Lutheran Beliefs and Denominations

1. What Do Lutherans Believe?

Lutherans believe that God justifies the sinner by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, and that this is the article on which the Church stands or falls. Scripture is the only source and norm of Christian doctrine, and the confessional writings gathered in the Book of Concord of 1580 state how Lutherans understand it. Lutherans baptise infants and hold that baptism works forgiveness and new birth, retain private confession and absolution, and confess that the true body and blood of Christ are given with the bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper.

Lutheranism takes its name from Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and professor of biblical theology at Wittenberg, though Lutherans have always been uneasy with the label and their confessions prefer the word evangelical. The tradition began as a reform movement inside the Western Church and became a separate communion when reconciliation failed in the 1530s and 1540s. Our guide to the Reformation and its causes tells that sixteenth-century story in full, and this page stays with what Lutherans teach and how their churches are organised now.

The Two Governing Distinctions

Two distinctions organise almost everything in Lutheran theology, and a Catholic reader who grasps them will follow the rest easily.

• Law and Gospel. Every word of Scripture functions in one of two ways. The Law commands, accuses and exposes sin. The Gospel announces what God has done in Christ and gives what it announces. Lutheran preaching is trained to keep the two from being mixed, so that the Law is never softened into advice and the Gospel is never turned into a new set of conditions.
• The theology of the cross. Luther's Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 set the theology of the cross against a theology of glory. God is found where he has promised to be found, hidden under the opposite of what human reason expects: in a crucified man, in water, in bread and wine, in a word of forgiveness spoken by another sinner. Lutheran spirituality is built around external, physical means of grace rather than inward experience.

2. Justification: Imputed Righteousness and Infused Grace

Justification is the doctrine that made Lutheranism a separate church, and the sixteenth-century disagreement had a precise shape. Lutherans teach that justification is a declaration made by God about the sinner. The Catholic Church teaches that justification is a declaration that also makes the sinner righteous. Everything else in the argument follows from that one difference.

The Lutheran Position, Stated by Lutherans

The Augsburg Confession, presented to Emperor Charles V in 1530, puts it in a few lines in Article IV: people cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits or works, and they are justified freely for Christ's sake through faith, when they believe that they are received into favour and that their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake. Faith itself is God's gift, worked by the Holy Spirit through the Word and the sacraments.

The righteousness by which the Christian stands before God is therefore Christ's own righteousness, credited or imputed to the believer from outside himself. Lutherans call this an alien righteousness, meaning that it belongs to another and is reckoned to us, and they anchor the word in Genesis 15:6 and its use by St Paul.

From this follows the formula simul iustus et peccator, at the same time righteous and a sinner. The Christian is fully righteous in God's judgement because Christ's righteousness covers him, and remains in himself a sinner until death. Good works follow justification necessarily as fruit, and they contribute nothing to it. Lutherans insist on this order because they hold that any work admitted into the ground of justification will end by driving the conscience back onto itself, which is the pastoral problem Luther set out to solve.

What the Council of Trent Taught

The Council of Trent answered in its Decree on Justification, promulgated in January 1547 at the sixth session. Trent affirmed a great deal that Lutherans also affirm: that no one can be justified by their own works without grace, that the whole process begins with God's prevenient grace calling a sinner who has no claim on it, and that faith is the beginning of human salvation and the root of all justification.

Trent then taught that justification is the passing from the state in which a person is born a child of Adam into the state of grace and adoption, and that it is the remission of sins together with the sanctification and renewal of the interior person through the voluntary reception of grace and gifts. The righteousness by which we are justified is God's gift poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit, and it truly inheres in us as ours (CCC 1989 and 1991 restate this). Canon 11 of that session condemns the position that people are justified by the imputation of Christ's righteousness alone, or by the remission of sins alone, to the exclusion of the grace and charity poured into their hearts and inhering in them.

Trent also rejected the Lutheran reading of the baptised Christian as still properly a sinner. The Decree on Original Sin of 1546 teaches that concupiscence remains in the baptised, that it comes from sin and inclines to sin, and that it is not truly and properly sin in those who are reborn. A Catholic can say that the justified still struggle, and cannot say that they remain simply sinners.

3. The 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was signed in Augsburg on 31 October 1999 by representatives of the Lutheran World Federation and of the Catholic Church through the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Its central claim is stated in paragraph 40: the two sides are able to articulate a consensus in the basic truths of the doctrine of justification. Paragraph 41 states the consequence: in light of that consensus, the doctrinal condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to the teaching of the other partner as it is presented in the Declaration.

