The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With 1.8 million members, it is the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States. 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 2020, it has approximately 3.14 million baptized members in 8,894 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 Confessing Movement is a lay-led conservative Christian movement that opposes the influence of liberalism and progressivism within several mainline Protestant denominations and seeks to return them to its view of orthodox doctrine.
The American Lutheran Church (TALC) 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.
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 Synod of North America, before 1927 German Evangelical Synod of North America, in German (Deutsche) Evangelische Synode von Nord-Amerika, was a Protestant Christian denomination in the United States existing from the mid-19th century until its 1934 merger with the Reformed Church in the United States to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. This church merged with the Congregational Christian Churches denomination in 1957 to create the United Church of Christ.
The United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA) was established in 1918 in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation after negotiations among several American Lutheran national synods resulted in the merger of three German-language synods: the General Synod, the General Council (1867), and the United Synod of the South (1863). The Slovak Zion Synod (1919) joined the ULCA in 1920. The Icelandic Synod (1885) also joined the United Lutheran Church in America in 1942.
Charles Porterfield Krauth was a pastor, theologian and educator in the Lutheran branch of Christianity. He is a leading figure in the revival of the Lutheran Confessions connected to Neo-Lutheranism in the United States.
The Pennsylvania Ministerium was the first Lutheran church body in North America. With the encouragement of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787), the Ministerium was founded at a Church Conference of Lutheran clergy on August 26, 1748. The group was known as the "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of North America" until 1792, when it adopted the name "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States".
The Norwegian Lutheran Church in the United States is a general term to describe the Lutheran church tradition developed within the United States by immigrants from Norway.
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 General Synod of the United States of America, commonly known as the General Synod, was a historical Lutheran denomination in the United States. Established in 1820, it was the first national Lutheran body to be formed in the U.S. and by 1918 had become the third largest Lutheran group in the nation. In 1918, the General Synod merged with other Lutheran denominations to create the United Lutheran Church in America. Both the General Synod and the United Lutheran Church are predecessor bodies to the contemporary Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The Malagasy Lutheran Church is one of the most important Christian churches in Madagascar, established in 1950 by the unification of 1,800 Lutheran congregations in central and southern Madagascar. The oldest of these congregations was founded in the early 19th century with the arrival of missionaries from the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS).
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 New York Ministerium, also known as the Ministerium of New York, was an early Lutheran synod founded in 1786 in the U.S. state of New York. Throughout its history there were theological controversies that led to congregations withdrawing from it to form new synods. In 1917, it became part of the United Lutheran Church in America, which is one of the predecessor bodies of today's Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
