Lutheran Church in America - Formation

Formation

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many of the independent U.S. Lutheran church bodies moved progressively toward greater unity. In 1960, for example, a number of such bodies joined to form the American Lutheran Church.

The Lutheran Church in America was another product of these trends, forming in 1962 out of a merger among the following independent Lutheran denominations:

  • The United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA), established in 1918 with the merger of three independent German-American synods: the General Synod, the General Council and the United Synod of the South. This group provided the bulk of the eventual LCA's membership.
  • The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (Suomi Synod), established in 1890.
  • The American Evangelical Lutheran Church, traditionally a Danish-American Lutheran denomination, established in 1872.
  • The Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church, traditionally a Swedish-American Lutheran denomination, established in 1860.

The merger was largely engineered through the efforts of Franklin Clark Fry, who had served as president of the United Lutheran Church in America since 1944 and president of the Lutheran World Federation since 1957. Fry was known by contemporaries as "Mr. Protestant," a moniker that captured his tireless work on behalf of greater ecumenical unity among Protestant church bodies.

The merger was made official and celebrated at a convention in Detroit, Michigan on June 28, 1962. Upon its inception, the LCA became the largest Lutheran church body in the United States.

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