rev. Timothy Teuscher. (See: https://www.lutheranchurchcanada.ca/who-we-are/history/ )

LCC is subdivided into three regions – West (Alberta/BC), Central (Saskatchewan/Manitoba/NW Ontario) and East (Ontario/Quebec/Atlantic). An elected President and Board of Directors, and leaders within each of the regions, provide direction, resources, and ecclesiastical supervision to the church and its operations. These operations include:

25 Lutheran schools across the country

two seminaries: Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Edmonton, and Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in Waterloo; (both seminaries have played key roles in advancing LCC-Roman Catholic relations in Canada)

several domestic and international missions

supports for LCC military chaplains,

a ministry of care for church workers, and

an online and print magazine called The Canadian Lutheran.

LCC is a member of the International Lutheran Council (ILC) – a body distinct from the Lutheran World Federation that describes itself as “a growing worldwide association of established confessional Lutheran church bodies which proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the basis of an unconditional commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired and infallible Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book of Concord as the true and faithful exposition of the Word of God.”

This “unconditional commitment” to the Word of God (sola scriptura) and a “vigorous subscription to the Lutheran Confessions” are two of the defining features that set ILC members apart from LWF members, and in Canada that distinguish LCC and ELCIC Lutherans from one another.

LCC maintains “altar and pulpit fellowship” with other confessional Lutheran churches (especially Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and other members of the ILC). Ecumenically, LCC has entered into “discussions…to explore areas of common interest” with the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB). The latter has born exceptional fruit in the past decade including the establishment of one national (Waterloo, 2013-present) and one regional (Edmonton, 2014-2021) dialogue group, and an invitation to the LCC President to bring greetings and to participate in a panel discussion on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation at the 2016 CCCB plenary assembly. These are significant accomplishments within a mere decade of “discussions,” and hope-filled signs of what may still emerge from engagements between LCC Lutherans and Roman Catholics in Canada in years to come.

LCC-Roman Catholic Dialogue in Canada

The national LCC-RC dialogue group was established in June 2013 under the authorization of the LCC Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) and the CCCB’s Commission on Church Unity, Religious Relations with the Jews, and Interreligious Dialogue. The group began meeting in southern Ontario out of expediency, as most of the members of the dialogue were theologians from seminaries in Waterloo (LCC) and Toronto (RC), Ontario. They established a pattern, and have continued to meet twice each year.

A similar pattern developed in Edmonton (although meeting more frequently – up to four times per year), beginning in 2014. Like the national group, the Edmonton dialogue was authorized by the national LCC Synod authorities (President and CTCR) since in LCC church polity, church relations are not under the jurisdiction of individual districts (like the Alberta-BC District), but of the national church. The Catholic partners in the dialogue were theologians and pastors selected by the Archdiocese of Edmonton.

The first few meetings of both groups were dedicated to getting acquainted and to organizational discussions. While each group was given licence to choose their own topics for dialogue, they were to do so within a specific mandate received from their respective authorities:

For the national group: “to deepen understanding, to foster charity, and to develop common witness through exploration of doctrine and moral issues, and through celebration of appropriate forms of joint prayer.”

For the Edmonton group (in the text of the mandate given to us by the LCC President and Archbishop Smith as sponsoring authorities before we began our work): “to increase understanding and appreciation between RC and LCC churches in the Edmonton area; to explore pastoral, theological and ethical issues, including those which may divide our churches, and to consider how national and international Lutheran-Catholic statements may impact the situation of Lutheran and Catholic churches in the local context.”

The two groups agreed to focus initially on four main discussion topics: Justification, The Eucharist, Ministry, and Scripture and Tradition. The 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification as well as the abundance of preparatory materials produced in anticipation the 500th anniversary of the Reformation (especially From Conflict to Communion [FCC]), opened up avenues for engaging all of these themes, while at the same time allowing LCC theologians to differentiate themselves from the LWF perspectives found within both the JDDJ and FCC texts.

