The American Lutheran Church (ALC) was a Christian Protestant denomination in the United States that existed from 1960 to 1987. Its headquarters were in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1960, the ALC designated Augsburg Publishing House (est. 1891), also located in Minneapolis, as the church publisher. The ALC began ordaining women as ministers in December 1970, when the Rev. Barbara Andrews was ordained. The first Native American woman to become a Lutheran minister in the United States, the Rev. Marlene Whiterabbit Helgemo , was ordained by the ALC in July 1987.
Formation
The American Lutheran Church was formed in 1960 out of the following Lutheran church bodies:
- American Lutheran Church, which was formed in 1930 from a merger of the German Iowa Synod (est. 1854) and the Joint Synod of Ohio (est. 1818). Note: The article "The" is used to note the ALC after the 1960 merger. The 1930-60 ALC did not use it.
- United Evangelical Lutheran Church , formerly known as the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, founded in 1896.
- Evangelical Lutheran Church founded in 1917 as the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America. The NLCA had been formed from a merger of the Hauge Synod (est. 1876), the Norwegian Synod (est. 1853) and the United Norwegian Lutheran Church (est. 1890). The NLCA changed its name in 1946 to the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
- The Lutheran Free Church, which had broken away from the United Norwegian Lutheran Church in 1897, joined the ALC in 1963. (Forty Lutheran Free Church congregations chose not to participate in the merger, and instead formed the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, today the fourth-largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S. with over 230 congregations )
Merger
On 1 January 1988, the American Lutheran Church ceased to exist when it, along with the Lutheran Church in America and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, joined together to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. At the time of the merger, the ALC was the third-largest Lutheran church body in the United States, behind the Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. The ALC brought approximately 2.25 million members into the ELCA. Twelve ALC congregations that did not want to participate in the merger formed the American Association of Lutheran Churches, which has since grown to 87 congregations.
Bishops of the ALC
- 1960 - 1970 Fredrik A. Schiotz
- 1970 - 1974 Kent S. Knutson
- 1974 - 1987 David W. Preus
