Why the FELSISA has no fellowship with the Lutheran World Federation (LWF)

In a report by the previous secretary of the ILC, Albert Collver wrote the following: “Although the ILC is celebrating its silver anniversary in 2018, the roots of the ILC go back much further and involved several name changes.

The idea for an organization similar to the ILC goes back even further as a way to draw church bodies and territorial churches into an organization that could help support one another to re-main Lutheran in the face of unionism. At least in the territories that would become modern day Germany, after the Religious Peace of Augsburg 1555, the principle cuius regio, eius religio (“whoever’s realm it is, it is his religion”) was adopted as law.

The result of this law was that the religion of the ruler was the religion of the territory. Eventually, this led to the created a large number of territorial churches in the German lands. Each territorial church body would have its own agenda and liturgy, and after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), either a Reformed or Lutheran Confession. In 1817, Frederick William III of Prussia merged the Lutheran and Reformed churches in his territory into one administrative unit. Eventually, a common agenda, church order, and liturgy were produced for the union of Reformed and Lutheran churches.

Particularly onerous to those who practiced “exclusive Lutheranism,” that is, those who wanted to confess that the Scriptures were the Word of God and an unreserved acceptance of the Lutheran Confessions, was the alteration of the Words of Institution in the liturgy to reflect a Reformed understanding (a symbolic or spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Supper).

The Prussian Union was a line of demarcation between what would become “inclusive Lutheranism” and “exclusive Lutheranism.” Inclusive Lutheranism sought bring churches together with differing confessions (such as Reformed and Lutheran) provided that the “gospel was preached” and the “sacraments were administrated” according to an abstract interpretation of Augsburg Confession, Article VII.

This form of inclusive Lutheranism would become the dominate motif in what would become the Lutheran World Federation founded in 1947. In Germany those, who held to an “exclusive” form of Lutheranism called themselves Old Lutherans, and they resisted efforts of unionizing the Lutheran church. The Old Lutherans contributed to the formation of the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (SELK) in Germany, and also contributed to the Franconian and Saxon migrations to the United States and the 1847 formation of the church later known as The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Both SELK and the LCMS presently are members of the ILC.

In the intervening years between the Prussian Union in 1817 and the formation of the Lutheran World Federation in 1947, the Old Lutherans, those who practice exclusive Lutheranism in both Europe and the Americas sought ways to encourage, strengthen, and promote confessional Lutheranism.