Lutheran Church in America

The Lutheran Church in America (LCA) was an American and Canadian Lutheran church body that existed from 1962 to 1987. It was headquartered in New York City and its publishing house was Fortress Press.

The LCA's immigrant heritage came mostly from Germany, Sweden, present-day Czech Republic, present-day Slovakia, Denmark, and Finland, and its demographic focus was on the East Coast (centered on Pennsylvania), with large numbers in the Midwest and some presence in the Southern Atlantic states.

Theologically, the LCA was often considered the most liberal and ecumenical branch in American Lutheranism, although there were tendencies toward conservative pietism in some rural and small-town congregations. In church governance, the LCA was clerical and centralized, in contrast to the congregationalist or "low church" strain in American Protestant Christianity. With some notable exceptions, LCA churches tended to be more formalistically liturgical than their counterparts in the American Lutheran Church (ALC). Among the Lutheran churches in America, the LCA was thus the one that was most similar to the established Lutheran churches in Europe.

The LCA ordained the country's first female Lutheran pastor, Elizabeth Platz, in November 1970. In 1970, a survey of 4,745 Lutheran adults by Strommen et al., found that 75 percent of LCA Lutherans surveyed agreed that women should be ordained, compared with 66 percent of ALC members and 45 percent of Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod members.^[1]

It subsequently ordained the nation's first female African-American Lutheran pastor (Earlean Miller in 1979), first Latina Lutheran pastor (Lydia Rivera Kalb in 1979), and first female Asian-American Lutheran pastor (Asha George-Guiser in 1982).

The LCA was a founding member of the Lutheran Council in the United States of America, which began on January 1, 1967.