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Quod Ubique The Common Confession of the Universal Church

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Called to Common Mission — Evangelical Lutheran and Episcopal Full Communion in North America

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Episcopal Church (TEC)

1999

On 19 August 1999 at the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Denver, Colorado, the ELCA voting members adopted by 716 votes to 317 the text of Called to Common Mission: A Lutheran Proposal for a Revision of the Concordat of Agreement — a 69.4% majority, clearing the two-thirds threshold that the 1997 predecessor Concordat had failed by six votes. On 13 July 2000 at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting in Denver, the TEC Houses of Bishops and Deputies ratified the same text, and the agreement entered into force on 1 January 2001 as a declaration of full communion between the two largest historically-Protestant denominations in the United States after the Reformed and Methodist families. The agreement is not a merger. Each church remains governed by its own synodal and conciliar structures, confesses its own confessional standards, and preserves its own liturgical tradition. What the agreement establishes is interchangeability of clergy, mutual recognition of sacraments, common witness in mission, and — the theological crux — a Lutheran commitment to receive the historic episcopate as a sign (but not a guarantee) of the apostolic tradition, and an Episcopal recognition of Lutheran ministries as genuine ministries of the Word of God and the sacraments of Christ. Internal to the ELCA the reception was uneven, producing a named Lutheran dissent tradition that would subsequently crystallise in the 2009–2010 realignment. This document records the agreement, the voices of its supporters, the voices of its dissenters within both traditions, and the continuing life of the full-communion relationship in the conditions that have obtained since.

Cross-references: Layer 5 document 07 (Porvoo Common Statement) is the British/Irish Anglican–Nordic/Baltic Lutheran parallel whose “rope of several strands” approach to apostolic succession addresses a structurally similar question on different terms; this document notes the contrast. Layer 5 document 08 (Leuenberg Agreement) is the intra-Protestant European predecessor whose methodology — the naming of historic condemnations as no longer applicable to present teaching — informs CCM’s retrieval of episcopal ministry. Layer 4 document 04 (Apostolic Succession) treats the faultline directly; CCM is an attempted bridging of it. Layer 2 documents on Baptism and on the Lord’s Supper name the sacramental common ground the agreement presupposes.

1. The Dialogue

The dialogue arc

The Lutheran–Episcopal dialogue in the United States ran for thirty-two years before Called to Common Mission was written. Lutheran–Episcopal Dialogue I (LED I) convened 1969–1972 between the Lutheran Council in the USA (LCUSA, then representing the predecessor bodies of what would become the ELCA together with the LCMS) and the Episcopal Church; it produced the Lutheran–Episcopal Dialogue Report (Princeton 1972) recommending recognition of each tradition’s ministries as genuinely Christian. LED II (1976–1980) followed, producing the Progress Report of 1981. LED III (1983–1991) produced Implications of the Gospel (1988) and the 1991 agreed text proposing “interim sharing of the Eucharist” which the Episcopal General Convention of 1982 and the LCA, ALC, and AELC conventions of 1982 adopted.

The formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in 1988 — through the merger of the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), the American Lutheran Church (ALC), and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) — created a new and larger Lutheran partner. LED IV (1991–1997) took up the question of full communion proper. Its proposed text, the Concordat of Agreement, was placed before the Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA meeting in Philadelphia in August 1997. The text required a two-thirds majority under ELCA constitutional provisions governing full-communion agreements.

The 1997 Concordat failure

On 18 August 1997 at Philadelphia the Concordat of Agreement failed the ELCA Churchwide Assembly by six votes. The final count was 684 voting in favor and 351 voting against — 66.1 percent of voters in favor, when the constitutional requirement was 66.67 percent. Same-year assembly decisions adopted full communion with three Reformed partners (the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ) through the Formula of Agreement — the structurally parallel but confessionally distinct instrument — at a higher percentage. The difference was substantial: the Concordat’s requirement that the ELCA commit to the historic episcopate in apostolic succession, while non-coercive at the parish level, was read by a substantial minority of ELCA voters as either doctrinally unwarranted by the Lutheran confessional standards or institutionally problematic for the ELCA’s polity and self-understanding.1

