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The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is an orthodox, traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With 1.8 million members as of 2021, it is the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States, behind the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The LCMS was organized in 1847 at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois, as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, a name which partially reflected the geographic locations of the founding congregations.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a mainline Protestant Lutheran church headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA was officially formed on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three Lutheran church bodies. As of 2022, it has approximately 2.9 million baptized members in 8,640 congregations.
The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), also referred to simply as the Wisconsin Synod, is an American Confessional Lutheran denomination of Christianity. Characterized as theologically conservative, it was founded in 1850 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, commonly called the Norwegian Synod, was founded in 1853. It included churches in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Confessional Lutheranism is a name used by Lutherans to designate those who believe in the doctrines taught in the Book of Concord of 1580 in their entirety. Confessional Lutherans maintain that faithfulness to the Book of Concord, which is a summary of the teachings found in Scripture, requires attention to how that faith is actually being preached, taught, and put into practice. Confessional Lutherans believe that this is a vital part of their identity as Lutherans.
The American Lutheran Church (ALC) was a Christian Protestant denomination in the United States and Canada that existed from 1960 to 1987. Its headquarters were in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Upon its formation in 1960, The ALC designated Augsburg Publishing House, also located in Minneapolis, as the church publisher. The Lutheran Standard was the official magazine of The ALC.
The Lutheran Church in America (LCA) was an American and Canadian Lutheran church body that existed from 1962 to 1987. It was headquartered in New York City and its publishing house was Fortress Press.
The Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, often known simply as the Synodical Conference, was an association of Lutheran synods that professed a complete adherence to the Lutheran Confessions and doctrinal unity with each other. Founded in 1872, its membership fluctuated as various synods joined and left it. Due to doctrinal disagreements with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) left the conference in 1963. It was dissolved in 1967 and the other remaining member, the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, merged into the LCMS in 1971.
Johannes Andreas August Grabau was an influential German-American Old Lutheran pastor and theologian. He is usually mentioned as J. A. A. Grabau.
The Anti-Missourian Brotherhood was the name of a group of Lutheran pastors and churches in the United States who left the Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1887.
The General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America, or, in brief, the General Council was a conservative Lutheran church body, formed as a reaction against the new "Americanized Lutheranism" of Samuel Simon Schmucker and the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America.
The Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States, commonly known as the Joint Synod of Ohio or the Ohio Synod, was a German-language Lutheran denomination whose congregations were originally located primarily in the U.S. state of Ohio, later expanding to most parts of the United States. The synod was formed on September 14, 1818, and adopted the name Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States by about 1850. It used that name or slight variants until it merged with the Iowa Synod and the Buffalo Synod in 1930 to form the first American Lutheran Church (ALC), 1930–1960.
Lutheranism was first introduced to Mexico in the 1850s, when German-American Lutherans began serving German immigrants in Mexico, though mission work among the non-German population in Mexico did not begin until the 1940s. Today there are five Lutheran church bodies in Mexico—the Mexican Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Synod of Mexico, the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Church—Mexico, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mexico (unaffiliated), and the Lutheran Apostolic Alliance of Mexico (unaffiliated)—and several independent congregations.
The Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa and Other States, commonly known as the Iowa Synod, was founded on August 24, 1854, at St. Sebald in Clayton County, Iowa. It adopted a constitution and its name, in 1864. The synod was the result of disagreements, in Saginaw, Michigan, against the Missouri Synod that had arisen with some of the pastors sent to America by Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe. Some of these pastors joined the Missouri Synod, while pastors Georg M. Grossmann and Johannes Deindoerfer and a small group moved to Iowa.
The American Lutheran Church (ALC) was formed in 1930 from the merger of the three conservative Lutheran synods of German-American origin: The Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa and Other States, established in 1854; the Lutheran Synod of Buffalo, established in 1845; and the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States, established in 1818 from the Ministerium of Pennsylvania. The headquarters of the ALC were in Columbus, Ohio, which had been the headquarters of the Joint Synod of Ohio, the largest of the three synods.
St. John's Lutheran Church is a member congregation of the American Association of Lutheran Churches (AALC) in Pocahontas, Missouri.
The Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Illinois, often referred to as the Illinois Synod, was created in June 1846 when the Evangelical Synod of the West divided due to growth. It held its first convention in Hillsboro, Illinois, on October 15, 1846.
Heinrich "Henry" Sieck was a German-American Lutheran minister, writer, and college president.
David Walter Preus was an American Lutheran minister. He served as the last president/presiding bishop of the American Lutheran Church (ALC) from 1973 until that body merged into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in 1988.
The following is a timeline of significant events in the history of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.
References
- Lueker, Erwin L.; Poellot, Luther; Jackson, Paul, eds. (2000). "Buffalo Synod". Christian Cyclopedia (Online ed.). St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House . Retrieved August 17, 2023.
- Neve, J. L. (1916). A Brief History of the Lutheran Church in America (Second Revised and Enlarged ed.). Burlington, Iowa: The German Literary Board. p. 384 . Retrieved October 25, 2015.
Buffalo Synod.