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Evangelical Lutheran

Evangelical Lutheran proper noun: lutheran (of or pertaining to the theology of Martin Luther or its followers).

Proper noun

Evangelical Lutheran

  1. Lutheran (of or pertaining to the theology of Martin Luther or its followers)
    • Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Origin of Evangelical Lutheran

Combination of "Evangelical", which was Martin Luther's adjectival term for his own theology and "Lutheran", which was originally a derogatory adjectival term, soon a noun with repeated usage, used to describe his followers' endorsement of Luther. Later, when the movement split into fractions, the term "Evangelical Lutheran" came to mean the followers of Luther's original teaching. From there it has gradually been shortened back to "Lutheran" as general descriptor for Luther's latter followers, but "Evangelical Lutheran" is still widely used by certain Lutheran church denominations.

Questions about Evangelical Lutheran

What does Evangelical Lutheran mean?
Evangelical Lutheran means lutheran (of or pertaining to the theology of Martin Luther or its followers).
What part of speech is Evangelical Lutheran?
Evangelical Lutheran is a proper noun.

Words near Evangelical Lutheran in the dictionary

  1. evangeliary
  2. evangelic
  3. evangelical
  4. evangelical counsel
  5. evangelical counsels
  6. Evangelical Lutheran
  7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
  8. evangelicalism
  9. evangelicalisms
  10. evangelicality
  11. evangelicalization

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Evangelical Lutheran (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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