Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is held to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops. Christians of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Old Catholic, Moravian, Hussite, Anglican, Church of the East, and Scandinavian Lutheran traditions maintain that "a bishop cannot have regular or valid orders unless he has been consecrated in this apostolic succession". Each of these groups does not necessarily consider consecration of the other groups as valid.
An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. It is the structure used by many of the major Christian Churches and denominations, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Anglican, and Lutheran churches or denominations, and other churches founded independently from these lineages.
The Church of Sweden is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with just under 5.8 million members at year end 2020, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden, the largest Lutheran denomination in Europe and the third-largest in the world, after the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With over 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 International Lutheran Council (ILC) is a worldwide association of confessional Lutheran denominations. Member bodies of the ILC hold "an unconditional commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired and infallible Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book of Concord as the true and faithful exposition of the Word of God." The member church bodies are not required to be in church-fellowship with one another, though many of them are.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) is the federation of Lutheran churches in Tanzania and one of the largest Lutheran denominations in the world, with more than 6 million members, or 13% of the Tanzanian population. It is the second largest Lutheran church in the world and the largest Lutheran church in East Africa.
The Lutheran Hour is a U.S.-based Christian radio program produced by Lutheran Hour Ministries. The weekly broadcast began on October 2, 1930, as an outreach ministry of the Lutheran Laymen's League, part of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Since 2018, Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler is the current speaker of The Lutheran Hour. During the 1950s–1980s, the program was heard on 1,200 stations in the U.S. and in thirty other nations. Its motto is "Bringing Christ to the Nations".
The Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (CELC) is an international fellowship of 34 Confessional Lutheran church bodies.
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 Mission Province is a Swedish independent ecclesiastical province founded by members of the Church of Sweden who are opposed to the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. The province, which aligns with Confessional Lutheranism, considers itself as a free-standing diocese within the Church of Sweden, a position rejected by the church itself. The Mission Province was founded on 6 September 2003 and shares altar and pulpit fellowship with those in the Communion of Nordic Lutheran Dioceses, in addition to being a member of the International Lutheran Conference.
The Lutheran Confessional Synod (LCS) was a Confessional Lutheran church, characterized by a strict interpretation of the Lutheran Confessions and a historical liturgy. Organized in 1994, when Christ Lutheran Church in Decatur, Illinois, broke away from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, it initially declared doctrinal agreement with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, but broke fellowship with those two synods on June 14, 1997, because of differences in the doctrine of the ministry and the Lord's Supper. The LCS organized the Johann Gerhard Institute and St. Anselm Theological Seminary in 1996.
The term Evangelical Catholic is used in Lutheranism, alongside the term Augsburg Catholic, with those calling themselves Evangelical Catholic Lutherans or Lutherans of Evangelical Catholic churchmanship stressing the catholicity of historic Lutheranism in liturgy, beliefs, practices, and doctrines. Evangelical Catholics teach that Lutheranism at its core "is deeply and fundamentally catholic". The majority of Evangelical Catholic Lutheran clergy and parishes are members of mainstream Lutheran denominations.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia is a Lutheran Protestant church in Latvia. Latvia's Lutheran heritage dates back to the Reformation. Both the Nazi and communist regimes persecuted the church harshly before religious freedom returned to Latvia in 1988. Unlike Estonia, where state atheism reduced the once 80% Lutheran majority to almost 10% by 2011, the Latvian Lutheran church had dropped to around 20% but has recovered slightly and now includes approximately 30% of the population.
Christianity is a minority religion in Sri Lanka. It was introduced to the island in first century, probably in AD 72. Traditionally, after Thomas the Apostle's visit in Kerala in AD 52, Christianity is said to have been introduced to Sri Lanka because of its close geographical and commercial ties.
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying with the theology of Martin Luther, a 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Roman Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation. The reaction of the government and church authorities to the international spread of his writings, beginning with the Ninety-five Theses, divided Western Christianity. During the Reformation, Lutheranism became the state religion of numerous states of northern Europe, especially in northern Germany, Scandinavia and the then Livonian Order. Lutheran clergy became civil servants and the Lutheran churches became part of the state.
The Communion of Nordic Lutheran Dioceses are Lutheran dioceses that entered into schism with their Scandinavian national churches in 2003 due to what they perceived as "the secularization of the national/state churches in their respective countries involving matters of both Christian doctrine and ethics". These dioceses are members of the International Lutheran Council, a body of Confessional Lutherans who are in full communion with one another and include the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, Mission Province of the Church of Sweden, and the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Norway. These dioceses entered into schism with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, Church of Sweden, and Church of Norway, respectively, though the Mission Province considers itself to be a non-territorial diocese within the Church of Sweden. Their lines of apostolic succession derive from other traditional Lutheran Churches, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya; Walter Obare Omwanza, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya, assisted by bishops Leonid Zviki from Belarus, David Tswaedi from South Africa, Børre Knudsen and Ulf Asp from Norway, consecrated Arne Olsson in apostolic succession as the Ordinary for the Mission Province. The first bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, Risto Soramies, was then ordained by Matti Väisänen of the Mission Province of the Church of Sweden. These dioceses have an Evangelical Catholic churchmanship, reflective of the influence of High Church Lutheranism and Pietist Lutheranism in Scandinavia. As such, the Communion of Nordic Lutheran Dioceses affirms:
We believe, teach and confess that biblical faith and doctrine which is founded on the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the New and the Old Testament and which has been expressed in the three main creeds of the Early Church, that is, the Apostolic, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and the Athanasian Creed, and in the unaltered Augsburg Confession, and that is rightly and bindingly explained by all the books accepted into the Book of Concord of the Lutheran Church.
