page_title: Lutheranism
section_title: Western Hemisphere and Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Lutheranism / Practices / Polity / Western Hemisphere and Australia
caption_attribution_description: Hymnal of the Lutheran Pennsylvania Ministerium
context_page_description: Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism that identifies with the teachings of Martin Luther, a 16th-century German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation. The reaction of the government and church authorities to the international spread of his writings, beginning with the 95 Theses, divided Western Christianity. During the Reformation Lutheranism became the state religion of numerous states of Northern Europe, especially in northern Germany and the Nordic countries, Lutheran clergy became civil servants and the Lutheran churches became part of the state.
  The split between the Lutherans and the Catholics was made public and clear with the 1521 Edict of Worms: the edicts of the Diet condemned Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas, subjecting advocates of Lutheranism to forfeiture of all property, half of the seized property to be forfeit to the imperial government and the remaining half forfeit to the party who brought the accusation.
context_section_description: During the period of the emigration, Lutherans took their existing ideas about polity with them across the ocean, though with the exception of the early Swedish Lutherans immigrants of the New Sweden colony who accepted the rule of the Anglican bishops and became part of the established church, they now had to fund churches on their own. This increased the congregationalist dynamic in the blended consistorial and presbyterian type synodical governance. The first organized church body of Lutherans in America was the Pennsylvania Ministerium, which used Reformed style synodical governance over the 18th and 19th centuries. Their contribution to the development of polity was that smaller synods could in turn form a larger body, also with synodical governance, but without losing their lower level of governance. As a result, the smaller synods gained unprecedented flexibility to join, leave, merge, or stay separate, all without the hand of the state as had been the case in Europe.
  During their 19th century persecution, Old Lutheran believers were left in a bind. Resistance to authority was disobedient, but upholding the true doctrine and right practice was also disobedient. Fortunately the doctrine of the lesser magistrate could be employed, whereby clergy could legitimately resist the state and even leave. illegal free churches were set up in Germany and mass emigration occurred. For decades the new churches were mostly dependent on the free churches to send them new ministerial candidates for ordination. These new church bodies also employed synodical governance, but tended to exclude Hegelianism in their constitutions due to its incompatibility with the doctrine of the lesser magistrates. In contrast to Hegelianism where authority flows in from all levels, Kantianism presents authority flowing only from the top down, hence the need for a lesser magistrate to become the new top magistrate.
  Over the 20th and 20th century, some Lutheran bodies have adopted a more congregationalist approach, such as the Protes'tant Conference and the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, or LCMC. The LCMC formed due to a church split after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America signed an agreement with the Episcopalians to start ordaining all of their new bishops into the Episcopalian Apostolic succession. In other words, this meant that new ELCA bishops, at least at first, would be jointly ordained by Anglican bishops as well as Lutheran bishops so that the more strict Episcopalians would recognize their sacraments as valid. This was offensive to some in the ELCA at the time because of the implications this had on the priesthood of all believers and the nature of ordination.
  Today, some churches allow dual-rostering. Situations like this one where a church or church body belongs to multiple larger organizations that do not have ties are termed "triangular fellowship." Another variant are independent Lutheran churches, although for some independent churches the clergy are members of a larger denomination. In other cases, a congregation may belong to a synod, but the pastor may be unaffiliated. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Wisconsin Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the Church of the Lutheran Confession, and the Missouri Synod, teachers at parochial schools are considered to be ministers of religion, with the latter defending this before the Supreme Court in 2012. However, differences remain in the precise status the status of their teachers.
caption: The Pennsylvania Ministerium published this 1803 hymnal.[240]
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