Eleven German denominations - including Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Anglican churches —recognized formally each other's baptism, at an ecumenical ceremony in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

"As a sign of the unity of all Christians, baptism is a bond with Jesus Christ, the foundation of this unity," states a common declaration which was signed at the service on April 29. "This mutual recognition of baptism is an expression of the bond of unity founded in Jesus Christ."

Leaders of the 11 churches, including Bishop Wolfgang Huber, who heads the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and Cardinal Karl Lehmann, chairperson of the German (Roman) Catholic Bishops Conference, attended the service at Magdeburg cathedral.

The cathedral possesses a 1000-year-old baptismal font, thought to be the oldest in Germany in continuous use, the Protestant news agency epd reported. It dates back to before the 1054 division between eastern and western Christianity and the 16th century Protestant Reformation.

Baptism, a religious ceremony performed with water, is acknowledged throughout the Christian world to be a commandment of Jesus and the fundamental rite of initiation into the church.

In Germany there are already some regional agreements on baptism but this is the first formal agreement at a national level. The idea goes back to a suggestion made in May 2002 by Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the EKD noted.

The following year, the then general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Konrad Raiser, said greater progress towards church unity could be made by focusing on baptism, rather than the Eucharist, about which there are still major differences between the various Christian traditions.

In practice, Protestant and Roman Catholic churches had reached a common understanding on baptism, Raiser noted, but this needed official acknowledgement. "It would mark a 'Copernican Revolution' in ecumenical dialogue if churches were genuinely to recognize each other's baptism," he said.

The 11 churches say in the statement that the "one baptism in Christ is 'a call to the churches to overcome their divisions and visibly manifest their fellowship'," a quotation from a 1982 document, "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry", elaborated by a WCC commission.

The WCC's 347 member churches come principally from Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox traditions. The Catholic Church is not a WCC member but has official representatives on its Faith and Order Commission, which drew up the 1982 document.

The 11 signatory churches in Germany are the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Germany; Council of Anglican Episcopal Churches in Germany; Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church in Germany; Evangelical Old-Reformed Church in Lower Saxony; European Continental Province of the Moravian Church; Evangelical Church in Germany; Evangelical Methodist Church; Catholic Diocese of the Old-Catholics in Germany; Orthodox Church in Germany; Roman Catholic Church; Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church.

But the joint statement on Baptism has not been signed by the largest free church in Germany, the Union of Evangelical Free Churches-Baptist Union. Also other member and associated churches of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany (ACK), who refuse to allow their children to be baptized and who practise the baptism of adult believers, like the Mennonites and the Seventh-day Adventists, didn't support the common statement.

In the name of this Anabaptist minority group, Pastor Werner Funk, president of the Association of Mennonite Congregations in Germany, formulated a special commentary during the ceremony. Funk also criticised the fact, that the two largest churches, the Protestant (through EKD) and Roman Catholic (through the Bishops Conference), have prepared the common statement, without an indispensable consultation with the minority denominations within the Council (ACK).

Text of the statement (in German): http://www.ekd.de/presse/pm86_2007_wechselseitige_taufanerkennung.html