The Episcopal Cafe blog.
Full communion among Protestant denominations means that churches in full communion recognize in one another the essentials of the Christian faith. It may also involve free interchangeability of membership by individual members of each denomination and an interchangeability of the ordained ministry between the churches. The primary symbols of their full communion is recognition of the baptism of the other denomination and sharing the Eucharist.
The Northern & Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church in North America and the Presbyterian Church USA have agreed to enter full communion with one another. The two provinces of the Moravian Church, which have congregations in 13 US states and 2 Canadian provinces, are also in full communion with the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Presbyterian Church USA is also in full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ and the Reformed Church in America.
The two churches will be celebrating their full communion agreement with a national service of worship on 5 JUN 2016. The service will be held at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Madison WI. National leaders from both denominations will participate in the service that will include sharing the eucharist.
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“churches in full communion recognize in one another the essentials of the Christian faith”. Only one problem with this,,,,, The PCUSA have no essentials of the faith!
I honestly think somewhere down the road there will a merger of some if not all the churches listed here, a bunch of dying denominations curling up together to keep each other warm until the end.
Under what form of church government? Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Congregational? Do you honestly think that the Episcopalians and PC(USA) Presbyterians would willingly forgo their Trust Clauses or the UCC Congregationalists, the ELCA Lutherans, or the American Baptists adopt one?
And for all the talk of how similar the dying Mainline congregations are to one another, there are still deep differences between them, many of which go back to the American Colonial period, and others of which go back to the Protestant Reformation.
You might see some attempts at merger, such as between the PC(USA) and the Reformed Church in America, which have similar histories and nearly identical forms of government (the main difference being that Presbyterians were founded by colonists from England and Scotland, whereas the RCA was originally founded by colonists from the Netherlands), or between the Episcopal Church and the liberal splinter from the UMC (the UMC being descended from the Methodist Episcopal Church, which split from the Church of England in 1784). However, do not look for any merger between the PC(USA) and any denomination with an Episcopal or Congregationalist form of government any time soon.
In all likelihood, the PC(USA) will shrivel down to a core constituency of about half a million members or so, having alienated all its Evangelical constituency, and will continue to slowly shrink, as the numbers of infant and believer’s baptisms will be unable to keep pace with the number of funerals.
Unless, of course, the Lord grants the PC(USA) mercy and either truly reforms it according to His holy, inerrant Word or else hastens its ignominious demise.
The model of such a merger is the United Reformed Churh in the UK. It was a merger of the Congregationalists and the English Presbytrian churh. Polity is a hybridization of congregational leadership at the local level and above that level regions and synods. Now no one in that church thinks much about the initial compromises. The URC has gone from over 300,000 members at the union to less than 85,000 today. Another dying liberal denomination. Of course the 300,000 plus members at merger were but a shadow of what were once two leading denominations in the UK. Now they have lots of empty churches for sale. Now they are hybridizing even more to accomodate Methodits……..
In the US denominatioal specifics mean less and less to the leadership of the various denominations that would negotiate the mergers. But in the end the result will be like the United Reform Church in th UK, A merger of the dead and dying.