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Lutheranism

Christianity

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Origin 1517 to 1530

The oldest Protestant tradition, arising from the reform begun by Martin Luther in Germany in 1517. Its heart is justification by grace through faith alone, apart from works, received on the authority of Scripture alone, with Law and Gospel carefully distinguished. Lutherans confess the faith through the Book of Concord, above all the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and Luther's catechisms, and hold that Christ is truly present in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, a real presence they distinguish from both Catholic transubstantiation and the purely symbolic view of the Reformed. They keep two sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist, a liturgical worship, and the baptism of infants. Sharing the Reformation with the Calvinists yet differing from them over the sacraments and predestination, Lutheranism is strongest in Germany and the Nordic countries and among their descendants abroad.

Facts
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Trinitarian: one God in three persons 1Tradition: Christianity
Defining Doctrinal Position
Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) 1Tradition: Christianity
Trajectory
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
By 2013, LWF membership had grown to 72,268,329 across 142 member churches. 4
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
By 2015, LWF membership stood at 74,261,862 across 145 member churches. 4
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
By 2019, LWF membership had reached 77,493,989 across 148 member churches. 4
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
By 2023, LWF membership stood at 78,431,111 across 150 member churches, the federation's own most recently published figure, a steady rise across the whole fourteen-year table rather than the decline seen on several other bodies on this axis. 4
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
The Lutheran World Federation's own published membership table recorded 70,053,316 members across 140 member churches in 2009, the earliest year in its continuously updated table. 4
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2009-01-01 4
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2013-01-01 4
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2015-01-01 4
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2019-01-01 4
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2023-01-01 4
Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account
Church-Reported Rolls 4
Disputed
Adherents Today
78,000,000 to 95,000,000 5
The Lutheran World Federation's own count of its member churches' baptized membership stands at just over 78 million, the more conservative, directly-counted bound. Broader estimates of everyone belonging to the worldwide Lutheran tradition, including church bodies outside the LWF such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, run as high as 90-95 million.
Origins
Origin Period
1517 to 1530 1
Place of Origin
Wittenberg, in Saxony 1
Founder
Martin Luther (1483-1546), who did not set out to found a separate church. 1
History
Separation or Divergence
The Lutheran reformers held that they were reforming the western church rather than leaving it 1
Separation or Divergence
The Roman church: from Luther's excommunication and the Diet of Worms in 1521 to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 1
Date of Separation
1521 to 1555 1
Organisation
Governance
Episcopal: governed by bishops 1
The Nordic and Baltic churches retain bishops, some claiming historic succession
Governance
Synodal: governed by synods of clergy and lay delegates 1
Ordination
Restricted to men 1
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and other confessional bodies do not
Ordination
Varies between provinces or member bodies 1
Most European and North American Lutheran churches ordain women, from the 1940s onward
Relation to the State
Varies by Province 2
Lutheranism's establishment status differs sharply among the Nordic countries alone: Denmark's constitution names the Evangelical Lutheran Church the country's established church, supported by the state, in Section 4; Iceland's constitution makes the same declaration in Article 62, reaffirmed when a 2012 referendum kept a national church despite the drafting committee's own recommendation against it; Norway's parliament instead amended its constitution in 2012 to end the Church of Norway's status as the state's official religion, leaving it a state-supported national church rather than an established one; and Sweden formally disestablished its Lutheran state church in 2000.
Practice
Liturgical Language
The vernacular 1
Practice StatusSourced to the subject's own account
Lutheran doctrine, beginning with Martin Luther's own writings and the Book of Concord, has been published and openly debated since the sixteenth century, and Lutheran congregations generally welcome outside visitors and inquiry. 3
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Finances
Financial Disclosure RegimeSourced to the subject's own account
Lutheranism is not a single church but a worldwide family of independent national and regional church bodies descended from the sixteenth century Reformation associated with Martin Luther. Many, though not all, belong to the Lutheran World Federation, a communion of self-governing member churches rather than a single denomination with one treasury; others, including the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and other confessional bodies, hold no membership in it at all. Each Lutheran church body funds and discloses its own finances separately. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Lutheranism as a whole to disclose. 4
Giving
Standing Giving ExpectationSourced to the subject's own account
Global Lutheranism sets no single member-giving rule, and nothing above the denominational level has the standing to set one. The Lutheran World Federation, founded at Lund in 1947 and counting 154 member church bodies in 99 countries as of 2023, describes itself as a global communion of national and regional Lutheran denominations, coordinating shared work in ecumenical relations, theology and humanitarian aid rather than governing member churches' own internal practice. The divergence this leaves is well documented rather than merely inferred: the Church of Sweden's kyrkoavgift is a real, tax-withheld, mandatory membership fee with a genuine consequence for nonpayment, while the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's own stewardship materials describe giving as a voluntary response to grace carrying no adopted percentage or churchwide resolution, a customary expectation rather than an enforced one. A single Lutheranism-wide rule would have to hold across both of those bodies at once, and none does. 4
How the Expectation Is EnforcedSourced to the subject's own account
Customary Norm 4
Learn More
What the Quarrel Was Actually About

The popular version has Luther objecting to corruption. He did, but corruption was not the thing that made reconciliation impossible.

