The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the United Methodist Church (UMC) has moved a step closer to full communion. During the ELCA’s assembly held 8-14 August, delegates voted 877 to 60 to approve an “interim Eucharistic sharing” agreement with the United Methodists, who approved the pact in April last year.

The agreement makes the way for full communion and completes 30 years of ecumenical dialogue between the denominations. However, there has been no set timetable for that move.

According to the United Methodist News Service, Bishop William Oden, the ecumenical officer of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, who had attended the Lutheran assembly, labelled the vote as “an historic moment” for both denominations. “We have invited each other into each other’s house,” he said.

An interim “testing” period will allow the two denominations to engage in joint celebrations of the Eucharist. The two churches could share clergy if the agreement over full communion is achieved eventually. This would help both churches where parishes have trouble keeping full-time staff.

In recent years, full communion agreements have become more common in U.S “mainline Protestant” denominations. For example, the ELCA already has such agreements with the Episcopal Church, the Moravian Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ.

The ELCA is the largest Lutheran denomination with 4.9 million members in the United States and the UMC is the largest mainline denomination with 8.2 million members.

Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the ELCA Assembly, who is also president of the Geneva-based Lutheran World Federation, said, “Christianity is in the midst of a global identity crisis, because we have not addressed ecumenically the questions of authority and interpretation of scripture.”