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:
“It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realise that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“These South savannahs may yet prove battle-fields.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)