The indulgence controversy of 1517 was the occasion. An indulgence remitted temporal punishment for sin, and the campaign being preached in Germany was tied to a financial arrangement involving a bishopric bought on credit from a banking house. Luther's ninety-five theses attacked the practice as a theological error, not merely a racket: if God forgives freely, a payment cannot be part of the transaction.

Pulling that thread produced the real dispute. Justification, how a person comes to stand right with God, became for Luther the article by which the church stands or falls, and his answer was that it happens by grace alone, received by faith alone, with no human contribution at any point. Trent replied that this cut the nerve of the moral life. The two positions were formally reconciled in a joint declaration signed by Lutheran and Catholic representatives in 1999, a document each side reads rather differently.

Behind justification sat authority. Asked at Leipzig in 1519 whether councils could err, Luther said they could, and that removed the ground on which any negotiated settlement could stand. Scripture alone was left as the norm, though Lutheran practice reads alone permissively, keeping vestments, images, crucifixes and a liturgical shape that the Reformed swept away.

The confession came in 1530 at Augsburg, and it is a strikingly conciliatory document: it presents Lutheran teaching as the catholic faith properly stated, and lists the abuses corrected almost as an afterthought. It did not persuade anyone, and the Book of Concord of 1580 gathered it with the rest of the Lutheran symbols.

Governance by Whatever Was Left Standing

Lutheranism has no characteristic polity, and that is itself informative. Luther had no theory of church government that required a particular shape, so the shape was supplied by whoever held power where the reform succeeded.

In Germany that meant the territorial prince. The peace of Augsburg in 1555 settled the wars of religion on the principle that the ruler determined the religion of his territory, and Lutheran churches accordingly became state churches with the sovereign as their effective head and a consistory of clergy and lawyers running them. In Scandinavia the reform was carried out by the crown and the existing episcopal structure was simply retained, which is why Sweden and Finland have Lutheran bishops who claim historic succession while German Lutherans generally do not and do not think it matters.

The consequence is that Lutheran churches today are governed by synods combining clergy and lay delegates, with bishops or presidents or superintendents at the head depending on the country, and that Lutherans regard the question as one on which the gospel does not legislate. What they do treat as binding is doctrine: a Lutheran body is defined by which of the Book of Concord documents it subscribes and how strictly.

That is where the family divides. The Lutheran World Federation gathers the large majority of Lutherans worldwide. Outside it sit confessional bodies, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod in the United States, and their partners abroad, which hold to a stricter subscription, do not ordain women, and practise closed communion. The disagreement between them is not about polity at all. It is about how much of the confessions is still load-bearing.

Where It Is Now

Lutheranism is usually put at somewhere between seventy and eighty million adherents, which makes it one of the largest Protestant families. Where those people are has changed completely within living memory.

The historic heartlands are statistically hollow. Germany and the Nordic countries retain very large formal memberships, in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland the Lutheran church was until recently the established church and enrolment was close to automatic, but weekly attendance across the region generally runs in low single figures as a percentage. Memberships in Germany and Sweden have been falling by hundreds of thousands a year, much of it through formal resignation, which in Germany carries a tax consequence and is therefore recorded precisely.

The growth is in Africa. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus is now the largest Lutheran church in the world, with a membership in the many millions and still rising, and Tanzania, Madagascar and Nigeria hold further large bodies. That shift has already changed the internal politics of the Lutheran World Federation, because the African churches are broadly conservative on sexuality and ordination while the European and North American churches that fund much of the federation's work are not.

In the United States the pattern is a merger followed by a split. Most moderate and liberal Lutherans combined into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988; its 2009 decision to permit clergy in same-sex relationships led several hundred congregations to leave and form new bodies. The ELCA has lost roughly half its reported membership since its formation, from a combination of that departure, deaths and general decline.

Spread History
Lutheranism Spread Map Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Lutheranism Is Established in the German Territories, Germany, 1517 to 1555, EstablishedLutheranism Is Established in Sweden, Sweden, 1527 to 1593, EstablishedLutheranism Is Established in Denmark-Norway, Denmark, 1536 to 1537, EstablishedThe Book of Concord Unifies Lutheran Doctrine, Germany, 1580, EstablishedReorus Torkillus Organizes the First Lutheran Congregation in North America at Fort Christina, United States, 1640, ArrivedZiegenbalg and Plutschau Found the Danish-Halle Mission at Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu, 1706, ArrivedThe Archbishop Of Salzburg Expels Its Protestants, Austria, 1731 to 1732, SuppressedLutheranism Is Established in North America, United States, 1742 to 1748, EstablishedThe Prussian Union Forcibly Merges Lutheran and Reformed Churches, Germany, 1817, SuppressedThe Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, Organizes in Chicago, United States, 1847, EstablishedThree Synods Merge to Form the United Lutheran Church in America, United States, 1918, EstablishedThe Lutheran World Federation Forms in Lund, Sweden, Sweden, 1947, EstablishedThe Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus Forms in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1959 to 2023, EstablishedThe Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania Unites Seven Missions, Tanzania, 1963 to 2020, EstablishedThe Catholic Church and Lutherans Sign a Joint Declaration on Justification, Germany, 1999 to 2017, EstablishedThe Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation Commemorate the Reformation in Lund, Sweden, 2016, EstablishedThe Lutheran World Federation Elects Anne Burghardt Its First Woman General Secretary, Switzerland, 2021, Established

Marker size and shape show how established Lutheranism was there: a small filled dot for an arrival, a larger one for an established or dominant presence, and a hollow, distinct marker where it was suppressed or nearly disappeared, never simply absent.