The CCM revision

The rejection was not the dialogue’s end. The ELCA Conference of Bishops in October 1997 committed to a revision, and the Lutheran–Episcopal Coordinating Committee — working with the ELCA’s Office of Ecumenical Affairs under Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson (1995–2001) and its Episcopal counterpart under Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold (1998–2006) — produced Called to Common Mission: A Lutheran Proposal for a Revision of the Concordat of Agreement.2 The revision retained the Concordat’s core commitment to full communion and to Lutheran reception of the historic episcopate, but it re-framed that reception in terms the drafters believed the Concordat’s critics might receive: the historic episcopate was named as a “sign” rather than “guarantee” of apostolic succession; Lutheran bishops’ participation in the succession was not presented as theologically necessary for the validity of ministry; and the Lutheran tradition’s commitment to the gospel and the sacraments as the sole marks of the church (Confessio Augustana Article VII) was preserved in the text as a load-bearing Lutheran qualification.

The revised text was submitted to the 1999 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Denver. On 19 August 1999 the voting members adopted CCM by a vote of 716 in favor and 317 opposed — 69.4%, clearing the two-thirds threshold.

The Episcopal General Convention, meeting in Denver the following year (5–14 July 2000), ratified CCM on 13 July 2000. Both houses adopted the text.

Full communion entered into force on 1 January 2001.

The Bylaw 13 “exception clause”

The 2001 ELCA Churchwide Assembly at Indianapolis (10–18 August 2001), in response to continuing internal-Lutheran concerns, adopted a constitutional provision allowing the ordination of Lutheran clergy without the participation of a bishop in the historic succession, under specific conditions of local pastoral necessity. The provision — generally referred to as the “Bylaw 13 exception” or the “pastoral exception clause” — is retained in the ELCA’s governing documents and has been invoked, in practice, by a small number of ELCA synods.3 The exception is theologically significant: it names, within ELCA constitutional law itself, that the historic episcopate as CCM receives it is not on the ELCA’s own confession a church-dividing issue — while within TEC constitutional law the historic episcopate is an ecclesial given that admits no such exception.

2. What Was Said Together

On the nature of the agreement

CCM §1 names the ecclesial reality the agreement confesses:

“We, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, on the basis of our common Lutheran and Anglican heritage, and on the basis of the extensive dialogues between our churches, do hereby declare and establish between us full communion.”4

The agreement’s articulation of “full communion” is Anglican-register: fuller than the Leuenberg “church fellowship” — which does not require shared historic episcopate — and narrower than merger. Full communion in CCM specifically entails: interchangeability of ministers, mutual recognition of sacraments, common mission, and joint expressions of episcopal ministry through the installation of bishops by the laying on of hands.

On the historic episcopate

The agreement’s theologically most debated section, §§13–18, addresses the Lutheran reception of the historic episcopate:

“We therefore commit ourselves to share an episcopal succession that is both evangelical and historic. We agree that all future ordinations of bishops in each of our churches will be carried out with the laying on of hands by at least three bishops, at least two of whom shall be bishops in the historic succession. The participation of bishops in the historic succession in the installation of bishops in the ELCA will be read as a visible sign of the ELCA’s commitment to the apostolic continuity of the whole Church, while not being made a prerequisite of the ELCA’s ministry.”5

The Lutheran qualifier — “while not being made a prerequisite of the ELCA’s ministry” — is load-bearing. The ELCA does not, on its own confession, hold that the historic episcopate is theologically necessary for the church’s existence as church (Confessio Augustana VII: the marks of the church are the pure preaching of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments). The Episcopal side receives the Lutheran qualifier without asking the ELCA to surrender it; the Episcopal side’s own reception of CCM is in terms consistent with the Preface to the Ordinal (1550, 1662) and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886/1888) which preserves “the historic episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church” as the fourth of the Quadrilateral’s four bases of unity.

On the interchangeability of ministers

CCM §§7–9 establish the interchangeability-of-clergy commitment:

“We agree that the clergy of the ELCA, both those ordained before and those ordained after the implementation of this agreement, shall be eligible to preside at the celebration of the Eucharist in the Episcopal Church, and that the clergy of the Episcopal Church shall be eligible to preside at the celebration of the Eucharist in the ELCA. Ordinations in each of our churches shall be mutually recognised.”

The commitment is genuine and practised; in subsequent decades ELCA and Episcopal clergy have served in each other’s parishes, jointly officiated at weddings and funerals, and participated in each other’s episcopal installations. The commitment does not extend to the Roman Catholic Church or to the Orthodox Churches — CCM is a bilateral, not a multilateral.

