EKD - Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover
| Church family: | Lutheran churches |
|---|---|
| Based in: | Germany |
| Present in: | |
Membership*:About membershipStatistics of church membership, number of churches, congregations, pastors, etc. are those given by the churches and organizations, unless otherwise indicated. WCC member churches have various ways of defining their membership: state churches in which virtually every citizen is baptized and thus counted as a member, churches which include in their membership persons who are baptized but not actively participating, churches in which only adult baptized or communicant members are counted, etc. No attempt has been made to classify the membership figures in such categories, because agreed upon indicators to so do not exist. | 3142685 |
| Pastors: | 2004 |
| Congregations: | 1561 |
| Member of: | WCC (1950) |
| Associate member of: | |
| Website: | http://www.evlka.de |
During the reign of Charlemagne (d. 814), Anglo-Saxon missionaries assisted in the conversion of the people of Lower Saxony. Many of today's parish boundaries are from medieval times. The introduction of the Reformation began in 1527. Moderating influences kept Hanoverian Lutheranism from extreme confessionalism. Pietism gained little following. The Enlightenment proved more popular, but eventually yielded to the religious awakenings of the early 19th century. Hanover's contemporary contribution to world Lutheranism and to the modern ecumenical movement is best summed up in the dynamic career of Bishop Hanns Lilje (1899-1977), a president of the WCC from 1968-75.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover combines episcopal, synodal and other elements in its organization. The constitution, first adopted in 1922 and most recently amended in 1965, provides for several central church organs. The bishop is the spiritual (clerical) head of the church. He or she chairs the senate, the church council, and the bishop's council which is made up of the district superintendents of the church's eight districts. The church maintains official relations with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church of South India, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Siberia, Ural and the Far East, the Evangelical Church of France, the Lutheran Church of Great Britain and Lutheran churches in several other countries.