View the Full Spread Map

  1. Lutheranism Is Established in the German TerritoriesGermany, 1517 to 1555, Established
  2. Lutheranism Is Established in SwedenSweden, 1527 to 1593, Established
  3. Lutheranism Is Established in Denmark-NorwayDenmark, 1536 to 1537, Established
  4. The Book of Concord Unifies Lutheran DoctrineGermany, 1580, Established
  5. Reorus Torkillus Organizes the First Lutheran Congregation in North America at Fort ChristinaUnited States, 1640, Arrived
  6. Ziegenbalg and Plutschau Found the Danish-Halle Mission at TranquebarTamil Nadu, 1706, Arrived
  7. The Archbishop Of Salzburg Expels Its ProtestantsAustria, 1731 to 1732, Suppressed
  8. Lutheranism Is Established in North AmericaUnited States, 1742 to 1748, Established
  9. The Prussian Union Forcibly Merges Lutheran and Reformed ChurchesGermany, 1817, Suppressed
  10. The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, Organizes in ChicagoUnited States, 1847, Established
  11. Three Synods Merge to Form the United Lutheran Church in AmericaUnited States, 1918, Established
  12. The Lutheran World Federation Forms in Lund, SwedenSweden, 1947, Established
  13. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus Forms in Addis AbabaEthiopia, 1959 to 2023, Established
  14. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania Unites Seven MissionsTanzania, 1963 to 2020, Established
  15. The Catholic Church and Lutherans Sign a Joint Declaration on JustificationGermany, 1999 to 2017, Established
  16. The Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation Commemorate the Reformation in LundSweden, 2016, Established
  17. The Lutheran World Federation Elects Anne Burghardt Its First Woman General SecretarySwitzerland, 2021, Established
Denominations of Lutheranism
Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

An early lay defender of Luther's teaching in print, publishing a widely reprinted open letter in 1523 defending it against the University of Ingolstadt.

He received the Augsburg Confession in 1530, defeated its princes in the field in 1547, and in 1555 conceded its legal existence within the empire.

Source Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700Diarmaid MacCulloch

Lutheran practice made the church organ the carrier of the chorale.

Source The Cambridge Companion to the OrganNicholas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber (eds.)

This source names Lutheranism directly: "Clifford Nelson's standard academic history of Lutheranism in North America identifies Reorus Torkillus, who arrived at Fort Christina on the Delaware River on 17 April 1640, as the first Lutheran..."

Reformation preaching supplied much of the rebels' vocabulary of appeal, though Luther himself condemned the revolt.

Lutheran territories were recognised at Augsburg in 1555; Luther himself was condemned by the emperor in 1521 and protected by his own prince.

Marburg, Cities

Luther and Melanchthon argued the Lutheran case at the colloquy and would not concede the fifteenth article.

Source Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700Diarmaid MacCulloch
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The German Christian movement took control of most regional Protestant churches in 1933 and installed a Reich bishop; the Confessing Church answered at Barmen in 1934.

This source names Lutheranism directly: "settle disputes that had arisen within Lutheranism after Luther's own death, and later collected into the 1580 Book of Concord."

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others

The Lutheran princes and Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus carried the Protestant cause; the peace confirmed Lutheranism's legal standing.

This source names Lutheranism directly: "Wikipedia's article on Lutheranism, a continuously edited tertiary source with no fixed publication year, accessed 2026-08-20."

Source Wikipedia, Lutheranism (source)Wikipedia contributors

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

Contained In

A Protestant confession.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Critiqued

Celibacy / Monasticism, Practices

The Augsburg Confession devotes two articles to this, one against compulsory clerical celibacy and one against monastic vows, and the monasteries of the Lutheran territories were dissolved.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Pilgrimage, Practices

Pilgrimage stands in the Augsburg Confession among the human traditions urged as though they merited grace, and is refused on that ground rather than as a custom.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Pope, Religious Roles & Titles

The Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, denies the Bishop of Rome coercive civil jurisdiction and confines episcopal power to preaching and administering the sacraments, the confessional basis of this tradition's rejection of papal supremacy.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Regulative Principle of Worship, Doctrines

This tradition holds the normative principle rather than the regulative one. Article XV keeps those church usages which may be observed without sin and which serve peace and good order, without requiring positive scriptural warrant for each.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Seven Sacraments, Practices

Lutherans count the sacraments by the presence of a command of Christ and a promise attached to an outward sign, which yields two, or three when absolution is counted.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Veneration of saints and Mary, Practices

The Augsburg Confession permits the remembrance of the saints as examples of faith and forbids their invocation, since Christ alone is the mediator.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Rejected Here

Papal primacy and infallibility, Doctrines

The Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, Of Ecclesiastical Power, denies that the office of bishop, including the papacy, carries power over civil government or over conscience apart from the Word, undercutting the claim of papal primacy over princes and believers alike.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Purgatory, Doctrines

Luther's Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, the Ninety-Five Theses of 1517, opens the Reformation's critique of purgatory by challenging the indulgence trade built on it and questioning the pope's authority over souls there; confessional Lutheranism went on to reject purgatory outright as an unscriptural invention.