On common mission and shared witness

CCM §§20–25 articulate the agreement’s commitments to common mission, particularly in theological education, social witness, and the combined voice of the two churches on questions of the public square. These commitments are less theologically contested but are the agreement’s principal working realities on the ground.

3. Reception by Tradition Witnesses

3a. From within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Michael Root, at the time Director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research at the Lutheran World Federation (Strasbourg) and subsequently a participant in the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue that produced the JDDJ, was among the principal theological advocates of CCM. Root’s work on the historic episcopate within Lutheran confessional theology — arguing that the episcopate as sign of the church’s apostolic continuity is compatible with the Confessio Augustana VII’s identification of the marks of the church as preaching and sacraments — provided the theological framework the CCM text adopted.6 Root’s 2005 reception of Catholicism and his 2010 move to Catholic University represent a trajectory distinct from CCM’s Lutheran reception but indicative of the theological direction CCM was one step along.

Walter Sundberg, Professor of Church History at Luther Seminary (St. Paul), and other Midwestern Lutheran theologians were among CCM’s academic-Lutheran supporters, framing the agreement as a necessary recovery of ministerial order after the post-Reformation Protestant tendency toward congregational autonomy.

The ELCA bishops as a body supported both the 1997 Concordat and the 1999 CCM; the Conference of Bishops’ statements before both assemblies were largely in favor. Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson (served 1995–2001) and his successor Mark S. Hanson (2001–2013) were personally committed advocates.

3b. From within the Episcopal Church

Frank T. Griswold, Presiding Bishop (1998–2006), was CCM’s principal Episcopal advocate, framing the agreement as an extension of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral’s ecumenical method into the North American context. His 2001–2006 tenure saw implementation of CCM across the ELCA’s and TEC’s institutional infrastructure, including the drafting of joint procedural documents on clergy exchange and joint episcopal installations.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop (2006–2015), continued implementation of CCM during a period of ecclesial strain within TEC (following the 2003 consecration of V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and the subsequent 2008 GAFCON movement, both of which affected TEC’s international Anglican standing without directly affecting CCM).

The Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations (SCEIR) of TEC has maintained the ecumenical working relationship with the ELCA across the successive presiding bishoprics, including Michael Curry (2015–2024) and Sean Rowe (from 2024).

3c. From within confessional Lutheranism outside the ELCA

The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) did not receive CCM and are not signatories. The LCMS theological objection is articulated in the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) materials on CCM:

“The agreement as framed requires a Lutheran reception of the historic episcopate as a normative feature of ecclesial order. The Lutheran Confessions, particularly the Confessio Augustana Articles VII, XIV, and XXVIII, and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, articulate the ministry of the Word and sacraments as the mark of the Church and treat episcopal order as iure humano — of human institution — rather than as iure divino. CCM’s requirement of bishops in the historic succession as participants in ELCA ordinations moves the Lutheran tradition toward a position the Lutheran confessional writings do not warrant.”7

The WELS and ELS hold substantially parallel positions.

3d. The Lutheran dissent within the ELCA itself

The ELCA’s 716-to-317 adoption of CCM preserved a substantial minority — over 30% of voting members — in opposition. The theological voice of the Lutheran dissent within the ELCA has been sustained across subsequent decades through several named instruments:

Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) was founded in 2005 as a confessional-Lutheran renewal movement within the ELCA addressing both CCM-related ecclesiology concerns and the concurrent sexuality-and-theology conversations. Its early leadership included James Arne Nestingen (Professor of Church History at Luther Seminary, retired; principal theological voice of the confessional-Lutheran dissent in the 1980s–2000s), Gerald L. Kieschnick (LCMS President 2001–2010, as observer), and other figures named across the 2005–2009 CORE meetings.

The North American Lutheran Church (NALC) was formed on 27 August 2010 at Grove City, Ohio, by ELCA congregations and pastors leaving the ELCA in response to the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly decisions on clergy in same-gender relationships and the Ministry Policies revisions. The NALC’s confessional basis retains the Lutheran Confessions including the Confessio Augustana in its traditional reading; its ecclesiology does not include the CCM relationship with TEC, and the NALC does not claim the historic episcopate in the sense CCM confesses it. The NALC’s departure was driven principally by the 2009 sexuality decisions, but the ecclesiological concerns about CCM were part of the longer theological trajectory that produced the willingness to leave.

