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 Lutheran Free Church (LFC) was a Lutheran denomination that existed in the United States, mainly in Minnesota and North Dakota, from 1897 until its merger into the American Lutheran Church (ALC) in 1963. The history of the church body predates its official organization, and a group of congregations that did not join the ALC formed the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations.
The Apostolic Lutheran Church of America (ALCA) is a Laestadian Lutheran church denomination established by Finnish American and Norwegian immigrants in the 1800s. They came mainly from northern Finland and northern Norway where they had been members of the state churches. Most or all members had ties from their home countries to the Laestadian revival movement named after Swedish state church administrator and pastor Lars Levi Laestadius of Pajala, Sweden. Eventually, there were too many arguments between this denomination and the other American Laestadians, and some of the followers of Laestadius were excluded from the sacrament of holy communion. Under the lead of Salomon Korteniemi, the excluded members formed a congregation of their own in December 1872, under the name the Salomon Korteniemi Lutheran Society. In 1879 this name was changed to the Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Congregation. As other congregations of Finns in Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and Oregon were organized on the same basis, they came into fellowship with this body under the name the Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church, or, as it is usually called, the Apostolic Lutheran Church.
The Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (SELC) was an American Lutheran denomination that existed from 1902 to 1971. It merged with the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) in 1971 and now operates as the non-geographic SELC District of that body.
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.
Infant communion refers to the practice of giving the Eucharist, often in the form of consecrated wine mingled with consecrated bread, to young children. This practice is standard throughout Eastern Christianity, where communion is given at the Divine Liturgy to all baptized and chrismated church members regardless of age. Infant communion is less common in most of Western Christianity.
High church Lutheranism is a movement that began in 20th-century Europe and emphasizes worship practices and doctrines that are similar to those found within Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglo-Catholicism. In the more general usage of the term, it describes the general high church characteristics of Lutheranism in Nordic and Baltic countries such as Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia. The mentioned countries, once a part of the Swedish Empire, have more markedly preserved Catholic traditions.
Lutheranism as a religious movement originated in the early 16th century Holy Roman Empire as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church. The movement originated with the call for a public debate regarding several issues within the Catholic Church by Martin Luther, then a professor of Bible at the young University of Wittenberg. Lutheranism soon became a wider religious and political movement within the Holy Roman Empire owing to support from key electors and the widespread adoption of the printing press. This movement soon spread throughout northern Europe and became the driving force behind the wider Protestant Reformation. Today, Lutheranism has spread from Europe to all six populated continents.
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.
Robert Sylvester Graetz Jr. was a Lutheran clergyman who, as the white pastor of a black congregation in Montgomery, Alabama, openly supported the Montgomery bus boycott, a landmark event of the civil rights movement.
The Lutheran Church in Malaysia or LCM is one of four Lutheran bodies in Malaysia. It currently has 52 congregations nationwide with a total of 6,736 baptised members and is the largest entirely Lutheran body in the country. Until 2012, the body was known as the Lutheran Church in Malaysia and Singapore.
In Lutheranism, the Eucharist refers to the liturgical commemoration of the Last Supper. Lutherans believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, affirming the doctrine of sacramental union, "in which the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, offered, and received with the bread and wine."
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.
The Taiwan Lutheran Church is one of the six Lutheran bodies in Taiwan. It currently has 80 mission sites nationwide with a total of 11,422 baptized members.
The Lutheran sacraments are "sacred acts of divine institution". They are also defined as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”.
Walther Christian Academy is a private Lutheran high school and middle school in Melrose Park, Illinois, United States. Established in 1954, the school is affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.
The Luther Monument is a public artwork located in front of Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., United States. The monument to Martin Luther, the theologian and Protestant Reformer, is a bronze, full-length portrait. It is a copy of the statue created by Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel as part of the 1868 Luther Monument in Worms, Germany. The version in Washington, D.C., inspired the installation of many other castings across the U.S. The statue is a contributing property to the Luther Place Memorial Church's listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites (DCIHS). It is also a contributing property to the Greater Fourteenth Street Historic District, which is also listed on the NRHP and DCIHS.
Luther College was a private black school in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It was established by the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America in 1903 as part of the conference's missionary work among African Americans in the Southern United States following the American Civil War. The school was founded the same year as Immanuel Lutheran College in Concord, North Carolina, and both schools had the same three departments: a secondary school, a normal school, and a seminary.