Luther burned the bull publicly at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520, and the Lutheran churches date their separation from that refusal rather than from the excommunication that followed it.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Lutheran teaching subjects every church office to scripture and denies that any of them can establish an article of faith.

Lutheran teaching denied that monastic vows are meritorious or binding, and the houses in Lutheran territories were dissolved and their members released.

Monk, Religious Roles & Titles

The Augsburg Confession treats monastic vows at length and refuses them, holding that they were presented as a way of earning grace and that the Lutheran territories were right to dissolve the houses.

Nun, Religious Roles & Titles

Refused with the vows on which the office rests.

Papacy, Religious Organization & Structure

The Smalcald Articles of 1537 deny that the papacy is of divine right and treat papal claims to rule the church as a human institution that may be resisted.

Lutheran teaching holds that the church's authority rests on the gospel and not on an office that can define without it, so the definition is refused rather than merely doubted.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Pope, Religious Roles & Titles

The Lutheran confessional writings treat the claims of the papacy at length and refuse them, holding that the primacy claimed is of human and not divine right.

The Council of Trent, Councils and Synods

Lutheran churches refuse Trent, and above all its canons on justification, which anathematise the teaching that a sinner is accounted righteous by faith alone.

Lutheran churches refuse the definition of transubstantiation this council made binding, holding that Christ is truly present in the supper without the philosophical account of how the elements change.

Held Differently

The Real Presence in the Eucharist, Doctrines

The Formula of Concord, Article VII, Of the Holy Supper, affirms Christ's true body and blood are truly and substantially present, distributed and received in, with and under the bread and wine, a sacramental union, while explicitly rejecting the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation as an unwarranted philosophical explanation of the mode of that presence.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others
Additions to Daniel, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Additions to Daniel. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Additions to Esther, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Additions to Esther. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Book of Baruch, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Book of Baruch. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Book of Judith, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Book of Judith. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Book of Tobit, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Book of Tobit. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Books of the Maccabees, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Books of the Maccabees. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Letter of Jeremiah, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Letter of Jeremiah. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Prayer of Manasseh, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Prayer of Manasseh. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
The Apocrypha, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize the collected Apocrypha. Luther placed these books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Wisdom of Sirach, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Wisdom of Sirach. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Wisdom of Solomon, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Wisdom of Solomon. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Source An Introduction to the ApocryphaBruce M. Metzger
Bishop, Religious Roles & Titles

Lutheran churches keep bishops in many places, but the Augsburg Confession holds bishop and presbyter to be one office by divine right, differing in oversight rather than in order. The office is retained for good order, not because it is a third grade of ministry.

Charity, Virtues

Lutheran teaching holds love as the fruit of faith rather than the form that makes faith justifying, which reverses the order Rome gives the two.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Diocese, Religious Organization & Structure

Lutheran churches divide on this. Some kept dioceses and bishops, others replaced them with districts or synods under superintendents or presidents, and the office does not mean the same thing across them.

Faith, Virtues

Lutheran teaching holds faith not as one infused habit among three but as the trust by which a sinner is justified apart from works, so that love follows justification instead of forming the faith that justifies.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Gregorian Chant, Sacred Sound

Luther kept the chant rather than abolishing it and had it fitted to German, so the Deutsche Messe carries plainchant formulas sung to vernacular words. The melodies are the Roman ones and the language is not.

Source Western Plainchant: A HandbookDavid Hiley
Priest, Religious Roles & Titles

Lutheran churches ordain to a ministry of word and sacrament and teach the priesthood of all the baptised, so the ordained man is a pastor and the sacrificial sense of priest is refused.

Raphael, Archangels

Raphael is named only in Tobit, which the Lutheran Bible prints among the Apocrypha as useful and good to read but not as a ground of doctrine, so he is present in the tradition without being taught from it.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Saint, Religious Roles & Titles

The Lutheran confessions teach that the saints are to be remembered, that their faith is to be imitated and that they are not to be invoked, which keeps the commemoration and refuses the intercession.

Atonement, Doctrines

Christ's atoning sacrifice reconciling sinners to God is affirmed per the Augsburg Confession, Article III, Of the Son of God.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Atonement, Doctrines

Christus Victor. The cross is read as the defeat of sin, death and the powers rather than as the settling of a legal claim.

The Real Presence in the Eucharist, Doctrines

Sacramental union: the body and blood are truly present in, with and under the bread and wine, which remain what they are.

Excluded from Canon

1 Esdras, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize 1 Esdras. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

3 Maccabees, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize 3 Maccabees. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Psalm 151, Scriptures & Texts

Lutheranism does not canonize Psalm 151. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.

