Danish church decides to join Porvoo ... in time for the Archbishop of Canterbury

Alongside the events in Copenhagen for the climate change summit, a brief press release on Friday (11 December) in Danish announced that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark has decided to join the Porvoo Communion of Anglican churches in the British Isles and Ireland, and Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches.
The communion is based on the Porvoo Declaration signed in 1996 established eucharistic fellowship and close ecclesiastical contacts between the signatory churches. Although the Danish church took part in the drafting of Porvoo, its bishops did not sign the declaration as they had reservations concerning the Anglican understanding of the bishop’s office and wanted equal admittance for men and women ordained by male and female bishops. In 2004 the Danish bishops received a letter from the Church of England inviting them to reconsider their decision not to sign.  The manner of the announcement by the Danish church has led to some questioning in the Danish press as to how and why it was made in such apparent haste. Jakob Holm in the Kristeligt Dagblad writes that while the decision is welcome news, the church's much vaunted, "democratic process ahead of the Danish church's  affiliation to Porvoo was conspicuous here by its total absence". The decision in 1995 not to sign Porvoo followed comments from several hundred church districts. The body that last week made the decision, had a paper setting out four possible strategies to "sell" the decision to the church, but instead decided just to announce the decision already-made.... Why the haste? Hm, wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Church of England and head of the Anglican Communion, was preaching in Copenhagen Cathedral on Sunday for the Climate Change service.
Bishop David Hamid of the Church of England's diocese in Europe in the Danish capital for the climate summit writes on his blog that arrangements for the public signing of the Porvoo Declaration are still to be settled, but that once signed the agreement will extend the Porvoo Communion of Churches to embrace the 12 dioceses and more than 2000 parishes in Denmark. Like the Church of Norway, the Danish church a few years ago signed the Leuenberg Agreement which established full communion between Lutheran, Reformed and United churches in continental Europe and which has also been extended to include Methodist churches. This means that  the Norwegian and Danish churches will serve as bridges between the episcopally-ordered Anglican and Nordic Lutheran churches, and the Reformation churches of Europe that follow a pattern of synodical authority.