Timothy J. Wengert, Professor Emeritus of Reformation History at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (now United Lutheran Seminary), while remaining within the ELCA, has in his subsequent work articulated a confessional-Lutheran critique of CCM’s reception of the historic episcopate, reading the Confessio Augustana’s episcopal framework as non-coercive and reading CCM’s requirement as inconsistent with that framework.8

3e. From within the Reformed and broader Protestant traditions

The Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ — all parties to the 1997 Formula of Agreement full communion with the ELCA — have maintained full communion with the ELCA alongside the subsequent CCM full communion with TEC. The ELCA therefore stands in full communion with three Reformed denominations and one Anglican denomination simultaneously, a structural position the Formula of Agreement and CCM together make possible.

The Moravian Church in America entered full communion with the ELCA in 1999 (adopted 18 August 1999 at the same Churchwide Assembly that adopted CCM, earlier in the same session) through the Following Our Shepherd to Full Communion agreement.9

The United Methodist Church approved a bilateral Interim Sharing of the Eucharist agreement with the ELCA in 2005 and moved subsequently toward full communion through the Confessing Our Faith Together (2009) / A Bond of Life and Witness trajectory, with full communion implemented 2009.

3f. From the broader Anglican communion

The Anglican churches of the Porvoo Communion (see Layer 5 document 07) are in full communion with the Episcopal Church and hence, through CCM, with the ELCA — though the ELCA is not itself a Porvoo signatory. This creates an indirect communion web: Porvoo-ELCA full communion is real through TEC, without ELCA having directly received the Porvoo text. The 2002 Church of England General Synod and subsequent Lambeth Conferences have welcomed CCM as a parallel instrument to Porvoo without the two agreements’ texts being formally synchronised.

4. Who Declined and Why

The LCMS, WELS, ELS, and SELK

As noted in §3c, the confessional Lutheran bodies outside the ELCA have declined to receive CCM. The consistent theological ground is the Lutheran confessional reading of episcopal order as iure humano rather than iure divino, and therefore as not the proper subject of ecumenical agreements that would commit a Lutheran church to episcopal succession as a constitutive feature.

Internal ELCA dissent: the theological core

The 317 voting members of the 1999 Churchwide Assembly who voted against CCM, and the subsequent Lutheran CORE / NALC trajectory they helped produce, articulated a theological position distinct from the LCMS/WELS/ELS rejection — namely, that the ELCA as a Lutheran church cannot receive the historic episcopate as CCM confesses it without modifying its own confessional identity, not because the episcopate as such is illegitimate but because the particular binding of the ELCA to the historic succession (however qualified) amounts to a form of Anglicanisation of Lutheran ecclesial order.10

The ELCA’s 2001 Bylaw 13 exception clause is a constitutional acknowledgment of this tension: the ELCA retains CCM as its rule but recognises, in its own constitutional law, that Lutheran ministers may be ordained without the historic-episcopal participation in specific pastoral cases — a provision that would be unthinkable under TEC canons.

The Roman Catholic side

The Roman Catholic Church is not party to CCM and has not directly engaged the agreement as its own ecumenical business. The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has received CCM as a development within the broader Lutheran–Anglican ecumenical landscape; the USCCB has engaged CCM indirectly through its own parallel Lutheran-Catholic and Anglican-Catholic bilaterals in the United States.

Voices within TEC uneasy about CCM’s Lutheran reception

The Anglo-Catholic tradition within TEC — particularly the Society of the Holy Cross, Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA), and the theological voices associated with the Affirmation of St Louis (1977) — have received CCM cautiously, concerned that the Lutheran qualifier on the historic episcopate (that it is a sign but not a guarantee) opens a door the Catholic-Anglican tradition considers theologically settled.

5. What This Agreement Did Not Settle

The ecclesiological status of Lutheran ministries outside the ELCA

CCM establishes the ELCA’s ministry as fully interchangeable with TEC’s. It does not address — and was not intended to address — the theological status of LCMS, WELS, or ELS ministries. The confessional Lutheran ministries outside the ELCA continue without the full-communion status CCM extends to the ELCA.

The Moravian-ELCA-TEC triangle

The Moravian full communion with the ELCA (1999) has not produced a parallel Moravian–TEC full communion. The three-body communion web is therefore asymmetrical: ELCA is in full communion with Moravians and with TEC, but Moravians and TEC are not in direct full communion.