This document is routinely reported inaccurately, in both directions. Some accounts say the Reformation is over and the churches now agree. Others say Rome quietly abandoned Trent. Neither is what happened, and the text is short enough that the claim can be stated exactly.

What the Declaration Actually Says

The core confession in paragraph 15 is agreed by both sides: by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works. The body of the text then works through seven contested topics, and in each one it states the common confession first and then sets out how Lutherans and Catholics each explicate it. The differences of language, theological elaboration and emphasis are described as acceptable, in the technical sense that they no longer carry the church-dividing weight the sixteenth century gave them.

What It Did Not Do

• It did not repeal the Council of Trent. Trent's canons stand as canons. The Declaration says the condemnations do not apply to the teaching presented in the Declaration, which is a narrower statement and a deliberate one.
• It did not settle everything about justification. The Official Common Statement issued with the signing, and the Annex attached to it, were drafted precisely because the Catholic Response of 1998 from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Council had raised difficulties, above all over the Lutheran formula simul iustus et peccator and the standing of concupiscence in the baptised. The Annex works at that point rather than dissolving it.
• It did not touch the other disputed questions. Paragraph 43 says so directly: the consensus reached does not cover all that either church teaches about justification, and the remaining questions include the relationship between the Word of God and church doctrine, the authority of the Church and its teaching office, ordained ministry, the sacraments, and the relation of justification to social ethics. The Mass as sacrifice, purgatory, indulgences, Marian doctrine and the papacy are all outside its scope.
• It did not restore communion. Catholics and Lutherans are not in eucharistic fellowship, and the Declaration changed nothing about that.
• It did not bind every Lutheran. The Lutheran World Federation signed for its member churches. The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod rejected the Declaration, and a large group of German Protestant theology professors published a public protest against it before the signing.

Who Has Joined Since

The Declaration has been received beyond its two original signatories. The World Methodist Council formally associated itself with it in 2006, the Anglican Consultative Council affirmed it in 2016, and the World Communion of Reformed Churches associated with it in 2017. That gives the text a standing well past the Lutheran and Catholic conversation, and it also means that a document written for one dispute is now carrying weight in several.

4. Scripture Alone and the Lutheran Rule of Faith

Lutherans hold that the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only source and norm by which all teachers and teachings are to be judged. The Formula of Concord opens with that sentence, and it is the Lutheran meaning of sola scriptura. Scripture is the norm that norms, and the creeds and confessions are norms that are themselves normed, held to be true because they agree with Scripture rather than alongside it.

What Lutheran Sola Scriptura Is Not

Lutheran practice differs sharply from the individualist reading of Scripture common in later Protestantism. Lutherans confess the three ecumenical creeds, treat the church fathers as genuine witnesses, expect doctrine to be taught by called and ordained ministers, and bind their pastors by oath to a book of confessions written by other people. Luther's Small Catechism assumes a household in which the head of the family teaches a fixed text to children. Lutherans also retained many practices the Reformed tradition discarded, on the principle that whatever Scripture does not forbid may be kept.

Lutherans read the Bible with a canon within the canon, which is the doctrine of justification itself. Luther's judgement of a biblical book turned on whether it preaches Christ, which is why he ranked the Letter of James low and moved Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation to the end of his New Testament. Luther's German Bible of 1534 printed the deuterocanonical books in a separate appendix headed Apocrypha, under a heading describing them as books not held equal to Holy Scripture and yet useful and good to read, and Lutheran editions that carry those books still follow that arrangement. Our guide to the deuterocanonical books covers what was at stake in that decision.

The Catholic Response

The Catholic Church holds that Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition flow from the same divine wellspring and make up a single deposit of the Word of God, entrusted to the Church, and that the task of authentically interpreting that Word has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church, which is not above the Word of God but serves it (Dei Verbum 9-10). The Catholic reading of 2 Thessalonians 2:15, where St Paul tells the Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions they were taught by word of mouth or by letter, is the standard biblical entry point into this argument. Our guide to Sacred Tradition and Scripture works through it, and our guide to how the Bible was assembled covers the canon itself.

The Second Vatican Council was careful to praise what Lutherans and other Protestants do with the Bible rather than only to dispute their theory of it, observing that a love and reverence for Sacred Scripture, which might be called devotion, leads the separated brethren to a constant and diligent study of the sacred text (Unitatis Redintegratio 21). A Catholic who has watched a Lutheran congregation work through a Sunday text will recognise the description.

