Lutheran
The Lutheran family began when Luther's protest over indulgences and justification ended in his excommunication in 1521 and the Augsburg Confession of 1530. Its American branches on this tree run from the Missouri Synod of 1847 through the 1988 union that formed the ELCA and the departures that followed.
On the tree
Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2.
Bodies in this family
- Lutheran1517–1530
Luther's protest over indulgences and justification led not to reform within but to his excommunication in 1521; the confessional church took shape around the expelled movement with the Augsburg Confession of 1530. Direction of action: expelled, then organized.
Confessional Lutherans who refused the Prussian crown's forced Lutheran-Reformed union emigrated and, under C. F. W. Walther, organized a synod bound unconditionally to the Book of Concord — the conservative pole of American Lutheranism ever since.
The 1988 union of the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches — the consolidation of mainline American Lutheranism, and the tree's neatest case of a merger carrying a fragment of a rival family branch (the ex-LCMS AELC) into a new body.
Formed by congregations leaving the ELCA after its 2009 changes on sexuality and ordination, seeking a confessionally traditional Lutheranism distinct from both the ELCA and the LCMS; retains women's ordination and a decentralized structure.
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.