Initial discussions touched upon topics of confessional identity, “sacramentality” understood from Lutheran and Catholic perspectives, the enduring validity (yet contemporary reinterpretation) of the 16th century “solas,” and common misconceptions and present misrepresentations about the other. Other topics included past and contemporary theological understandings of (and the practice of dispensing) Indulgences, and specific questions about the exercise of authority, the validity of orders and “catholicity” understood and manifest within each church.

In reference to the JDDJ, LCC theologians expressed great concern with the notion of “differentiated consensus,” which seemed to them simply to represent “agreeing to disagree,”, and the post-Vatican II Catholic doctrine of a “hierarchy of truths,” which seemed to them to relativize biblically revealed truths of the faith.

In reference to FCC, both churches admitted mixed feelings within their respective communions with respect to marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation jointly. On the one hand, they expressed joy at being able to celebrate, for the first time in history, their common faith and life in Christ. On the other hand, they acknowledged the reality of impaired communion – the anathemas of Trent not lifted, Luther remaining excommunicated, the tragedy of divisions and religious wars, and the enduring legacy of the Council of Trent (and subsequent Councils) upon both Lutheran and Catholic theology today.

How wonderful it was for us in Edmonton in June 2017, despite the ongoing impairment of communion, to be able to present an ecumenical concert of sacred works from the late 15th to early 17th centuries, entitled “With One Voice: Hymns and Choral Works of the Reformation Era.” The concert featured the Schola Cantorum of St. Joseph’s Basilica, accompanied by a prominent LCC organist, with interspersed narration and congregational hymn singing. Several hundred people (mostly LCC Lutherans and Catholics) attended the concert, and donations collected at that event were shared equally between Canadian Lutheran World Relief and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace.

The Edmonton LCC-RC dialogue group was disrupted indefinitely by Covid in 2021. The national dialogue continues, however, with LCC and RC theologians most recently discussing the topic of synodality. They have specifically explored what it means to be a Synod: walking together, as clergy and laity together. LCC participants have found it interesting to hear and witness the struggles that the Roman Catholic Church seems to be experiencing in their desire to be more attentive and inclusive of lay voices in the church. Both churches believe that the Holy Spirit guides conciliar processes to sort out authentic interpretations of Scripture and "the wisdom of the church's lived faith throughout the centuries," a preferred LCC way of articulating what Catholics call “Tradition.” However, each church entrusts the task of “sorting” the authenticity of these interpretations to different processes and authorities. For LCC Lutherans, such “sorting” the authenticity of these interpretations to different processes and authorities. For LCC Lutherans, such “sorting” could never occur without reference to Luther’s authoritative interpretations supplied within The Augsburg Confession and other Lutheran confessional texts.

A final word of encouragement in this brief presentation belongs to Pastor Michael Keith, former co-chair of the Edmonton dialogue group and member of the LCC’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations:

While it is true that for some groups dialogue may be seen as a means to seeking what we would term “altar and pulpit fellowship,” that is not the main consideration for LCC’s involvement in these [ecumenical] dialogues. (…) The dialogues allow us to build relationships and friendships with fellow Christians in other church bodies. The importance of these relationships becomes ever more apparent as the culture in which we live grows more and more hostile toward anyone who bears the name Christian. Though disagreements remain, together we can offer support and encouragement to one another in an increasingly difficult environment for Christians. There are also opportunities and possibilities for LCC to work with other church bodies in areas that do not require doctrinal agreement – areas which can and should be explored. (“Ecumenical Dialogue-Why Bother?” The Canadian Lutheran, February 27, 2023.)

Julien Hammond has been the ecumenical officer for the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton for over twenty years. He has served as a member of the Roman Catholic-United Church of Canada Dialogue, the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in Canada, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)-Roman Catholic International Consultation. He is currently a member of the Jewish-Catholic national dialogue, co-sponsored by the Canadian Rabbinic Caucus and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.