The North American Lutheran Church’s (NALC) application to join the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has not been approved. In a May letter announcing the decision, the LWF’s General Secretary Martin Junge judged the NALC’s application lacking in a number of ways. He questioned the way the NALC describes the LWF to its members, subsequently calling into question the ratification process by which the church voted to join the LWF. General Secretary Junge further declared “a prevailing fundamental problem in the fact that while applying for membership into the LWF, the NALC is not prepared to be in communion with all member churches, particularly those of the North American region.” This must be rectified, he writes, “as a necessary first step . . . in view of the NALC’s desire to become a member of the LWF.”
In other words, because the NALC is not in communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC)—churches they broke away from over significant theological differences regarding the nature of Scriptural authority—the LWF is rejecting the NALC’s application. Or, perhaps more accurately, the LWF has simply refused to decide on the NALC’s application, relegating it to an ill-defined “pending” status.
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