Family Trees

The "family trees" provided below are intended to help students of American Lutheran history make sense of the often bewildering array of Lutheran church bodies (or "synods") that have existed in this country. As some of the church body names indicate, the divisions were often based on the country of origin and ethnic background of the immigrant-founded synod. Differences in worship traditions and polity, in addition to the language used, also contributed to the "splintering" of American Lutheranism.

The following are MS Word 97 files. Double-click on the link to open or download the file.

Streams of Tradition Forming Luther Seminary

Danish-American Lutheranism

Forming the Lutheran Church in America

Norwegian-American Lutheranism, 1846-1917

Norwegian-American Lutheranism (Abbreviated)

Forming the American Lutheran Church

Forming the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Swedish-American Lutheranism

The Emergence of the Missouri Synod