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:
“The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in action ... a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“It’s better to sit in the bar and think of church than to sit in church and to think of the bar.”
—Swedish proverb, trans. by Verne Moberg.
“Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.”
—Thomas Buchanan Read (1822–1872)