Founded By

Martin Luther, Figures

The confession, the catechisms and the name are his, though he objected to the use of his name for a church and preferred that believers be called simply Christian.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Holds Element

Luther's own text and tune, appointed on Reformation Day and treated as the emblem of the confession.

Source A Dictionary of HymnologyJohn Julian (editor)

The alb was kept at the Reformation. The Augsburg Confession treats vesture as a matter of good order rather than of faith, so nothing about it was abolished on principle.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

The altar was kept where the Reformed churches removed it, and Lutheran order retains the word as well as the furniture.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

The cup is given to the laity, which was one of the first practical changes of the Lutheran reformation and remains one of its marks.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Never abolished and never made general. The chasuble is ordinary in the Scandinavian churches and in high church parishes elsewhere, and unknown in others, without either practice being held to say anything about the sacrament.

The organ is central to Lutheran worship, and the chorale accompanied from it is one of the tradition's largest contributions to church music.

Ordinary street dress for Lutheran pastors in most churches of the tradition.

Luther was an Augustinian friar and read his own doctrine of grace as a recovery of Augustine's against the schoolmen who had claimed him.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The cross stands on the altar and the sign of it was retained in the Lutheran orders of service.

The Lutheran reformation kept the crucifix on and above the altar, on the principle that usages not contrary to scripture may be retained.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Held in Lutheran churches, though its content varies widely between them, from a liturgical assistant to a minister of service outside the congregation.

The bread and wine are held to carry the true body and blood, given and received in, with and under the elements.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Frankincense, Incense

Never abolished and never made general in Lutheran practice, and used at high festivals in the Scandinavian and high church parishes.

Gabriel, Archangels

Gabriel is named in the Gospel of Luke, so he stands inside the Lutheran canon without qualification and is preached on the Annunciation.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The black preaching gown was adopted widely in the German and North American churches, where it stood for the ministry of the word beside rather than against the retained vestments.

Kept in the Divine Service and sung in German, most often in the paraphrase All Glory Be to God on High.

Kyrie Eleison, Mantras

Kept at the opening of the Divine Service, in Greek or in the German Kyrie of the hymnals.

Kept at Vespers in German, and the subject of a commentary Luther wrote out and addressed to a young prince.

Michael, Archangels

Lutheran calendars retained the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, while the Augsburg Confession refuses the invocation of angels and saints and has the day preached as a witness to God rather than as an appeal to the archangel.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Pastor is the ordinary Lutheran title for the ordained minister of a congregation, naming the work of preaching and of shepherding rather than of offering.

The plate for the bread is kept with the chalice as part of the retained eucharistic vessels.

Sung and read, and one of the psalms Luther versified for congregational use.

Worn by the ordained in the colour of the season, and the most widely retained of the Lutheran vestments.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Kept in Luther's German version, Herr Gott, dich loben wir, and sung at services of thanksgiving.

The Lutheran confessions receive the Chalcedonian definition and build their teaching on the communication of attributes upon it.

Received in the Lutheran confessions for its defence of the single person of Christ.

The Lutheran confessions receive the creed of this council as the church catholic true confession of the Holy Spirit.

The Lutheran confessions open by affirming the decree of the Council of Nicaea, and Lutheran churches receive it as scripture faithfully summarised rather than as an authority standing beside scripture.

Received in the Lutheran tradition for the same reason, as the ancient churchs own repudiation of the view that the will begins the work of salvation.

Source Canons of the Second Council of OrangeSecond Council of Orangethe holders' own account

Luther taught in the university and preached in the town church, and he and Melanchthon are buried in the castle church whose door the ninety-five theses are traditionally associated with.

Critiqued Here

Lutheran teaching parts from the Institutes on the presence of Christ in the Supper and on the extent of election, so the book is read across a confessional boundary rather than within one.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Lourdes, Sacred Sites

Lutheran teaching honours Mary and refuses to call upon her: the Augsburg Confession allows that the saints may be remembered as examples and denies that they are to be invoked.

Summa Theologiae, Other Writings

Luther's disputation against scholastic theology of 1517 attacked the whole method this work perfected, holding that the reception of Aristotle had corrupted the doctrine of grace at its root.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Lutheran churches argued against the veneration the council prescribes while refusing the iconoclasm of the more radical reformers. Images stayed in Lutheran churches as teaching and remembrance, and the quarrel was with the honour paid to them rather than with their presence.

Turin Cathedral, Sacred Sites

Lutheran teaching treats relic veneration as without warrant and does not practise it, without the wholesale condemnation of the objects that the Reformed position carries.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

The Aaronic blessing is the benediction with which the Lutheran service ends, and it is the form most Lutherans would name if asked for the last words of worship.

Agnus Dei, Prayers

The Agnus Dei is sung during the distribution.

