Origin from 1947
From 30 June to 6 July 1947, two hundred voting delegates representing forty seven Lutheran church bodies from twenty six countries met in Lund, Sweden, under the theme The Lutheran Church in the World Today. The assembly reorganized the informal Lutheran World Convention, which had held conventions in 1923, 1929 and 1935, into a permanent body, the Lutheran World Federation, and adopted a thirteen article constitution setting out its name, doctrinal basis and purposes. Delegates elected Anders Nygren, a Swedish theologian from the University of Lund, as the Federation's first president, and confirmed Sylvester C. Michelfelder of the United States, who had served as acting executive secretary, in that post. Meeting in a country that had escaped the devastation of the Second World War, the assembly gave Lutheran churches scattered by war and displacement a permanent forum for coordinating theology, relief work and the exchange of students and pastors.
Facts
Dates
StatusEstablished marks the 1947 Lund assembly that founded the permanent Lutheran World Federation, not Lutheranism's earlier national establishments in North America, Scandinavia and the German territories already recorded here, nor the Federation's later ecumenical milestones with Rome already on this timeline. Cross-Tradition Connections
Occurred In
Spread Event Of
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.
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