History
In 1830, the German Theological Seminary of the Ohio Synod, later known as the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary (ELTS), was founded to meet the need for educating pastors in the Ohio region. It generally used the German language in its education and materials for its first few decades. It began in Canton, Ohio, but soon moved to Columbus, the state capital, and located in the suburban neighborhood of Bexley. It was operated by the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States (known in short as the Joint Synod of Ohio), which also used the German language. The Joint Synod existed from 1818 until its merger in 1930 with two smaller German-language regional synods (the Iowa Synod and the Buffalo Synod) into the first denomination known as the American Lutheran Church (existed 1930-1960) with its headquarters on Main Street along with publishing houses, the Lutheran Book Concern and Wartburg Press, issuing the church newspaper / magazine the "Lutheran Standard" since 1847. German and English language worship / liturgical books were published including the "Evangelical Lutheran Hymnal" beginning in the 1880s and revisions to 1909. During these decades, the seminary was run as the theological department of the nearby Capital University, which had been chartered by the Joint Synod in 1850. The seminary was, as a result, it was occasionally known as "Capital Seminary", until the two were temporarily separated in 1959. In 1960, the first American Lutheran Church of 1930 was merged after a short life of three decades with other Lutheran churches to form the larger The American Lutheran Church (ALC), the second denomination with that name, and uniting it's Germans with other Scandinavian Lutherans.
With the growing closeness and theological friendships during the mid-20th century between major American Lutheran traditions, the decision was made in 1974 to consolidate ELTS and nearby Hamma Divinity School. Hamma was founded in 1845 as the Theological Department of Wittenberg College, in Springfield, Ohio, and was associated with the regional Ohio Synod jurisdiction of the old General Synod of 1820. The General Synod merged into the broader United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA) in 1917–1918, (on the 400th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation) and that ULCA with its eastern U.S. German heritage centered in Pennsylvania in turn merged in 1962 with several other Lutheran denominations also from Midwestern immigrants from Scandinavia into the more ethnically diverse Lutheran Church in America (LCA), then becoming the largest American Lutheran group for another 26 years to 1988, then into the modern ELCA.
The merged institution, renamed Trinity Lutheran Seminary, opened its doors on September 1, 1978. For the decade from 1978 until the merger creating the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988, Trinity was owned and operated jointly by the ALC and the LCA. At the time they were two of the three largest Lutheran bodies in the United States. [2]
On January 1, 2018, Trinity rejoined the university that it founded in 1850, Capital University, to become Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University.
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