Delegates to the United Methodist General Conference approved full communion with The Episcopal Church on April 30. The agreement needs the approval of the Episcopalians before going into effect.

During the conference’s “Ecumenical Day,” the morning plenary session was halted briefly to acknowledge the vote.

“We want to lift up and recognize this moment, which is an incredibly significant moment, especially on this day as we celebrate our ecumenical relations,” said the Rev. Gary Graves, secretary of the General Conference.

“As you adopted that resolution,” he noted, “you adopted the full communion relationship with The Episcopal Church in the United States, that has been worked on for many years.”
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The timeline for a full communion partnership between The Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church remains on hold as the latter has postponed its quadrennial General Conference until 2024, when it will consider a vote to split the 12.9 million-member denomination over disagreements on the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ members.
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During their meeting on July 30, 2020 via video conference, the members of The Episcopal Church-United Methodist Dialogue Committee agreed that the churches postpone taking action on the full communion proposal until their next General Convention/General Conference after 2021:

“Our churches and people are responding to unprecedented challenges in their local communities, conferences/dioceses, and at the denominational level. The United Methodist General Conference scheduled for May of 2020 has been postponed until Aug. 29-Sept. 7, of 2021. The Episcopal Church as well, is rethinking the format, timing, and range of issues that might be taken up by the next General Convention.
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Meeting at First Presbyterian Church in San Diego Feb. 17-19, representatives of the Episcopal-Presbyterian Bilateral Dialogue met and considered how the two ecclesial traditions could partner with each other considering the context of the 21st-century church.
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The Diocese of Southern Virginia announced Jan. 17 that it would change the location of its Feb. 1 consecration of Bishop-elect Susan Haynes from a Roman Catholic church in Williamsburg in response to backlash from some Roman Catholics who said they were disturbed by the ordination of a woman bishop.
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General Synod passed a resolution July 15 to recognize full communion among the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC), the U.S.-based Episcopal Church (TEC), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Dean Peter Wall, co-chair of the Joint Anglican Lutheran Commission, introduced the resolution by reading excerpts from the Memorandum of Mutual Recognition of Relations of Full Communion, which was drafted at a meeting of the Joint Anglican Lutheran Commission and the Lutheran Episcopal Coordinating Committee in September 2018.
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National Lutheran Bishop Susan Johnson and Anglican Primate Fred Hiltz will complete their ministry together as leaders in partnership of their respective churches this year. Hiltz announced last year that he would be stepping down at the end of General Synod this July and that a new primate would be elected to succeed him.

Hiltz and Johnson shared a common outlook during the 12 years they have worked together. In the same week in 2007, they were both elected head of their church at parallel assemblies held in Winnipeg. Since this coincidental beginning, they have both passionately modelled what each espouses: strong and growing Anglican-Lutheran relations.
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The Episcopal Church-United Methodist Dialogue Committee met in Washington, D.C., to continue its work on establishing a full communion relationship between the two denominations.

The committee has adopted a draft proposal for full communion titled A Gift to the World: Co-Laborers for the Healing of Brokenness (The Episcopal Church and The United Methodist Church, A Proposal for Full Communion) and is seeking feedback from laity, clergy and bishops in both denominations before an official resolution could be presented to respective legislative bodies.
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The Episcopal Church-United Methodist Dialogue met in Washington, D.C. at the United Methodist Building on October 2-4, 2017. Episcopalians present were the Right Reverend C. Franklin Brookhart (co-chair); the Reverend Dr. Thomas Ferguson; Dr. Deirdre Good; Mr. Richard J. Mammana, Jr. (staff); the Reverend Mariclair Partee Carlsen; the Right Reverend David Rice; and the Reverend Margaret Rose (staff). United Methodists present were the Reverend Patricia Farris; the Reverend Dr. James Howell; the Reverend Dr. Pamela Lightsey; Bishop Gregory Palmer (co-chair); the Reverend Dr. Kyle Tau (staff); Bishop B. Michael Watson; and the Reverend Dr. Robert Williams. The Reverend Dr. Jonathan Linman was an invited observer from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
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Un groupe d’épiscopaliens et de méthodistes a rendu publique sa proposition visant à une pleine communion entre les deux confessions.

