Timing delays full Lutheran participation in apology to Mennonites

At the eleventh assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, delegates today unanimously approved a statement asking forgiveness from Anabaptists (Mennonites) for “the harm that our forbears in the sixteenth century committed” in persecuting Anabaptists.

Since the Geneva-based LWF does not represent all Lutherans, the organization invited the International Lutheran Council (ILC) to participate in this action in late 2009, after the council had concluded its triennial meeting in Korea. The ILC comprises more than 30 Lutheran church bodies around the world, including Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC).

The ILC’s executive committee has placed the invitation to participate in the apology on its agenda for review and discussion at its October 2011 meeting. “We are not dismissing this action out of hand,” explained LCC president, Rev. Dr. Robert Bugbee who serves on the ILC committee. “We don’t meet as a council again until 2012, and the executive will give careful consideration to this invitation before presenting it to our member churches.”

The International Lutheran Council is a worldwide association of established confessional Lutheran church bodies which proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the basis of an unconditional commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired and infallible Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book of Concord as the true and faithful exposition of the Word of God.

(See: www.ilc-online.org )