The American Lutheran Church (ALC or sometimes TALC - to distinguish it from earlier predecessor denomination of 1930-1960) was a ChristianProtestantdenomination in the United States and Canada that existed from 1960 to 1987. Its headquarters / offices and adjacent publishing house were on South Fifth Street in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. Upon its formation in 1960,
The ALC's immigrant European heritage came mostly from Germany, Norway, and Denmark, and its demographic center was in the Upper Midwest (with especially large numbers in Minnesota and then adjacent Wisconsin, Michigan, the Dakotas and Ohio. Theologically, the church was influenced by pietism of the 19th century. It was slightly more conservative than the slightly larger Lutheran Church in America (LCA) of 1962, with which it would eventually merge almost three decades later. While officially it taught biblical inerrancy in its merger constitution, this was seldom enforced by such controversial means as investigations or heresy trials.
The ALC was a founding member of the expanded "Lutheran Council in the United States of America" (LC-USA), which began on January 1, 1967, as a successor to the previous smaller National Lutheran Council, established 1918. The ALC cooperated with the more conservative / right-wing Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod in many ventures then, which was temporarily becoming more moderate and ecumenical in those 1950s and 1960s years, but the inter-Lutheran ties came to an end when talks concerning a merger of The ALC with the Lutheran Church in America began, along with theological controversies and splits at the Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, after election of a much more conservative synod leadership in 1969 under LC-MS president Jacob A.O. Preus II.
After six years, in 1966, Canadian congregations and districts of the ALC formed the autonomous Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada (ELCC), which two decades later in 1986 joined with the Lutheran Church in America – Canada Section (LCA-CS) (former LCA congregations in separate regional synods in Canada) to form the current Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).
Formation
The American Lutheran Church was formed in 1960 out of the following Lutheran church bodies:
American Lutheran Church (1930–1960)
The first American Lutheran Church was formed in 1930 by a merger of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa and Other States (est. 1854), the Lutheran Synod of Buffalo (est. 1845), and the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States (established 1818 from Ministerium of Pennsylvania, 1748 to joining General Synod of 1820, then continuing to 1918), with headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. After the merger of 1960, this body was informally referred to as the "old American Lutheran Church" or the "first American Lutheran Church" to distinguish it from the later larger more ethnically diverse body into which it had been absorbed. The merged denomination was also named "The American Lutheran Church" (with the capitalized "The" as part of the official title), which was earlier occasionally abbreviated as "TALC." Hence "ALC" designates the first 1930-1960 body headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, while "TALC" designates the second 1960-1987 body, with offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Evangelical Lutheran Church
The Evangelical Lutheran Church, established in 1917 and known for its first 29 years, from its founding until 1946 as the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (NLCA), with headquarters in Minneapolis. Norwegian immigrant American Lutherans wew divided into a handful of Midwestern synods. The NLCA had itself been formed from a merger of the Hauge Synod (established 1876), the Norwegian Synod (established 1853), and the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (established 1890).
The Lutheran Free Church, which had broken away from the United Norwegian Lutheran Church in 1897, joined the ALC on February 1, 1963, three years after its merger. However, forty Lutheran Free Church congregations still chose not to participate in the long-planned merger into the larger Lutheran grouping, and instead formed the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, which 62 years later today is the sixth-largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S. with over 250 congregations.
Ordination of women
The ALC began ordaining women as ministers/pastors in December 1970, when the Rev. Barbara Andrews became the second woman ordained as a Lutheran minister in the United States. In 1970, a survey of 4,745 Lutheran adults by Strommen et al., found that 66% of ALC Lutherans surveyed agreed that women should be ordained, compared with 75% of LCA Lutherans and 45% of LCMS Lutherans.[1] The first Native American woman to become a Lutheran minister in the United States, the Rev. Marlene Whiterabbit Helgemo, was ordained by the ALC in July 1987.
ELCA Merger
The site of The ALC's former headquarters on South Fifth Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, now serves as the Hennepin County Jail. The site of the publishing arm of The ALC, Augsburg Publishing House, is adjacent
In 1986, just before its merger into the ELCA, The ALC had 7,671 pastors, 4,959 congregations, and 2,319,443 members.[2] The ALC brought approximately 2.25 million members into the ELCA. Twelve conservative ALC congregations that did not want to participate in the merger formed the American Association of Lutheran Churches, which has since grown to 87 congregations.
Use of the term presiding bishop as an alternative change for the previous ALC 1960 constitutional term general president was approved by the church's 10th General Convention at Minneapolis in 1980.
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