American Lutheran Church

The American Lutheran Church (ALC or sometimes TALC) was a Christian Protestant denomination in the United States that existed from 1960 to 1987. Its headquarters was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Upon its formation in 1960, the ALC designated Augsburg Publishing House (est. 1891), also located in Minneapolis, as the church publisher. The Lutheran Standard was the official magazine of the ALC.

The ALC's immigrant heritage came mostly from Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and its demographic center was in the Upper Midwest (with especially large numbers in Minnesota). Theologically, the church was influenced by pietism. It was slightly more conservative than the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), with which it would eventually merge, and officially taught biblical inerrancy in its constitution (although seldom enforced it by means of heresy trials and the like).

The ALC was a founding member of the Lutheran Council in the United States of America, which began on January 1, 1967. The ALC cooperated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in many ventures, but ties would end when talks concerning a merger with the Lutheran Church in America began.

In 1966, Canadian congregations of the ALC formed the autonomous Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada (ELCC), which in 1986 joined with the Lutheran Church in America – Canada Section (LCA-CS) to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).

The ALC began ordaining women as ministers in December 1970, when the Rev. Barbara Andrews became the second woman ordained as a Lutheran minister in the United States. The first Native American woman to become a Lutheran minister in the United States, the Rev. Marlene Whiterabbit Helgemo, was ordained by the ALC in July 1987.