ABSTRACT
LUTHERANS In 1638, Swedish settlers of Fort Christiana on the Delaware River brought the faith of Martin Luther to the United States. Immigrants from Germany, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Slovakia swelled the ranks of believers in the next three centuries. In the twenty-first century, nineteen separate church bodies exist, demarcated along ethnic or confessional differences. Most belong to one of three major bodies: the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (5,038,006 members, 17,703 clergy), the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (2,512,714 members, 8,759 clergy), and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (411,295 members, 1,224 clergy). Other churches or groups of churches,
such as the Finnish Apostolic Lutherans, conduct their religious lives independently. Many traditional, informal practices enrich Lutheran congregations across this spectrum of beliefs.