La mise en œuvre intégrale de la proposition prendra au moins trois ans. La Convention générale de l’Église épiscopale et la Conférence générale de l’Église méthodiste unie doivent approuver l’accord qui est l’aboutissement de 15 années d’exploration et de plus de 50 ans de dialogue officiel entre les deux églises. La prochaine Convention générale de l’Église épiscopale se tiendra en juillet 2018 à Austin (État du Texas). La Conférence générale de l’Église méthodiste aura lieu en 2020.
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A group of Episcopalians and Methodists has released its proposal for full communion between the two denominations.

Full implementation of the proposal will take at least three years. The Episcopal Church General Convention and the United Methodist Church General Conference must approve the agreement, which culminates 15 years of exploration and more than 50 years of formal dialogue between the two churches. General Convention next meets in July 2018 in Austin, Texas. The General Conference’s next meeting is in 2020.
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he Episcopal Church–United Methodist Dialogue group have prepared A Gift to the World: Co-Laborers for the Healing of Brokenness; The Episcopal Church and The United Methodist Church – A Proposal for Full Communion, the result of dialogue for a formal full-communion relationship.

In a recent letter, Bishop Frank Brookhart of Montana, Episcopal Church co-chair of the committee, with Bishop Gregory V. Palmer, the United Methodist Church, Ohio West Episcopal Area, offered, “The relationships formed over these years of dialogue, and the recognition that there are presently no theological impediments to unity, paved the way for this current draft proposal.”
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Before I say a word about our gathering here at the Primates Meeting, I just want to say a word of thank you to you for all of your prayers: your prayers for this meeting, your prayers for me personally, both here and in my earlier sickness. We are well, and God is God, and I thank you. Let me say a word about the meeting. This is not the outcome we expected, and while we are disappointed, it’s important to remember that the Anglican Communion is really not a matter of structure and organization. The Anglican Communion is a network of relationships that have been built on mission partnerships; relationships that are grounded in a common faith; relationships in companion diocese relationships; relationships with parish to parish across the world; relationships that are profoundly committed to serving and following the way of Jesus of Nazareth by helping the poorest of the poor, and helping this world to be a place where no child goes to bed hungry ever. That’s what the Anglican Communion is, and that Communion continues and moves forward.
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A majority of Anglican primates on January 14 asked that the Episcopal Church, for a period of three years, “no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision-making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.”

Expressing their unanimous desire to walk together, the primates said that their call comes in response to the decision by the Episcopal Church’s General Convention last June to change canonical language that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman (Resolution A036) and authorize two new marriage rites with language allowing them to be used by same-sex or opposite-sex couples (Resolution A054).
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The heads of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have agreed to co-ordinate their responses to “events that transcend” their borders, such as natural disasters.

They could, for instance, issue a joint pastoral letter in response to a natural calamity and invite their members to contribute to relief and recovery efforts through one of their four relief agencies, said Archdeacon Bruce Myers, General Synod’s co-ordinator for ecumenical and interfaith relations. Myers served as staff support at the meeting.

Leaders of the four churches reached this agreement when they met for a day and a half of informal talks last December in Winnipeg. Since 2010, the heads of these four churches have met for informal talks, “becoming colloquially known as the ‘Four-Way,’ ” said Myers.

The Anglican Church of Canada’s primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, ELCIC Bishop Susan Johnson and Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori were joined in the meeting by the new presiding bishop of the ELCA, Elizabeth Eaton.
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June 29, 2013 – Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

On this day when we commemorate the two “pillars of the church”—the apostles Peter and Paul—the heads of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada are issuing “A Word to the Churches.”

