History of the Lutheran Church

The Lutheran church traces its roots directly to the Protestant Reformation that took place in Europe in the 16th century. Martin Luther, a German monk, became aware of differences between the Bible and church practices of the day. His writings, lectures and sermons inspired others to protest church practices and call for reform.

By the late 1500s the Reformation had spread throughout Europe. Followers of Martin Luther's teachings were labeled "Lutherans" by their enemies and adopted the name themselves. Lutheran beliefs became widespread, especially in Germany and the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland), later spreading throughout the world as early explorers took their faith with them on their voyages. Lutheranism came to the Americas that way; some of the earliest settlers in the Americas were Scandinavians, Dutch and German Lutherans. The first permanent colony of them was in the West Indies, and by the 1620s there were settlements of Lutherans along the Hudson River in what are now the states of New York and New Jersey.

As people migrated to the New World they continued to speak and worship in their native languages and use resources from their countries of origin. Europeans from a particular region would migrate to a particular region in America and start their own churches. As the number of these congregations grew, scattered groups would form a "synod" or church body, and as the nation expanded so did the number of Lutheran church bodies.

The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod traces its origin to 750 Saxon immigrants who came to Missouri in 1839 seeking freedom from religious rationalism in Germany. On April 26, 1847, 12 pastors representing 15 congregations signed a constitution that established "The German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States." Meeting in Chicago, they had traveled by horseback, stagecoach and boat from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and New York. They were men of faith and conviction. Some were German immigrants who had come to the United States to preserve their Lutheran confession of the faith, free from government intervention. They were stirred for mission, especially to reach German immigrants, and, for some, the desire to bring the Gospel to Native Americans.

The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, which remained largely German in its make-up and even in language until the end of the First World War, grew dramatically during the latter part of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. In 1897, 50 years after its founding, the Synod reported a membership of 685,000. During the next 50 years, it more than doubled its membership.

By the late 1800s the 20 or so Lutheran church bodies that would eventually merge to become The American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America had been established. Massive immigration from traditionally Lutheran countries had started, and between 1840 and 1875 alone 58 Lutheran synods were formed in the U.S.!

There were "revivalist" and "confessional" movements within Lutheran churches in Europe and in America, and as Lutherans migrated to this country they were influenced by the "fundamentalist" movement here. Consequently, there developed a wide variety of expressions of Lutheranism in North America. Nineteenth century Lutherans still looked to their homelands to supply pastors and worship materials, but as second and third generation Americans spoke English more than German, Norwegian or Danish, a need arose to provide formal theological training, hymnals, catechisms and other materials.

The first significant mergers of happened in 1917 when three Norwegian synods joined to form the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (NLCA) and in 1918 when three German synods joined to form the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA). The National Lutheran Commission had been formed in 1917 because the churches were concerned about the spiritual well-being of U.S. service personnel being sent into combat. In 1930 three churches with German origins had merged to form the American Lutheran Church, which had become one of the eight member churches in the NLC, along with the ULCA.

The next round of mergers occurred in the early '60s. In 1960 the American Lutheran Church (German), United Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Norwegian) merged to form The American Lutheran Church (ALC), later including the Lutheran Free Church (Norwegian). In 1962 the ULCA (German, Slovak and Icelandic) joined with the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church (Swedish), Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church and American Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish) to form the Lutheran Church in America (LCA).

Other movements included the Lutheran World Federation's (LWF) study of contemporary Roman Catholicism and the reforms proposed by the Second Vatican Council, and the invitation of Reformed churches (Presbyterian) in America to begin discussions. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), not a member church of the NLC or the LWF, participated in these ecumenical dialogues at the national level, and joined the NLC churches in 1967 to form the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. (LCUSA).

The LCMS, firmly rooted in confessional conservatism and relatively unchanged since its organization in 1846-47 as "The German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States," stood firmly on its belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. "A Brief Statement" had been adopted in 1932, stating:

Since the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, it goes without saying that they contain no errors or contradictions, but that they are in all their parts and words the infallible truth ...

