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According to the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge published in Philadelphia in 1849, "That eminent reformer whose name is dear to all the friends of evangelical religion throughout the world, has given name to the largest body of Protestant Christians. It is of little consequence to inquire how this has happened; but the probability is that Luther himself gave the church the name of Evangelical, while his followers, or their adversaries gave it the name of Lutheran."
The creed embraced by the Evangelical Lutherans was the Augsburg Confession. The Confession consisted of twenty-eight articles of faith. Twenty-one of the articles are theses or positive statements describing the principles of Christian doctrine accepted by the Lutheran Church. The remaining seven articles are anti-theses or negative statements which were considered as abuses of the Christian faith by the Roman Catholic Church.
Many of the earliest settlers of Pennsylvania and its adjoining states who were from Germany and Sweden were Lutherans. Ministers from Germany were sent to preach to these early Lutheran congregants. Of all the protestant denominations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the closest to Catholicism since it was the first offshoot from that mother church. And perhaps because it was the first of the churches to protest and break from the Roman Catholic Church, it was one of the largest in terms of members. There were, by 1834, roughly eight hundred congregations of Lutherans comprised of 600,000 members.
In 1820, the General Synod of the American Lutheran Church was formed. Prior to that time six separate synods had developed among the Lutheran congregations in America. As noted in the History of All the Religious Denominations in the United States: "Much prejudice and hostility were encountered in the enterprise to institute this body. . ." The obstacles were overcome, though, and the result was the union of the disparate district synods into the General Synod.
The American Civil War caused general turmoil in the Lutheran Church. In 1863 Lutheran congregations in the American South left the General Synod and formed their own 'General Synod.' The remaining members of the General Synod in the Union States continued to be wracked with controversies. They argued about the Lutheran confessions and eleven synods left to form the General Council in 1867. Over the next fifty years the old wounds healed and the three Lutheran entities became more cooperative. 1917 was the four hundredth anniversary of the traditional beginning of the Reformation. On 31 October 1517, Martin Luther nailed the document containing his Ninety-Five Theses onto the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. A joint committee of the three existing synods met in 1917 to plan a celebration. The cooperative attitude of the committee members encouraged them to begin talks of re-uniting. They chose as a new name, United Lutheran Church in America. In 1918 a constitution that came out of talks during the previous year was approved and accepted by all three entities, with the exception of a group that left to form their own Augustana Synod.
In 1962, the Augustana Synod merged with three other 'non-aligned' Lutheran entities: the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church and the United Lutheran Church in America.
Danish immigrants, in the mid-1870s, established a settlement at Neenah, Wisconsin. Being Lutheran, but far from their home church in Denmark, organized their own synod in 1874 under the name of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. During the following year a constitution was written up and approved. Then, in 1954, the name was shortened to simply the Lutheran Church in America.
Three Lutheran synods merged together in 1930 to form the (original) American Lutheran Church. The three synods were all of German descent: The Lutheran Synod of Buffalo (organized in 1845), the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio (organized in 1818), and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa (organized in 1854). Members of the Lutheran Synod of Buffalo were immigrants from Prussia who left their European homeland in 1838 after persecution there. They had refused to accept the forced union of Lutheran and Reformed churches that had been decreed by the King of Prussia in 1817.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church came into being in the year 1917 by the merger of three synods. Originally named the Norwegian Lutheran Church, the members of the three synods were all descended from Norwegian immigrants.
Two American Lutheran synods of Danish descent, located around Minneapolis, Minnesota, merged in 1896 to form the United Evangelical Lutheran Church.
In 1961, the (original) American Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church merged to form the American Lutheran Church. The merger was entered into after years of discussion between the (original) American Lutheran Church and the United Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church ~ Missouri Synod. Two years later the Lutheran Free Church (an offshoot of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church) joined this merger.
The Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches was established in 1976 when a group of ecumenical-minded members left the more conservative Lutheran Church ~ Missouri Synod.
From the various mergers over the years, on 01 January 1988 the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches merged to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. [See Union Church also.]
