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| The LCMS, WELS, ELS, and all the other Lutheran groups came from Pietism, and they quickly returned to their roots. UOJ, Receptionism, and Church Growth/Emergent are all from Pietism. |
Church of the Lutheran Brethren? Chances are you haven’t heard of this small denomination. However, for me it has been all that I’ve known since infancy.
This denomination was founded in 1900 as five independent Lutheran congregations met in Wisconsin to form a new synod. These churches were not splitting from another synod or denomination but gathered together with the main purpose of compiling resources to send missionaries overseas.
Due to the focus on oversea missions, the denomination has about 116 churches in America and Canada, while there are approximately 1,600 congregations in Chad and Cameroon, 16 congregations in Taiwan and 29 in Japan.
For myself, I have often jokingly said that I am a spiritual mutt. I grew up in the Church of the Lutheran Brethren, my Father is a practicing Roman Catholic and my Mother has roots in the American Lutheran Church. Through my childhood Christian education and youth group, as well as my college years of working at an Evangelical Christian Bookstore, I developed what I’ve come to call “Folk Lutheranism.” My Folk Lutheranism was a mixture of Lutheranism and Fundamentalistic Finneyism, coated with Evangelicalism and saturated with Pietism. Needless to say, I spent a lot of my time in legalism as well as constantly taking my spiritual temperature to see if I loved Jesus enough. I virtually had no assurance.
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