Trouble was brewing in the LCMS as some seminary professors began to adopt historical critical methods in their classrooms. In 1974 the seminary president was suspended and many seminarians and faculty left the seminary to continue their work in another setting, forming "Seminex," a seminary-in-exile. By 1976 the moderates had gathered forces to form the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC). Approximately 300 congregations and 110,000 people moved into the AELC from LCMS with a stated goal from the beginning of promoting unity with the ALC and LCA.

In 1977 the LCMS decision to place fellowship with ALC "in protest" nudged the three church bodies, ALC, LCA and AELC, toward merger. The 1978 ALC and LCA conventions adopted resolutions aimed at the creation of a single church body. The AELC joined them, and the ALC-LCA Committee on Church Cooperation became the Committee on Lutheran Unity (CLU) in January of 1979.

On September 8, 1982, with telephone hookups so each could hear the others' votes, all three church bodies voted to proceed on the path toward a new Lutheran church. By August 1986 the work had been completed and the three church bodies met in simultaneous conventions, voting overwhelmingly to accept the constitution and bylaws of the new church as well as the proposed agreement and plan of merger, thus creating the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the fourth largest Protestant body in the United States.

According to1994 statistics, there are 5,672,815,000 people on planet earth. David B. Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia (1994 Update) reports that 33.6 percent or 1.9 billion are classified as in some sense Christian. Of these, slightly over a billion (1,034,322,000) or 54 percent are Roman Catholic and 187,582,000 million or 9.9 percent are Orthodox. The third largest grouping of Christians in this world is Lutheran, which as of 1993 numbers 58.5 million or 3 percent of the Christian population. Anglicans come in fourth with a total of approximately 56 million worldwide.

The world's 59 million Lutherans belong to 250 different autonomous Lutheran churches around the world. Not surprisingly, the largest numbers of Lutherans are to be found in Germany, the place where the Lutheran tradition made its beginning during the early part of the 16th century. There are 14.7 million Lutherans in Germany in 15 church bodies, 8.7 million in North America, 7.6 in Sweden, 4.6 in Finland, 4.5 in Denmark, 3.9 in Norway, and 2.4 million in Indonesia. There are 6.2 million Lutherans in Africa, the place where the Lutheran Church is growing most rapidly today, and 4.6 million Lutherans in Asia.

The 8.7 million Lutherans in North America belong to 21 different Lutheran bodies. The largest of these at 5.2 million is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which came into being in 1988 as the result of a three way merger of the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. This brings us to The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, which with 2,615,567 baptized members ranks as the second largest Lutheran church body in North America and the 11th largest denomination in the USA. The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) has 421,189 members and is the third largest Lutheran Church in the USA.

As of 1993, The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod reports a membership of 2.6 million members belonging to 6,218 congregations. The Synod has 10 colleges, two seminaries, 62 high schools and the nation's largest Protestant elementary school system with 1,786 elementary schools and preschools. Congregations and schools are served by 8,389 pastors, 9,951 parochial school teachers and numerous other full-time workers, such as deaconesses and directors of Christian education. While the Synod holds that the ordination of women to the office of pastor is contrary to the Scriptures, approximately 45 percent of its full-time professional church workers are women. The LCMS has congregations in all sections of the United States, but the heaviest concentration of its membership continues to lie in the Midwest.

In its 150th year, The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod (the name was shortened on the 100th anniversary) counts 2.6 million members in 6,145 congregations. The original constitution was written in German (and German continued to prevail in worship and writing until World War I). Today, the list of pastors includes names like Schmidt and Nguyen and Perez and O'Connor and Zyskowski and King and Pacilli. While English dominates now, on any given Sunday, there may be worship in at least 20 different languages--including Spanish, Hmong, Eritrean, Russian, Finnish, Slovak, Chinese, even German.