United Synod of the South is the name given to a historic Lutheran church body in the southern states of the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1863 during the American Civil War, southern synods of the General Synod formed the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Confederate States of America. In 1866, the name was changed to Evangelical Lutheran General Synod in North America. In 1876, it was again changed to Evangelical Lutheran General Synod South and finally in 1886 to the United Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the South.
In 1918 the United Synod of the South became part of the United Lutheran Church in America along with the General Synod and General Council. In 1962, the United Lutheran Church in America became part of the new Lutheran Church in America. On January 1, 1988, the Lutheran Church in America ceased to exist when it, along with the American Lutheran Church and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, joined together to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, today the largest Lutheran church body in the United States.
Most of the United Synod's churches were in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, three states that remain to this day the "heartland" for the ELCA in the Southeastern U.S.
Famous quotes containing the words united, evangelical, church and/or south:
“Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“He prayed more deeply for simple selflessness than he had ever prayed before—and, feeling an uprush of grace in the very intention, shed the night in his heart and called it light. And walking out of the little church he felt confirmed in not only the worth of his whispered prayer but in the realization, as well, that Christ had become man and not some bell-shaped Corinthian column with volutes for veins and a mandala of stone foliage for a heart.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“The cloud was so dark that it needed all the bright lights that could be turned upon it. But for four years there was a contagion of nobility in the land, and the best blood North and South poured itself out a libation to propitiate the deities of Truth and Justice. The great sin of slavery was washed out, but at what a cost!”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)