Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a mainline Protestant church headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA was officially formed on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three Lutheran church bodies. As of December 31, 2023, it has approximately 2.79 million baptized members in 8,498 congregations.

In 2025, Pew Research estimated that 1.4 percent of the U.S. adult population self-identifies with the ELCA; more broadly, 2% of US adults, or 5.2 million people, identified with the ELCA and mainline Lutheranism. It is the seventh-largest Christian denomination by reported membership and the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. The next two largest Lutheran denominations are the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) (with over 1.7 million baptized members) and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) (with approximately 340,000 members). There are also many smaller Lutheran church bodies in the United States, some formed by dissidents to the major 1988 merger. Its members are largely descendants of Scandinavians and Germans who emigrated from countries where Lutheranism was the state religion.

The ELCA belongs to the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and the Lutheran World Federation. It is in full communion with the Episcopal Church, Moravian Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America, United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church.