This joint declaration comes just a few days before the four North American church leaders will gather with hundreds of other Anglicans and Lutherans at the first Joint Assembly of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, an example of how our churches are drawing closer together in full communion.
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U.S. Anglican-Roman Catholic Theological Commission plans statement on Approaches to Moral Issues

The Anglican-Roman Catholic Theological Consultation in the United States held its sixty-eighth meeting in Alexandria, Louisiana, on September 9 and 10. This session was largely devoted to the examination of a draft outline of a potential agreed statement on the topic of the current round of dialogue, “Ecclesiology and Moral Discernment: Common Ground and Divergences.” This topic explores the fact that while the two churches share the same convictions on a wide range of ethical questions, there are serious differences regarding certain issues in personal morality, especially those pertaining to human sexuality. In earlier meetings of the Commission, members discussed Catholic and Anglican positions on contraception, debt relief, immigration, same-sex unions and health care.
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Anglican leader’s concern for unity reflects Vatican concerns

Vatican concerns about how some recent decisions of the U.S. Episcopal Church will impact the search for full Anglican-Roman Catholic unity are echoed in a reflection by Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican Communion.

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A response of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church to an expressed need of the Church Editor’s note: This is a pastoral letter responding to the need for alternative pastoral oversight in some dioceses of the Episcopal Church USA. Four important points should be noted: 1) the Bishops distinguish between pastoral oversight and
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I returned home from our meeting at Lambeth grateful for the spirit of candor in which we shared our thoughts and feelings. I thank God for the opportunity to come together in Christ’s name and for the strong bonds and mutual affection that exist between us. I pray that our common commitment to mission and God’s ongoing work of reconciliation will continue to bind us together in Christ in the days and years ahead. I remind myself that the church is not our possession but the risen body of Christ of which each one of us is a limb and member in virtue of our baptism.

As I tried to make plain in the course of our meeting, we in the Episcopal Church have been dealing openly with the place of homosexual persons in the life of our church for at least thirty years. Though the question still remains unresolved, the presence among us of deeply faithful men and women whose lives reveal the fruit of the Spirit, and whose primary affections are ordered to persons of the same sex, has brought us to this difficult, and very public, moment. I recognize that while many in our church give thanks for where we have come, many others are deeply pained and distressed. I further recognize how our decisions have also affected you and I hope you know how profoundly I regret the pain our Province’s action has caused many of you.
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he Bishop and Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire met today in response to the London meeting of the Primates from the 38 autonomous Provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion for prayer, bible study and discussion. We acknowledge and affirm the wisdom of the Primates of the Anglican Communion in their statement. We echo their affirmation that “what we hold in common is much greater than that which divides us in proclaiming Good News to the world.”

We commend their resolve to follow the 1998 Lambeth resolution calling for the Church to “listen to the experience of homosexual persons, and … to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.”
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At the final press conference at the end of the Primates’ Meeting yesterday, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, USA, gave the following statement:

“I’d certainly like to underscore the Archbishop’s point about it being a difficult but truthful meeting. I think one thing that became very clear early on is that we seek to embody and proclaim the Gospel in very different contexts and what may, in fact, be good news to a majority in one province may, in fact, be bad news somewhere else in the world. And here I think particularly of my own province, the United States in which a majority, though not the whole province, has wrestled with the whole question of homosexuality for at least the last 30 years and come to a sense that men and women whose affections are ordered to members of the same sex are faithful members of the church; are people with whom we share ministry; are people we in many instances ordain, which of course has led to the confirmation of the election of the Bishop Elect of New Hampshire, which has caused such a division and certainly been one of the major focuses of our meeting here. But I do think what binds us together is deeper than some of the things that divide us and certainly the whole question of human sexuality; more particularly homosexuality; is far from settled and as we continue to struggle together I think it’s also important, as the Archbishop said, that we keep our focus on the mission we share because there is so much in the world that cries out for our attention beyond issues of human sexuality.
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PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) — “Unity in Christ has never been uniformity. Divisions in the church have injured us, but diversity has been enriching,” the Rev. Michael Rogness, professor of homiletics at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., told voting members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as they met in assembly here Aug. 16. He opened
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by James Solheim, director of news and information for the Episcopal Church. DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (ELCA) — As the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America move toward a historic decision in 1997 on full communion, they invited ecumenical partners to discuss the implications for all churches seeking unity. The Concordat of Agreement
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