Almsgiving is treated as a fruit of faith rather than as a work that justifies, which is the whole of the Lutheran difference on the point.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Apocalypse, Doctrines

Article XVII confesses the end of the world and Christ's return in judgment, while condemning the expectation of an earthly kingdom of the godly before the resurrection.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Received among the three ecumenical creeds in the Lutheran confessional books.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The founding confession of the Lutheran churches.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Baptism, Rituals

Baptism is necessary to salvation and by it the grace of God is offered, and the Augsburg Confession condemns those who teach that children are saved without it.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Luther's instruction to remember one's baptism daily, drowning the old self and rising again, is the central Lutheran account of the Christian life.

The Benedictus is the gospel canticle of Matins.

Nordic and German Lutheran state churches, such as the Church of Sweden, retain the historic title bishop for regional oversight, a use the Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, allows without conceding papal jurisdiction.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Article XVII confesses that Christ will return to judge, will raise up all the dead, and will give eternal life to the godly.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

The churching of a mother was retained in the Lutheran church orders of the sixteenth century, stripped of any suggestion that she needed purifying.

Compline, Practices

Compline stands in the modern Lutheran books as the last office of the day.

Confession, Practices

Luther retained private confession and absolution and defended it in the catechisms, though the practice fell away in most Lutheran churches in favour of a corporate confession at the start of the service.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)
Confirmation, Rituals

Confirmation was kept as a rite of the church and denied the standing of a sacrament, since it has no command of Christ and no promise of grace attached to an outward sign.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Covenant, Doctrines

The covenant is read here through the distinction of law and gospel, the promise given to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ, rather than as a system of covenants ordering the whole of scripture.

Article I confesses one divine essence, creator and preserver of all things visible and invisible.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Lutheran churches ordain or commission deacons to a ministry of service, and some bodies, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, also roster deacons to word and service ministry distinct from the pastorate.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Fasting, Practices

Fasting is kept as an outward discipline that prepares a person to receive the sacrament, and is expressly denied any merit before God.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The last of the confessions bound into the Lutheran Book of Concord of 1580.

Funeral Rites, Rituals

The burial office was retained, with the prayers for the dead removed and the promise of the resurrection put at the centre.

Gloria Patri, Prayers

The Gloria Patri closes the psalmody in Matins and Vespers.

Grace, Doctrines

Grace as God's unmerited favor, received through faith and not merited by works, is the Reformation's material principle per the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, Of Justification.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Heresy, Doctrines

Article I condemns by name the heresies raised against the article on God, listing the Manichaeans, the Valentinians, the Arians, the Eunomians and the Samosatenes.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Holy Orders, Rituals

Ordination is to the one office of the ministry of word and sacrament, and no man may publicly teach or administer the sacraments unless he is rightly called to it.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Holy Spirit, Doctrines

Article I confesses the Holy Ghost as one of three persons of one divine essence, and Article V that the Holy Ghost is given through the word and the sacraments.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Article III confesses two natures, the divine and the human, inseparably joined in one person, one Christ, true God and true man.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Incarnation, Doctrines

Article III confesses that the Son of God assumed human nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Infants are baptised, and the Anabaptists are condemned by name in the Augsburg Confession for rejecting it.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Intinction, Practices

Intinction is practised in many Lutheran churches, though the ordinary manner is to receive the host and then the cup.

Justification by faith alone, apart from the works of the law, is confessed as the article on which the church stands or falls, per the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, Of Justification.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The proper distinction between law and gospel is native Lutheran doctrine and confessional teaching per the Formula of Concord, Article V.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others

Designed with Luther's own involvement specifically as a teaching image for Lutheranism, the tradition he founded, distinct from the broader Protestantism edge on file since this documents its origin within one specific reforming church.

Source Wikipedia, "Law and Gospel (Cranach)"Wikipedia contributors

The liturgical colours were retained, along with vestments, the church year and the historic lectionary, on the ground that such things are matters of freedom and not of salvation.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

The daily office was retained rather than abolished, reduced to Matins and Vespers and put into the language of the people.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Logos, Doctrines

Article III names the Word, that is the Son of God, as the one who took human nature.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

LWR is the joint relief and development agency of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, so linked to Lutheranism at the tradition level rather than to either single body.

Source Lutheran World Relief (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Bound into the Lutheran Book of Concord alongside the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord.

LWF World Service is the humanitarian and development arm of the Lutheran World Federation, a global communion of Lutheran churches, so linked to Lutheranism.

Source For Hope and a Future: LWF World Service 2024 Annual ReportThe Lutheran World Federation, World Service

Marriage is a civil estate blessed by the church rather than a sacrament, and Lutheran clergy marry.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

The Masoretic Text is the Hebrew textual basis of Luther's German Old Testament translation, paralleling the role the Vulgate plays for Roman Catholicism and the Septuagint plays for Eastern Orthodoxy.

Bach composed it within his own lifelong Lutheran vocation as Thomaskantor of Leipzig, whatever the text itself sets.

Source Mass in B Minor, BWV 232 (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Matins, Practices

Matins is kept in Lutheran service books, with the Benedictus as its gospel canticle.

Twenty-seven-book New Testament canon, shared across the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran traditions.

Nunc Dimittis, Prayers

The Nunc Dimittis is sung after the distribution, as the thanksgiving of those who have received. Its placement after communion rather than at Compline is distinctively Lutheran.

