Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches

The Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) was a U.S. church body that existed from 1976 through the end of 1987. The AELC formed when approximately 250 dissident congregations withdrew from the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) in 1976, and ended as an independent body when it became part of the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) on January 1, 1988.

The AELC's forerunner was Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM), a liberal caucus within the LCMS that opposed the Synod's more conservative turn in the early and mid-1970s. ELIM was formed when, in the wake of conservative victories at the Missouri Synod's 1973 convention, liberal opponents had convened a conference in Chicago to chart out strategies. The conference's 800 delegates promised moral and financial support for church members who faced pressure due to their opposition to LCMS convention actions, and established ELIM as a network and rallying point for the moderate wing of the LCMS.

In 1974, the LCMS was rent by the Seminex controversy, a walk-out by the vast majority of students and faculty at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, that led to the establishment of a new, rival "Seminary in Exile." In 1975, presidents of eight LCMS districts were threatened with removal from office for allowing their congregations to ordain Seminex graduates as ministers, and four were removed in April 1976. In the wake of the Seminex controversy and these removals, a movement to leave the Synod took shape among dissident congregations and church officials, most of them members of ELIM. The largest number of departures came from the LCMS's non-geographical English District, which had joined the LCMS in 1911. Upon leaving the Missouri Synod, the English District leadership and many of its congregations immediately reconstituted the pre-1911 English Synod, and a number of officials and congregations from other districts followed their lead by exiting the LCMS.

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