The 8.3 million Lutherans in the United States trace their origin primarily to immigrants from Germany and the countries of Scandinavia. Originally organized along national and language lines, American Lutherans now find themselves in eleven separate bodies, the largest of which is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) with over 5 million members and almost 11,000 churches. The second-largest body is the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, with a little over 2,600,000 members in almost 6,100 congregations. The other Lutheran bodies, much smaller and regionally and ethnically diverse, include the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the American Association of Lutheran Churches, the Apostolic Lutheran Church of America, the Church of Lutheran Brethren of America, the Church of the Lutheran Confession, the Conservative Lutheran Association, the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.

The ECLA is the fifth-largest Christian body in the United States. Its predecessor bodies date to the mid-eighteenth century. The Augsburg Confession provides the doctrinal standards of the church. It operates eight seminaries and twenty-eight colleges and universities.

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, founded in 1847, has 6,000 congregations in the United States. It operates the largest Protestant elementary- and secondary-school system in the United States, with 13,795 students enrolled. Its publishing arm, Concordia Publishing House, is the third-largest Protestant publisher. The Arch Books’ children’s series alone has sold more than 55 million copies. Two ministries reach out to blind and deaf people. One thousand volunteers in fifty work centers make Braille publications available for the blind. Of the eighty-five congregations for deaf people in the United States, fifty-nine are Missouri Synod Lutheran congregations.

Doctrinal disputes have marked Lutherans in America as they did the founder of the Lutheran branch of Christianity, Martin Luther. In the 1970s, for example, Missouri Synod Lutherans felt that their main seminary Concordia Theological Seminary was not teaching the belief that the Bible was without error in its original manuscripts. Tensions rose to the point that when three-quarters of the students boycotted classes, the president was removed. Many faculty and students then established what became known as “Seminex,” the Concordia Seminary in Exile.

On the other hand, a spirit of ecumenism has been blowing through the largest Lutheran denomination, the ELCA. It has entered into dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church over the basic theological issue of the Reformation, the doctrine of justification by faith. Lutherans and Catholics have come much closer to a mutual understanding on this issue as a result. Within the Protestant family, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has joined with the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ and the Reformed Church in America to recognize the validity of the ordination of each other’s pastors.