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:
“Some of the offers that have come to me would never have come if I had not been President. That means these people are trying to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a former President of the United States. I can’t make that kind of use of the office.... I can’t do anything that might take away from the Presidency any of its dignity, or any of the faith people have in it.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“What if the Church and the State
Are the mob that howls at the door!
Wine shall run thick to the end,
Bread taste sour.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“... while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)