The Reformed-ELCA-TEC triangle

The same asymmetry obtains for the Reformed full communion through the Formula of Agreement. The PC(USA) / RCA / UCC are in full communion with the ELCA but not with TEC directly.

The Pan-Lutheran question

The 2010 NALC formation produced a Lutheran body in North America not in CCM with TEC. Whether this represents a durable bifurcation of North American Lutheranism (alongside the pre-existing LCMS/WELS/ELS bifurcation) or a transitional arrangement is a question the post-2010 decades have not yet settled.

The 2009 ELCA sexuality decisions’ effect on CCM

The ELCA Churchwide Assembly of August 2009 adopted Ministry Policies allowing the rostering of clergy in committed same-gender relationships. The NALC formed the following year. CCM itself was not directly addressed by the 2009 decisions, and TEC had already proceeded on its own trajectory since 2003. The full-communion relationship survived the 2009 decisions unaltered, but the internal-Lutheran realignment produced by those decisions removed from the ELCA some of the congregations and clergy who had most vigorously opposed CCM in 1999.

6. The Agreement’s Present Phase

The Lutheran-Episcopal Coordinating Committee

The Lutheran-Episcopal Coordinating Committee (LECC), established under CCM §§30–33, continues as the standing ecumenical instrument for the two churches. The LECC meets regularly and has produced joint studies on Christian witness in public life, on immigration, on theological education, and on inter-church cooperation. Presiding bishop-level meetings continue on roughly annual schedules.

Clergy interchangeability in practice

Interchangeability of clergy is practised routinely, though not at high volumes given the structural distinctness of the two churches’ governance. A number of ELCA clergy have served in TEC parishes and vice versa; joint episcopal installations and consecrations have occurred across the first two decades of implementation.

Recent developments

2019–2024 has seen no substantive renegotiation of CCM’s text; the relationship has proceeded within the framework the 1999–2000 adoption established. The COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022) tested the two churches’ joint commitments on remote ministry and sacramental practice in pastoral ways that had not been anticipated. The 2024 election of Sean Rowe as Presiding Bishop of TEC and the continuing ELCA leadership of Elizabeth Eaton (elected Presiding Bishop 2013, re-elected 2019 and serving through current term) have maintained the working relationship without substantive revision.

The continuing internal-Lutheran reception question

Within the ELCA, the conversation initiated in 1999 about what Lutheran reception of CCM specifically entails remains alive. Bylaw 13 exceptions are invoked occasionally; the ELCA bishops have generally proceeded within the CCM framework. The North American Lutheran Church (NALC) has continued as the principal home of the departing confessional-Lutheran tradition; its 2010 founding document and subsequent synodical positions specifically reject the CCM reception of the historic episcopate.

The broader ecumenical landscape

CCM stands within a web of North American full-communion relationships — the ELCA’s four full-communion partners (TEC, Moravians, Reformed-Formula of Agreement partners, UMC) — and the TEC’s own multilateral Anglican Communion membership with its own stresses since 2003. Whether CCM will produce further structural convergence (shared seminary, unified episcopal processes) or will remain at its current level of practical cooperation without structural integration is a question the next generation of North American ecumenical work will answer.

7. For Further Study

Primary texts

  • Called to Common Mission: A Lutheran Proposal for a Revision of the Concordat of Agreement (1999; adopted by ELCA 19 August 1999 Denver; ratified by TEC 13 July 2000 Denver)
  • Concordat of Agreement: Between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (1997; failed ELCA Churchwide Assembly Philadelphia 18 August 1997)
  • Implications of the Gospel (Lutheran–Episcopal Dialogue III, 1988)
  • Lutheran–Episcopal Dialogue: Report and Recommendations of Series I (1972)
  • Following Our Shepherd to Full Communion (Moravian-ELCA Agreement, 1999)
  • A Formula of Agreement (ELCA-Presbyterian/Reformed/UCC, 1997)
  • Confessing Our Faith Together / A Bond of Life and Witness (ELCA-UMC full communion, 2009)

Scholarly treatments

  • William G. Rusch, ed., A Commentary on “Called to Common Mission” (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003) — the principal drafter-compiled commentary
  • Michael Root, The Ecumenical Role of the Historic Episcopate: A Lutheran Study (Lutheran World Federation, 1996, 2nd ed. 2002) — Root’s theological framework for Lutheran reception
  • Jerald C. Brauer, The Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue Fifty Years On (various journal essays, Lutheran Quarterly and Anglican Theological Review, 2020–2022 retrospectives)
  • Timothy J. Wengert, “CCM after Twenty Years: A Confessional-Lutheran Perspective,” in Lutheran Quarterly (2019) [*]
  • James Arne Nestingen, Martin Luther: His Life and Teachings (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999) — contextual confessional-Lutheran theology; Nestingen’s CCM-period essays appear across Pro Ecclesia, Concordia Theological Quarterly, and Lutheran Forum

