Lutheran
Lutheran · 1517–1530 · Germany, Scandinavia; worldwide
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.
Lutheran was formed between 1517 and 1530, as a process rather than a single event. Lutheran continues today. Lutheran's institutional line runs back through Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.
Between the post-apostolic church and Lutheran stand 2 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- Between 1517 and 1530, as a process rather than a single event
- Family
- Lutheran
- Region
- Germany, Scandinavia; worldwide
- Key figures
- Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon
- Cause tags
- Doctrine, Governance
- Also known as
- Evangelical (Lutheran)
What it separated from
- Separated from Roman Catholicism.
Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Schwarzenau Brethren, Church of Pakistan, Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Evangelical United Brethren Church.
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.
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.