Martin
Luther
The Lutheran church
can trace 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.
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.
As early as 1812 the North Carolina Synod
had inquired about the possibility of better intersynodical cooperation, and that synod
worked with Pennsylvania publishing houses and the new theological seminary at Gettysburg
rather than set up its own support systems.
Cooperative Work Begins
Immigration of Lutherans continued to be
heavy through the first two decades of the 20th century, and the first significant mergers
of church bodies 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). With World War I taking place, the next logical
step in denominational consolidation was to form a joint agency of these two large synods
and other smaller ones in order to provide relief.
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 a short time 60,000 laymen were involved in
the effort, which proved a vast and complex enterprise. The laymen stayed active in the
relief and ministry of the commission, but formed their own organization, the Lutheran
Brotherhood, which supported the work of the commission by building facilities and
supplying equipment. After the war the Lutheran Brotherhood continued to develop lay
leadership and to foster intersynodical relationships.
The various Lutheran churches, with the
exception of the Synodical Conference, continued to work together closely, but were
limited to soldiers' and sailors' welfare efforts. There was a growing need to provide
missionaries to America's expanding industrial centers and to render aid to Lutherans in
Europe, and by September 1918 the National Lutheran Council (NLC) was formed to meet those
needs. Representation on the council was proportionate, based on membership figures of
participating church bodies.
The Early 20th Century
For the first 12 years of its existence,
the NLC concentrated on overseas relief programs, then from about 1930 through the entry
of the United States into World War II it developed its domestic programs. In 1945 it
reorganized and expanded the work it did on behalf of the participating churches. In
addition to the refugee and chaplaincy work, the council provided coordination of
establishing new congregations, town and country ministry, student services, public
relations and uniform statistical reporting, among other services. 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.
As cooperative work proved beneficial to
all the participants, and as the 32 councilors continued to meet on a regular basis, other
areas of commonality naturally surfaced. In the late '40s and '50s there were proposals by
the ULCA and Augustana to merge all the member churches of the NLC, and although they
failed, in 1952 the American Lutheran Conference Joint Union Committee presented the
document The United Testimony to its member churches, agreeing they were in
"essential agreement" with the positions of the ULCA and the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod. The next round of mergers occurred in the early '60s.
The '60s and '70s
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). The Lutheran Free Church
(Norwegian), which had dropped out of merger negotiations, came into the ALC in 1963.
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).
Meanwhile, the Lutheran World Federation's (LWF) 1957 resolve to study contemporary Roman Catholicism with the possibility of
entering "interconfessional conversations," and the reforms proposed by the
Second Vatican Council, led to a series of theological dialogues. Lutherans also accepted
the invitation of Reformed churches (Presbyterian) in America to begin discussions of
possible pulpit and altar fellowship. 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).