Sunday is kept for the sake of good order and of hearing the word, and the Augsburg Confession denies that the observance rests on divine law.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Omnipotence, Doctrines

Article I confesses God as of infinite power.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Article VIII of the Formula of Concord treats the communication of divine majesty, presence included, to the human nature of Christ. This is the point on which this tradition parted from the Reformed.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others
Omniscience, Doctrines

Article I confesses God as of infinite wisdom, and Article XI of the Formula of Concord grounds election in his foreknowledge of all things.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Article II teaches that since the fall of Adam all who are naturally born are born with sin, and condemns those who deny it.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Pastor is the ordinary title for ordained Lutheran clergy, called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, per the Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, Of Ecclesiastical Power.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Prayer, Practices

The Small Catechism teaches morning and evening prayer, grace at table and the Lord's Prayer as the shape of household devotion.

The Formula of Concord, Article XI, Of Election, teaches election unto salvation as gracious and certain in Christ while explicitly rejecting the Calvinist doctrine of a parallel predestination to damnation, holding that condemnation is caused by unbelief rather than a hidden decree.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others
Prophecy, Doctrines

Scriptural prophecy is received as the word of God and read as pointing to Christ, rather than as a continuing office in the church.

Redemption, Doctrines

Article III confesses that Christ was crucified and died to be a sacrifice not only for original guilt but for all actual sins of men.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Article III confesses that Christ truly rose again on the third day, and Article XVII the resurrection of all the dead at his return.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Salvation, Doctrines

Article III confesses that Christ suffered and died to reconcile the Father to us, and Article IV that we are received into favour for his sake.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Sanctification and good works are taught to follow justifying faith as its necessary fruit, though they do not merit favor before God, per the Augsburg Confession, Article VI, Of New Obedience.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Sola Fide, Doctrines

Article IV states that people cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits or works, but are justified freely for Christ's sake through faith. This is the article on which this tradition was founded.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Sola scriptura, scripture as the sole rule and norm of doctrine, is confessional Lutheran doctrine per the Formula of Concord's preface, which names scripture the only judge of all teachers and teachings.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others
Son of God, Doctrines

Article III is titled Of the Son of God and confesses him true God and true man in one person.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Source St Matthew Passion, BWV 244 (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Lutheranism follows the thirty-nine-book protocanonical Old Testament of the Hebrew canon, reviving Jerome's Hebraica veritas principle against the wider Greek Septuagint list used by Rome and Constantinople.

The Book of Concord opens by receiving the three ecumenical creeds in their Western form, and the Athanasian Creed printed there confesses the Spirit as proceeding from the Father and the Son.

The Fraction, Rituals

The breaking of the bread stands in the modern Lutheran books as a distinct action of the rite.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The kingdom is understood as Christ's spiritual reign through word and sacrament, held apart from the civil realm by the doctrine of the two kingdoms.

Article XVII confesses a final judgment at Christ's return, with everlasting joy for the godly and condemnation for the ungodly.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

The Small Catechism explains the Lord's Prayer petition by petition and sets it in the household as well as in the church.

Lutherans keep the liturgical shape but drop the language of sacrifice, teaching that Christ is truly present in, with and under the bread and wine, a presence distinguished from both transubstantiation and a merely symbolic view.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Luther argued from 1520 that every baptised Christian is of the spiritual estate, and the ministry is grounded in the call of the church rather than in a separate priestly order.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Kept on August 6 and, in much Lutheran use, also on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, where it closes the season and turns the year toward Lent.

Article III confesses Christ born of the Virgin Mary.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

The words of institution are the heart of the rite, and Lutheran theology locates the presence of the body and blood in Christ's own words rather than in a prayer of the church.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others

Article XI of the Formula of Concord holds God's foreknowledge of all things while denying that God is the cause or the author of sin and evil.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others
Theotokos, Doctrines

Article VIII of the Formula of Concord holds that Mary is rightly called the mother of God, on the ground of the union of the two natures in one person.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others

Article I confesses God as eternal, without body and without parts, and in the same breath as the creator and preserver of all that is.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Trinity, Doctrines

Article I of the Augsburg Confession receives the decree of Nicaea on the unity of the divine essence and the three persons, and condemns by name the errors raised against it.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Two Kingdoms is native Lutheran doctrine, God's two ways of ruling, spiritual through the Gospel and temporal through civil authority, per Luther's Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, 1523.

Vespers, Practices

Vespers is kept in Lutheran service books, with the Magnificat as its gospel canticle.

Where the Ninety-five Theses were published and where Luther is buried.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Position On

Amillennial, confessed in the Augsburg Confession against a future earthly kingdom.

Grace, Doctrines

Grace alone, received by faith alone, with the will passive in its own conversion. Signatory to the 1999 Joint Declaration.

Heresy, Doctrines

Heresy defined confessionally, by departure from the symbols the church subscribes.

Incarnation, Doctrines

The Chalcedonian definition, received in the Book of Concord.

Close communion in the confessional bodies, restricted to those who confess the same understanding of the sacrament.

Related To

Lutheran churches take their name and their confessional books from the first phase of the Reformation.