5. The Book of Concord: The Lutheran Confessions

The Book of Concord is the collection of confessional writings that defines what Lutheranism teaches. It was published on 25 June 1580, the fiftieth anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, to end fifty years of doctrinal conflict among Luther's heirs. A Lutheran church body is Lutheran to the degree that it subscribes to this book, and most of the differences between the American synods can be read off the way each one signs it.

What Is in the Book

• The three ecumenical creeds. The Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed stand first, placing the Lutheran confession inside the ancient faith of the whole Church.
• The Augsburg Confession (1530). Drafted by Philip Melanchthon and presented to the Diet of Augsburg, twenty-eight articles setting out Lutheran teaching and the abuses the reformers wanted corrected. Article VII defines the Church as the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the sacraments rightly administered, and states that agreement on those two things is enough for the true unity of the Church.
• The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531). Melanchthon's long defence answering the Catholic Confutation. Its Article IV on justification is the fullest Lutheran statement of the doctrine.
• The Smalcald Articles (1537). Luther's own summary, written for a council that never met him, blunt in tone and firm on what he judged non-negotiable.
• The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537). Melanchthon's argument that the papal claim to divine right primacy over the whole Church cannot be established from Scripture.
• The Small Catechism (1529). Luther's brief explanation of the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, baptism, confession and the sacrament of the altar. Still memorised by Lutheran children today.
• The Large Catechism (1529). The same material at preaching length, written for pastors and teachers.
• The Formula of Concord (1577). The settlement of the intra-Lutheran fights of the previous generation, issued in a short Epitome and a long Solid Declaration.

What the Formula Settled

The Formula of Concord resolved a series of disputes among Lutherans after Luther's death in 1546: whether good works are necessary for salvation, whether the human will cooperates in conversion, whether the Law still has a use for believers, whether ceremonies could be conceded to the emperor under duress, and whether Christ's body is truly present in the Supper against those who had moved toward Calvin's position. Its answers hardened Lutheran identity against the Reformed tradition and gave the Lutheran churches a stable doctrinal text they still use.

Sources for this section: the Book of Concord itself, in the standard critical edition of the German and Latin confessional texts, and the dates given in the documents. Article and confession titles are quoted as the confessions name them.

6. Baptism, Confession and the Lutheran Sacraments

Lutherans normally count two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession also names absolution as a third. A sacrament, on the Lutheran definition, is a rite instituted by Christ's own command with a promise of grace attached and a physical element joined to the word. Confirmation, marriage, ordination and anointing are kept as rites of the Church without that status.

Baptism

Lutheran teaching on baptism will surprise Catholics who expect Protestant symbolism. The Small Catechism asks what baptism gives and answers that it works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. Baptism is the water joined to God's word, and Lutherans hold that it does what the word says rather than signalling a decision already made.

Lutherans baptise infants and defend the practice on the ground that faith is God's gift rather than a human achievement, so an infant can receive it. The Augsburg Confession condemns the Anabaptists on this point in Article IX. Catholic and Lutheran teaching stand very close here, and the Catholic Church recognises Lutheran baptism as valid Christian baptism, which is why a Lutheran received into full communion is never rebaptised. Our guide to what baptism does covers the Catholic theology in full, and our guide to Baptist beliefs and practice sets out the believer's baptism position that both Lutherans and Catholics reject.

Confession and Absolution

Private confession survived the Reformation in Lutheranism. Luther kept it, praised it, and complained when people neglected it. The Small Catechism gives a form for it, and the Augsburg Confession states in Article XI that private absolution should be retained in the churches, while dropping the requirement to enumerate every sin, which Luther regarded as a burden on consciences that no one could discharge honestly. The absolution is spoken by the pastor in Christ's stead, on the authority of John 20:23.

In practice private confession fell into disuse across most of Lutheranism and survives mainly in a general confession and absolution at the start of the service, though confessional Lutheran parishes have been reviving individual confession. The Catholic Church holds that the sacrament of penance requires confession of grave sins by kind and number to a priest with valid orders, and our guide to confession and the sacrament of penance explains why. The gap here is narrower than most Catholics assume and wider than the shared vocabulary suggests.

7. The Real Presence Without Transubstantiation

Lutherans confess that the true body and blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received in the Lord's Supper under the bread and wine. The Augsburg Confession says this in Article X and condemns those who teach otherwise. Lutherans reject transubstantiation, and the reason is a judgement about explanation rather than a denial of the presence itself.