The confessional Lutheran critique

  • LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations, Issues Related to Called to Common Mission (CTCR, 2000)
  • A Formula of Agreement Revisited: A Confessional Lutheran Response (collected essays, Logia and Concordia Theological Quarterly, 2000–2005)
  • WELS Commission on Inter-Church Relations materials on CCM (WELS, various)

Anglican reflections

  • Paul F. M. Zahl, “The Episcopal Response to CCM,” Anglican Theological Review (2001)
  • The Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations (SCEIR) of TEC, Commentary on “Called to Common Mission” (2002)
  • Mark Chapman, Anglican Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012) — on Anglican ecclesial-ecumenical method of which CCM is one instance

The NALC formation and its background

  • Lutheran CORE / NALC founding documents (2005, 2010)
  • NALC, Confession of Faith and Bylaws (2010)
  • NALC, A Statement of Theological Identity (various editions)

Notes

Footnotes

  1. The 1997 Concordat of Agreement failed the ELCA Churchwide Assembly at Philadelphia on 18 August 1997 by 684 votes in favor and 351 opposed — 66.1% when 66.67% was required for a two-thirds majority. The failure was the margin of six votes; the agreement did not “lose” but fell short of the constitutional threshold by a very narrow margin. ↩

  2. The ELCA Office of Ecumenical Affairs under Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson carried the drafting of the revision; the TEC Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations under Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold was the TEC counterpart. The Lutheran-Episcopal Coordinating Committee (LECC) has been the subsequent standing joint instrument. ↩

  3. The ELCA Bylaw 13 “exception clause,” more formally the provision governing the ordination of ministers of Word and Sacrament without the participation of a bishop in the historic succession under specific pastoral-necessity conditions, was adopted at the 2001 Churchwide Assembly at Indianapolis. The provision is constitutional law of the ELCA and is part of the ELCA’s self-understanding of the CCM reception. [∗] ↩

  4. Called to Common Mission, §1 and §30 on the declaration of full communion. The text as adopted 19 August 1999 (ELCA) and 13 July 2000 (TEC) is available through both churches’ ecumenical offices and in the Called to Common Mission commentary volume (Rusch, ed., 2003). ↩

  5. CCM §§13–18, drawn together. The full theological apparatus of the Lutheran reception of the historic episcopate as “sign but not guarantee” is developed across these sections with citations to the Lutheran Confessions and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. ↩

  6. Michael Root, The Ecumenical Role of the Historic Episcopate: A Lutheran Study (Strasbourg / Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1996; 2nd ed. 2002). Root’s subsequent reception of Catholicism and 2010 move to the Pontifical Academy of Theology / Catholic University represents his own theological trajectory rather than any institutional ELCA position. ↩

  7. The LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations position on CCM is articulated in Issues Related to “Called to Common Mission” (St. Louis: LCMS CTCR, 2000) and in related essays. The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537) in the Book of Concord is the specifically confessional-Lutheran document on episcopal authority that the CTCR reading treats as the foundational confessional teaching. ↩

  8. Timothy J. Wengert’s subsequent work on the Confessio Augustana and the episcopal question has been developed across his essays in Lutheran Quarterly and Pro Ecclesia; his full book-length treatment of the Augsburg Confession appeared in 2020. [∗] ↩

  9. The Moravian full communion with the ELCA, adopted through Following Our Shepherd to Full Communion on 18 August 1999 at the Denver Churchwide Assembly, preceded the CCM adoption at the same assembly by one day. The two full communions are distinct instruments but share the same ELCA ecumenical moment. ↩

  10. The theological voice of the ELCA-internal dissent is articulated across the Lutheran CORE founding documents (2005) and in the theological essays of its principal figures including James Arne Nestingen. A widely-circulated 2001 statement of Lutheran theologians raising CCM-related concerns — sometimes referenced in the secondary literature — is identified by various titles in different sources; the definitive statement and its signatories’ list are preserved in Lutheran CORE archival materials. [∗] ↩