Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia
Protestant-oriented Christian denomination in Latvia
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (Latvian: Latvijas Evaņģēliski luteriskā baznīca, or LELB) is a Lutheran Protestant church in Latvia. Latvia's Lutheran heritage dates back to the Reformation. The church reports having 250,000 members according to the Lutheran World Federation.
History
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (ELCL) sees itself as being in a continuous tradition of Christian life since the earliest recorded Christian missionary work in the area, in the 12th century. Latvia was highly influenced by the Reformation and the style of Lutheran church which emerged followed the more Protestant German-type Lutheranism. Riga became one of the first cities to actively support Luther's ideas. The spiritual renewal touched only the German-speaking ruling minority (almost all the pastors were German). The Latvian-speaking majority remained largely alienated from the church up to the beginning of the 18th century when the pietistic movement of Moravian (Herrnhut) Brethren reached Latvia. But the German domination of the Lutheran Church continued throughout the 19th century.
Until the 20th century, the Latvian Lutheran Church was part of the church organizations of Sweden or Russia.
The public source identifies “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia” as protestant-oriented Christian denomination in Latvia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Evangelical, Lutheran and Church.
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This entry incorporates text from “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.