'Join us in historic episcopate'

"We'd like to see U.S. Lutherans move in the same direction as we have," said Archbishop K.G. Hammar of the Church of Sweden during an April visit to the ELCA churchwide offices. "We've moved into the Porvoo Agreement with the Anglican Church, and we're happy we have. We appreciate the differences, and we don't see them as a threat."

Hammar referred to the Porvoo document, which brought into full communion Anglicans and Lutherans in the British Isles, the Nordic and the Baltic countries. Acknowledging fear on the part of some ELCA members to approve full communion with the Episcopal Church, he spoke of the historic episcopate as "a gift we value." (See also, pages 52, 57.)

"We see no danger in it," he said. "I'm the 68th archbishop in our church, and that says nothing about me. Rather it's all about God's faithfulness made manifest in this continuity."