The Lutheran Position, Stated by Lutherans

Lutherans call their teaching the sacramental union. The body and blood of Christ are given in, with and under the bread and wine, and the bread remains bread while the body of Christ is truly there. Lutherans object to transubstantiation on two grounds. First, they hold that it takes a particular philosophical account of substance and accidents, drawn from Aristotle by way of the medieval schools, and elevates it into a required article of faith, when Scripture says only what is given and not how. Second, they read 1 Corinthians 10:16 and 11:26-28, where St Paul continues to call the consecrated element bread after the consecration.

Lutherans generally reject the term consubstantiation for their own teaching, since it names an explanatory theory of the same philosophical kind they were declining to make binding. Their concern is the reality received: the Formula of Concord teaches that even the unworthy and unbelieving receive the true body and blood, to their own judgement, on the strength of 1 Corinthians 11:27-29. That claim rules out any symbolic reading and marks the deepest Lutheran break with the Reformed tradition, which was Luther's own view from the Marburg Colloquy of 1529 onward.

Lutheran teaching classically ties the presence to the use of the sacrament, meaning the consecration, distribution and reception together. That is why Lutheranism historically did not develop Eucharistic adoration, processions or reservation for devotion, and why practice around leftover consecrated elements varies between synods. Lutheran churches treat the elements with reverence within the service and stop short of the Catholic conclusion that Christ remains present in the tabernacle to be adored.

The Catholic Position

The Council of Trent taught at its thirteenth session in 1551 that by the consecration a change takes place of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood, and that the Catholic Church has fittingly called this change transubstantiation. The Catechism repeats Trent's language directly (CCC 1376). The point of the word is to say that what is present after the consecration is Christ himself and no longer bread, while the appearances of bread remain.

The Catholic Church also judges that the ecclesial communities of the Reformation, Lutherans among them, have not preserved the reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, chiefly because they lack the sacrament of orders in apostolic succession (Unitatis Redintegratio 22). That is why intercommunion is not open, and it is a judgement about ordained ministry rather than about Lutheran sincerity or Lutheran reverence. Our guide to the Eucharist and the Real Presence gives the Catholic case at length, and our guide to holy orders and the ministerial priesthood covers the succession question.

8. Worship, Ministry and Church Order

Lutheran worship kept the shape of the Western Mass. Luther's reforms of 1523 and 1526 revised the liturgy rather than replacing it: he removed the canon of the Mass with its language of offering, put the service into German, restored the cup to the laity and filled the service with congregational hymns. What remains is recognisably the same order a Catholic knows, with the Kyrie, the Gloria, the readings, the creed, the Sanctus, the Words of Institution, the Agnus Dei and the distribution.

Hymnody and the Church Year

Lutheranism made congregational singing a central act of worship, and the chorale tradition running from Luther's own hymns through Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the tradition's largest contributions to Christianity as a whole. Lutheran churches keep the church year, the lectionary and the liturgical colours, and many keep vestments, the crucifix and the sign of the cross, which the Small Catechism recommends morning and evening. Our guides to the liturgical calendar and to the Mass cover the Catholic versions of the same inheritance.

The Ordained Ministry

Lutherans hold that the office of preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments is instituted by God, and that no one may teach or administer publicly without a regular call (Augsburg Confession, Article XIV). They also teach the priesthood of all the baptised, meaning that every Christian has direct access to God through Christ and may pray for others, without the office being dissolved into the congregation.

Lutheran churches differ over bishops. The Nordic churches kept the episcopal office and the Church of Sweden claims an unbroken succession of consecrations through the Reformation, while the German territorial churches replaced bishops with superintendents and consistories, and American Lutheranism organised itself into synods governed by conventions. The Catholic judgement, following the same reasoning applied to Anglican orders, is that the Reformation churches lost apostolic succession in the sense the Church means by it. Ordination of women is now practised across the Nordic churches, the German regional churches, the ELCA and the NALC, and rejected by the LCMS, WELS and ELS.

The Two Kingdoms

Lutheran social teaching runs through the doctrine of the two kingdoms. God rules the world in two ways: through the Gospel in the Church, by the Word and the sacraments, and through the civil order by law, reason and the sword, both of them God's own rule. Lutherans use the distinction to keep the Church from becoming a political programme and to keep the state from claiming the conscience. The doctrine has been criticised, including by Lutherans, for leaving German churches disarmed in the 1930s. The Barmen Declaration of 1934, drafted for the Confessing Church by Reformed and Lutheran theologians together, and the witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer stand as the counterargument from within German Protestantism, though several Lutheran regional churches entered reservations about Barmen at the time. Catholic social teaching approaches the same ground through natural law and the common good, treated in our guide to Catholic social teaching.

