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 Protestant Church in Germany, formerly known in English as the Evangelical Church in Germany, is a federation of twenty Lutheran, Reformed, and United Protestant regional Churches in Germany, collectively encompassing the vast majority of the country's Protestants. In 2022, the EKD had a membership of 19,153,000 members, or 22.7% of the German population. It constitutes one of the largest Protestant bodies in the world. Church offices managing the federation are located in Herrenhausen, Hanover, Lower Saxony. Many of its members consider themselves Lutherans.
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 United Church of Christ (UCC) is a socially liberal mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Restorationist, Continental Reformed, and Lutheran traditions, and with approximately 4,600 churches and 712,000 members.The UCC is a historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Puritanism. Moreover, it also subsumed the third largest Calvinist group in the country, the German Reformed. Notably, its modern members' theological and socio-political stances are often very different from those of its predecessors.
The Confessing Movement is a largely lay-led theologically conservative Christian movement that opposes the influence of theological liberalism and theological progressivism currently within several mainline Protestant denominations and seeks to return them to its view of orthodox doctrine, or form a new denomination and disfellowship (excommunicate) them if the situation becomes untenable. Those who eventually deem dealing with theological liberalism and theological progressivism within their churches and denominations as not being tenable anymore would later join or start Confessional Churches and/or Evangelical Churches that continue with the traditions of their respective denominations and maintaining orthodox doctrine while being ecclesiastically separate from the Mainline Protestant denominations.
The Dutch Reformed Church was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch royal family and the foremost Protestant denomination until 2004. It was the larger of the two major Reformed denominations, after the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands was founded in 1892. It spread to the United States, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and various other world regions through Dutch colonization. Allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church was a common feature among Dutch immigrant communities around the world and became a crucial part of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa.
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 Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) is a Protestant Christian denomination in the United States. The present RCUS is a conservative, Calvinist denomination. It affirms the principles of the Reformation: Sola scriptura, Solus Christus, Sola gratia, Sola fide, and Soli Deo gloria. The RCUS has membership concentrated in the Midwest and California.
The Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church is a confessional Lutheran church body of Germany. It is a member of the European Lutheran Conference and of the International Lutheran Council (ILC). The SELK has about 33,000 members in 174 congregations. The seat of SELK is in Hanover.
The Evangelical and Reformed Church (E&R) was a Protestant Christian denomination in the United States. It was formed in 1934 by the merger of the Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) with the Evangelical Synod of North America (ESNA). A minority within the RCUS remained out of the merger in order to continue the name Reformed Church in the United States. In 1957, the Evangelical and Reformed Church merged with the majority of the Congregational Christian Churches (CC) to form the United Church of Christ (UCC).
The Prussian Union of Churches was a major Protestant church body which emerged in 1817 from a series of decrees by Frederick William III of Prussia that united both Lutheran and Reformed denominations in Prussia. Although not the first of its kind, the Prussian Union was the first to occur in a major German state.
The Evangelical Association of Reformed and Congregational Christian Churches is an evangelical protestant denomination in the United States. It began as a fellowship of churches disaffected from the United Church of Christ due to that denomination's liberal theology. Churches of the Evangelical Association are free to hold dual affiliation with another denomination, as local churches observe congregational polity.
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation.
Protestantism is the largest grouping of Christians in the United States, with its combined denominations collectively comprising about 43% of the country's population in 2019. Other estimates suggest that 48.5% of the U.S. population is Protestant. Simultaneously, this corresponds to around 20% of the world's total Protestant population. The U.S. contains the largest Protestant population of any country in the world. Baptists comprise about one-third of American Protestants. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest single Protestant denomination in the U.S., comprising one-tenth of American Protestants. Twelve of the original Thirteen Colonies were Protestant, with only Maryland having a sizable Catholic population due to Lord Baltimore's religious tolerance.
St. Paul's United Church of Christ of Laramie was founded in 1886 as the first German language congregation in Wyoming. The church building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The cornerstone was laid on July 13, 1890, three days after statehood. Clergy from Chicago and the local Christian, Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian and Baptist Churches participated in the ceremony, with an address by Dr. John Wesley Hoyt, former Governor of Wyoming Territory and at the time first president of the University of Wyoming. The building was completed and dedicated on January 18, 1891. It is the oldest church structure in Laramie continuously used by the same congregation. With its stained glass windows and heavy wooden furnishings, St. Paul's is reminiscent of rural German churches. Those elaborate windows and its many simplified Gothic elements make the building unique among Lutheran churches in Wyoming.
The Protestant Church of Anhalt is a United Protestant member church of the Protestant Church in Germany. Its seat is in Dessau-Roßlau in Saxony-Anhalt, in the former duchy of Anhalt. This church is the smallest regional church in Germany in terms of membership.
The German Protestant Church Confederation was a formal federation of 28 regional Protestant churches (Landeskirchen) of Lutheran, Reformed or United Protestant administration or confession. It existed during the Weimar Republic from 1922 until replaced by the German Evangelical Church in 1933. It was a predecessor body to the Protestant Church in Germany.
The Evangelical Church of the River Plate is a United, Protestant denomination with congregations in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It is named after the Río de la Plata Basin, where the majority of its congregations are located. The IERP was affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Germany from 1934–1965, when it became independent. The church ordains women as ministers and supported civil unions and same-sex marriage. It has approximately 27,500 members.
The Calvin Synod is an acting conference of the United Church of Christ, composed entirely of Reformed, or Calvinist congregations of Hungarian descent. Unlike much of the UCC, the Synod is strongly conservative on doctrinal and social matters, and many members of the "Faithful and Welcoming Movement," a renewal group acting to move the UCC in a more orthodox direction, belong to this body.
