Whose visible unity?

I have been an ecumenical enthusiast for four decades and don't intend to stop now. But for 10 years I have sat in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, reading text after ecumenical text and growing more and more exasperated at the power games played in the name of Christian unity.

Take, for example, the recent report of the Anglican-Lutheran international working group, Growth in Communion (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 2003).

In 1888, the Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops stated what has since become known as the Lambeth (or Chicago-Lambeth) quadrilateral: four points that in the Anglican view are indispensable for Christian unity. These include the "historic episcopate": bishops in apostolic succession.

Anglicans since then have found many and various ways of both stating and defending this quadrilateral, some more subtle than others, but they have never departed from it. The 1998 Lambeth conference recognized it as a statement of Anglican unity and identity and reaffirmed it as a basis on which Anglicans seek the full, visible unity of the church.

So far, no surprises.

What is surprising is the degree to which the Anglican view is written into the Niagara report: the 1987 report of the Anglican-Lutheran international continuation committee (Growth in Agreement II, pp.11ff).

Niagara sets out four steps towards full communion between Anglican and Lutheran churches. The first step is for churches to recognize each other as "true churches of the gospel". Then follow three further steps: a) the creation of provisional structures to express the degree of unity already achieved, b) changes with respect to oversight in the churches and full recognition of ministries, and c) public declaration of full communion. The end result is Lutheran churches that have fully embraced the historic episcopate.

What is even more surprising is the way in which Growth in Communion adopts the Niagara roadmap, without discussion, as the yardstick by which to measure Anglican-Lutheran developments around the world.

This earns the French Lutheran and Reformed participants in the Reuilly discussions a slap on the wrist. Consistent with their own ecclesiology, they say that for them "mutual recognition already expresses and signifies the unity of the church. Mutual recognition for them entails full communion, which includes full interchangeability of ministries" (Reuilly 1997 §27; emphasis in Growth in Communion).

The international working group detects a "possible discrepancy" between this and Reuilly §22, where the dialogue partners say that they "are committed to strive for the "full visible unity' of the body of Christ on earth".

In the Lutheran and Reformed understanding, there is no inconsistency.

In Anglican understanding, however, there is a radical discrepancy. Reuilly §27 also says, "Anglicans... make a distinction between the recognition (acknowledgement) of the church of Christ in another tradition, including the authentic word, sacraments and ministries of the other churches, and a further stage - the formation of a reconciled, common ministry in the historic episcopal succession, together with the establishment of forms of collegial and conciliar oversight. Anglicans speak of this further stage as "the reconciliation of churches and ministries'."

It is, of course, reconciliation on Anglican terms.

The real ecumenical discrepancy is that while we are all prepared to say together that we affirm the goal of visible unity, we understand this goal in different and often diametrically opposed ways.

What is, however, most surprising about this report, which concedes so much to the Anglican position, is that it is published unilaterally - not by the Anglicans, but by the Lutheran World Federation.