9. The American Synods: LCMS, WELS, ELCA, ELS and NALC

American Lutheranism is divided into synods that descend from different waves of European immigration and that now differ over Scripture, ordination and fellowship. The three largest are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and knowing which of the three a congregation belongs to tells you most of what you would want to know before walking in.

Membership figures in this section are each body's own reported statistics, published in its annual yearbook or on its own website, and all of them are declining year on year. National totals for American religious bodies are also tracked by the Association of Religion Data Archives and by the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)

The ELCA is the largest Lutheran body in the United States, formed in 1988 by the merger of the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. Its own reporting puts baptised membership under three million and falling. The ELCA ordains women, permits a range of views on the historical questions raised by modern biblical scholarship, and belongs to the Lutheran World Federation. It entered full communion with the Reformed churches in 1997, with the Moravian Church, with the Episcopal Church in 2001 through Called to Common Mission, which brought the ELCA into the historic episcopate, and with the United Methodist Church in 2009. In 2009 its Churchwide Assembly voted to allow clergy in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-sex relationships, and congregations left over that decision.

The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod (LCMS)

The LCMS was founded in 1847 by Saxon immigrants in Missouri under C. F. W. Walther, and it is the second largest American Lutheran body, reporting under two million baptised members. It subscribes to the whole Book of Concord as a correct exposition of Scripture, holds Scripture to be inerrant, ordains only men, and practises close communion, admitting to the altar those who share its confession. It does not belong to the Lutheran World Federation and works instead through the International Lutheran Council. Its internal fight over biblical criticism ended in 1974 with the walkout of most of the faculty and students of Concordia Seminary in St Louis, who formed a seminary in exile and then a church body that later merged into the ELCA. That episode explains a great deal of the distance between the two synods today.

The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS)

WELS was founded in 1850 by German immigrants in Wisconsin and reports something over three hundred thousand members. Its doctrine is close to the LCMS on Scripture, the confessions and ordination, and it differs on church fellowship, holding that fellowship in worship and work presupposes full agreement in doctrine and cannot be practised in stages. That principle led WELS to end its fellowship with the LCMS in 1961 over the Missouri Synod's cooperative arrangements with other Lutherans. WELS reports running the largest Lutheran parochial school system in the United States.

The Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS)

The ELS is small, reporting roughly sixteen thousand members, and it matters out of proportion to its size because of its history. It descends from the Norwegian Synod of 1853 and was reorganised in 1918 by congregations that refused to enter the Norwegian Lutheran merger of 1917, on the ground that the merger's compromise on conversion and election was doctrinally indifferent. It holds the same confessional position as WELS, is in fellowship with it, and runs Bethany Lutheran College and its seminary in Mankato, Minnesota.

The North American Lutheran Church (NALC)

The NALC was formed in 2010 by congregations and clergy who left the ELCA after the 2009 sexuality decisions, growing out of the reform network Lutheran CORE. It reports something over one hundred and forty thousand members, describes itself as Christ-centred, mission-driven, traditionally grounded and congregationally focused, holds to the Book of Concord, and ordains women. A second body, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, formed in 2001 on a more congregational model, took a further set of departing congregations.

10. Lutherans Worldwide: The Nordic Churches, the EKD and Mekane Yesus

Lutheranism is a world church whose centre of gravity has moved to Africa. The Lutheran World Federation, founded at Lund in Sweden in 1947 and based in Geneva, reports a membership of roughly seventy-seven million in its member churches, and the largest single member is Ethiopian. The historic European heartlands remain very large on paper and are contracting every year.

Figures in this section are from the Lutheran World Federation's own published membership statistics, from each church body's own reporting, and from the national statistical agencies named: Statistics Denmark, Statistics Norway and Statistics Finland publish annual membership shares for the folk churches, and the Evangelical Church in Germany publishes its own annual membership count.

The Nordic Folk Churches

Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland became Lutheran by royal decision in the sixteenth century, and their churches are folk churches: a person is baptised into the national church as an infant and remains a member unless they formally resign, usually while paying a church tax or membership fee. The Church of Sweden was for a long time the largest single Lutheran church body in the world, and its own statistics now report around five and a half million members, just over half the Swedish population, after its separation from the state in 2000. The Danish Folk Church remains constitutionally established, and Statistics Denmark puts membership at roughly seven in ten Danes and falling each year. The Church of Norway loosened its constitutional ties in 2012 and became a separate legal body in 2017. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Church of Iceland follow the same pattern.

