ELCA

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or ELCA is the largest Lutheran body in the United States, with 3.6 million full members in 2005, in 10,549 churches with 17,665 clergy. The 7900 Sunday Schools have an enrollment of 640,000. The bishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, Rev. Mark S. Hanson was reelected in 2007 for another six-year term as ELCA presiding bishop.

The ELCA was created in 1987 after a very complex set of mergers that brought together most of the nation's Lutherans. They came primarily from German and Scandinavian immigrant stock. Two conservative bodies, The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod did not join.

Though aware that some same-sex couples receive blessings from pastors and that some openly gay or lesbian pastors are ordained, delegates to the biennial assembly of the ELCA in 2005 declined to authorize either practice, even on a provisional basis. The vote to allow gay and lesbian pastors fell far short of the two-thirds majority required for a policy change--490 yes votes to 503 no votes. In 2007 the Churchwide Assembly voted not to overturn the denomination's rules that bar the ordination of noncelibate homosexual clergy.

Further reading

• Cimino, Richard P. Lutherans today: American Lutheran identity in the twenty-first century‎ (2003) 248 pages excerpt and text search
• Hofrenning, Daniel, Janelle Sagness, and L. DeAne Lagerquist. "Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium ed. by Corwin E. Smidt. (2004) pp 43-58.
• Kleingartner, Connie Marie. "Honoring Our Past, Embracing Our Future: A Qualitative View of First-Wave Women Clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America." PhD U. of St. Thomas, St. Paul 1999. 180 pp. DAI 2001 61(7): 2765-2766-A. DA9980866
• Trexler, Edgar R. Anatomy of a merger: people, dynamics, and decisions that shaped the ELCA‎ (1992) 286 pages