Ukrainian Lutheran Church | |
---|---|
Type | Eastern Protestant |
Classification | Eastern Lutheran |
Orientation | Confessional Lutheran |
Scripture | Bible |
Polity | Modified episcopal polity with some powers reserved to the congregation as in congregationalism |
Associations | Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference |
Region | Ukraine |
Liturgy | Byzantine Rite |
Origin | 1933[1] Kyiv, Ukraine |
Congregations | about 25 |
Members | 2,500 |
Official website | ukrlc.org |
The Ukrainian Lutheran Church (ULC; Ukrainian: Українська Лютеранська Церква, romanized: Ukrayins'ka Liuterans'ka Tserkva), formerly called the Ukrainian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, is a Byzantine Rite Lutheran Church based in Ukraine.[2] The Eastern Christian denomination consists of 25 congregations within Ukraine, serving over 2,500 members and runs Saint Sophia Ukrainian Lutheran Theological Seminary in Ternopil in Western Ukraine.
The ULC is a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (CELC), a worldwide organization of confessional Lutheran church bodies of the same beliefs.[3]
A revised Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is also celebrated in Ukraine by members of the Ukrainian Lutheran Church. This Church was organized originally in 1926 in the "Galicia" region of Ukraine, which was at that time under the government of Poland. The liturgical rites used by the Ukrainian Lutherans reflected their Byzantine tradition. They did not use a Lutheran revision of the Latin Mass in their services, but instead they used a Lutheran revision of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. At its height, before the Second World War, the UECAC had numbered over 10,000 members. But the UECAC was suppressed by the Communists in 1939, and after the war it ceased to exist at the institutional level on the territory of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession was reorganized on the territory of Ukraine in 1994, as the Ukrainian Lutheran Church.