Weekly attendance across the Nordic churches runs in the low single digits as a share of members, while the churches still conduct a large majority of funerals and a substantial share of weddings and baptisms. All five ordain women and all five have bishops. The Church of Sweden claims an unbroken line of episcopal consecration through the Reformation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland traces its episcopate to that Swedish line, which is why the Porvoo Common Statement, agreed in 1992 and signed in 1996, brought them into communion with the British and Irish Anglican churches.

Germany and the EKD

German Protestantism is organised in the Evangelical Church in Germany, the EKD, a federation of twenty regional churches. The EKD is a mixed body: some member churches are Lutheran, some Reformed, and some are united churches descending from the Prussian Union of 1817, which merged Lutheran and Reformed congregations in Prussia by royal order. The strictly Lutheran regional churches are also gathered in the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany. The EKD's own annual statistics reported under nineteen million members in 2023 and record losses of several hundred thousand a year, driven mostly by formal deregistration, which also ends the member's church tax liability. A small confessional body, the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church, stands outside the EKD and holds a position close to the American confessional synods.

Ethiopia, Tanzania and the Global South

The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, organised in 1959 out of Swedish, German, Norwegian and American mission work, reports well over ten million members and is by its own count and by the Lutheran World Federation's figures the largest Lutheran church in the world. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania is the next largest, and large Lutheran churches also stand in Madagascar, Indonesia, where the Batak Christian Protestant Church is the biggest, India, Papua New Guinea, Namibia and Brazil.

These churches are not junior partners. In 2013 Mekane Yesus declared that it was breaking altar and pulpit fellowship with the ELCA and the Church of Sweden over their decisions on same-sex marriage and ordination, a decision taken by the largest Lutheran church in the world against two of the oldest. Any account of Lutheranism written only from Wittenberg, Uppsala and Chicago is describing the minority. Our guide to Christianity in Africa covers the wider shift this belongs to.

11. Lutheran and Catholic Teaching Compared

The table below sets the two positions side by side on the questions that actually differ. Each column states the position as that church states it, and the Catholic column is the house position of this site.

Set against the whole Protestant landscape, that table shows an unusual amount of shared ground. Our side-by-side guide to Catholic and Protestant teaching takes the general comparison further, and our map of the Christian denominations places Lutheranism among the other families.

12. Where Things Stand Between Catholics and Lutherans

Catholics and Lutherans are separated Christians in a real though imperfect communion, and the Catholic Church says so in plain words. Everyone baptised with water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is a Christian, is joined to Christ, and belongs to that partial communion with the Catholic Church (CCC 838). The Second Vatican Council states that those born today into communities separated from Rome cannot be charged with the sin of that separation and are to be received with respect and affection as brothers and sisters (Unitatis Redintegratio 3).

What Has Changed Since 1965

The Lutheran and Catholic dialogue has run continuously since 1967 and has produced an unusually long shelf of agreed statements, on the Eucharist, on ministry, on the papacy, on justification and on the Church. The 1999 Joint Declaration is the most significant of them, with the limits set out in section 3 above. In 2016 Pope Francis travelled to Lund to open the commemoration of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation together with the Lutheran World Federation, the first time a pope has taken part in marking that anniversary. The common report From Conflict to Communion, published in 2013 by the international dialogue commission, is the standard text for what the two sides now say together and where they still stop.

What Has Not Changed

Catholics and Lutherans are not in eucharistic fellowship, and the reasons are the ones this page has laid out: the ordained ministry and apostolic succession, the Mass as sacrifice, the authority of the Church to settle doctrine, and the office of the Bishop of Rome. Ethical questions have opened new distances since the 1990s, and they have divided Lutherans from each other as sharply as from Rome, which is what the Mekane Yesus decision of 2013 demonstrates. Our guide to Christian unity and ecumenism covers what reunion would require, and our guide to the papacy and the office of Peter takes up the hardest single question.

What This Asks of You Now

Christ prayed on the night before he died that his followers would be one, so that the world would believe (John 17:21), and that prayer is unanswered while this division stands. The response asked of an ordinary Catholic is practical and immediate. Learn the doctrine well enough to state a Lutheran's position in a way he would recognise, stop repeating the caricatures in both directions, pray for unity, and see to your own life first. No one knows the day or the hour (Mark 13:32), and the account each of us gives will be personal.

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