What Happened To The Anglo-Lutherans?

I noted the other day that The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have been "in communion" since 2001. Exactly what this means has never been completely clear. However, a visitor noted,

I have read your post today. It reminded me of one of the things that particularly perturbed me of the heady days when the American ordinariate was just getting started.

At that time, there was a group of high-church Lutheran priests with their congregations scattered about the Northeast. They worshipped using our Book of Common Prayer and aspired to be received into the ordinariate, along with the rest of us run-of-the-mill Anglican groups.

Notwithstanding, Jeff Steenson turned them down. He directed them to make their own petition directly to the Vatican, as they were not Anglican enough for Anglicanorum coetibus. What a narrow-minded bureaucrat!

Where these men and their people have gone since then, I do not know, but Steenson certainly missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity delivered to him on a silver platter. Fiddlesticks!

I remember this as well from mid-2011. The existence of Anglo-Lutheran groups was noted on various blogs covering the Anglicanorum coetibus process, though I think these have dropped off the radar since then.

However, the Steenson Ordinariate was never consistent in its policies -- as Ms Chalmers, the disappointing then-chancellor told me in 2012, "We're making things up as we go along." Another visitor pointed out,

Fr Gonzalez y Perez of the OCSP was an ELCA clergyman who was licensed to assist at an Episcopalian parish for about two years before he was ordained as a Catholic priest. He would not have been able to go from the the ELCA directly to the Ordinariate, I assume. I know of other circumstances where Lutheran clergy have received appointments in Anglican churches, and vice versa.

However, I don't believe Fr Gonzalez y Perez is currently connected with an Ordinariate group. The US-Canadian Ordinariate does plan to ordain Glenn Baaten, a former Presbyterian pastor whose Anglican ordination was only months long, without pastoral duties, and must be considered pro forma; Fr Vaughn Treco was a former Charismatic Episcopal Church pastor, from a denomination not recognized as Anglican under the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision.

Houston has a pretty clear record of doing, or not doing, precisely as it pleases. UPDATE: But now a visitor adds,

The "Anglo-Lutherans" of which you speak were not just "high church" Lutherans; they were members of a denomination called the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church which had no connection with the ELCA. They popped up on the Anglo-Catholic, as I recall As the comments make clear, this is a typical fringe body with a bishop (or archbishop) for every ten clergy and a clergyman for every ten laypeople. The American leader, Abp. Gladfelter's one academic qualification seemed to be in dentistry Whatever opportunities Houston may have missed I do not believe that closer association with this body was one of them.

OK on that one. But I still have concerns about how Houston states and implements policy. Is the Charismatic Episcopal Church all that different from the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church? Does the recognition by Houston (and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis) give them more prestige than they would otherwise have?