Marching Toward Merger

The Protestant churches of the U.S. once seemed as fragmented as ancient Greece's city-states--but that was before the Ecumenical Era. Within the past month, a number of denominations have moved significantly closer to corporate union:

>In Chicago, Lutheran church leaders drew up a draft constitution for a new cooperative service agency to replace the present National Lutheran Council. Founded in 1918, the council now serves the Lutheran Church in America (3,100,000 members) and the American Lutheran Church (2,300,000). Its proposed successor would bring in two conservative bodies that have long been wary of cooperating: the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (2,500,000) and the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (20,000). At Missouri's insistence, the new agency will have a strong division for theological studies, which could help resolve some of the issues that now stand in the way of Lutheran intercommunion and pulpit fellowship. > Even closer to union are the 928,000-member Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) and the Reformed Church in America (232,000). A joint study committee has found no major obstacle to merger of these two Calvinist bodies, which already share a common church school curriculum and operate joint missions abroad. Observers believe that a formal announcement of merger may be made in time to celebrate the 400th anniversary of John Calvin's death, May 27. > At Washington's Wesley Theological Seminary, representatives of the African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and Christian Methodist Episcopal churches held a historic first consultation on the possibility of union. Leaders discovered no doctrinal disputes that would prevent the eventual creation of one Negro Methodist body with a combined membership of approximately 2,500,000.

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