Source Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700Diarmaid MacCulloch

Spread Events

The founding episode of Lutheranism's own spread history.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Lutheran history between the Book of Concord unifying Lutheran doctrine in 1580 and Ziegenbalg and Plutschau founding the Danish Halle mission at Tranquebar in 1706, both already recorded here: Reorus Torkillus organizing the first Lutheran congregation in what would become the United States, on 17 April 1640 at Fort Christina on the Delaware River.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Lutheranism's confessional history between Lutheranism's establishment in Denmark-Norway in 1536 and the Archbishop of Salzburg's expulsion of his Protestants in 1731, both already recorded here: the 25 June 1580 publication of the Book of Concord, closing three decades of doctrinal dispute among Luther's theological heirs and fixing the confession that Lutheran church bodies still hold today.

Closes a 63-year gap since 1963's The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania Unites Seven Missions, the most recent event already on Lutheranism's map, with the Lutheran World Federation's own joint declaration ending its mutual condemnations with the Roman Catholic Church over the doctrine central to the Reformation split.

Source Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of JustificationLutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unitythe holders' own account

Closes a 27 year gap since 1999's The Catholic Church and Lutherans Sign a Joint Declaration on Justification, the most recent event already on Lutheranism's map, with the two communions' own leaders jointly opening the Reformation's five hundredth anniversary year together.

Lutheranism's African growth, previously entirely missing: the existing five events run only through European and North American establishment, with nothing after them.

Lutheranism's second African growth event in this same band, alongside Ethiopia's Mekane Yesus church: together the two are now among the largest Lutheran bodies anywhere.

Source Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Adds a specific, dated institutional milestone between Lutheranism's establishment in North America in 1742 and the Lutheran World Federation forming in Lund, Sweden, in 1947, both already recorded here: twelve pastors representing fourteen congregations organizing the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States in Chicago, the confessional body that became the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.

Closes a five year gap since 2016's Common Prayer service at Lund, continuing the map's oldest Lutheran thread not with a new place but with the federation's own leadership, for the first time in a woman's hands.

Source Lutheran World Federation (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Adds a specific, dated institutional milestone between Lutheranism's establishment in North America and the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus's 1959 founding already recorded here: the 1947 Lund assembly that reorganized the informal Lutheran World Convention into the permanent Lutheran World Federation, giving Lutheran churches worldwide a standing forum in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Adds a milestone in Lutheran history between Lutheranism being established in North America between 1742 and 1748 and the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, organizing in Chicago in 1847, both already recorded here: King Frederick William III's 27 September 1817 decree merging Prussia's Lutheran and Reformed churches into a single state controlled Evangelical Church.

Adds a milestone in American Lutheranism's institutional consolidation between the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod organizing in Chicago in 1847 and the Lutheran World Federation forming in Lund, Sweden in 1947, both already recorded here: the General Synod, General Council and United Synod of the South merging in New York City in November 1918 to form the United Lutheran Church in America.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Lutheran history between the German editions of the Book of Concord being published at Dresden and Leipzig in 1580 and the Archbishop of Salzburg expelling his Protestant subjects in 1731, both already recorded here: Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plutschau's landing at Tranquebar on 9 July 1706, founding the Danish-Halle Mission, the first sustained Protestant mission to India.

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. LutheranismView the Source
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
3. Wikipedia, Lutheranism (source)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
4. Lutheran World Federation (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationLead paragraph
Quote, Lead paragraph
The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) is a global communion of national and regional Lutheran denominations headquartered in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland.
View the Source
5. More Than 78 Million Lutherans in LWF Member Churches (Lutheran World Federation)
The Lutheran World Federation, The Lutheran World Federation, 2024View the Source
The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes
Philip Schaff, Harper and Brothers, 1877Introduction
Quote, Introduction
A Creed, or Rule of Faith, or Symbol, is a confession of faith for public use, or a form of words setting forth with authority certain articles of belief, which are regarded by the framers as necessary for salvation, or at least for the well-being of the Christian Church.
View the Source
Church Vestments: Their Origin and Development
Herbert Norris, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1949
A Dictionary of Hymnology
John Julian (editor), John Murray, 1892View the Source
The Formula of Concord
Jakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others, 1577View the Source
Canons of the Second Council of Orange
Second Council of Orange, J. Thornton, 529the holders' own accountView the Source
The Marburg Articles
Martin Luther and the participants of the Marburg Colloquy, 1529the holders' own account
Western Plainchant: A Handbook
David Hiley, Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press), 1993View the Source
The Augsburg Confession
Philipp Melanchthon, 1530Articles 4, 7 and 10
Quote, Articles 4, 7 and 10
Justification by faith, the marks of the church, and the Lutheran account of the real presence.
View the Source
Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025Regional series
Quote, Regional series
The growth of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa against decline in Europe frames the current Lutheran distribution.
View the Source
Apostolic Lutheran Church of America (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaObjects and Practices of This Tradition: Apostolic Lutheran Church of AmericaView the Source
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationBranches: Evangelical Lutheran Church of FinlandView the Source
Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaObjects and Practices of This Tradition: Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of AmericaView the Source
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