International Lutheran Council | |
---|---|
Type | Association |
Classification | Protestant |
Orientation | Lutheran |
Theology | Confessional |
Chairman | Juhana Pohjola |
Secretary | Gijsbertus van Hattem |
General Secretary | Rev. Dr. Klaus Detlev Schulz |
Treasurer | Gerry Wiley |
Origin | 1993 |
Members | 7.15 million |
Official website | ilcouncil |
Part of a series on |
Lutheranism |
---|
![]() |
The International Lutheran Council (ILC) is a worldwide association of confessional Lutheran denominations. Member bodies of the ILC hold "an unconditional commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired and infallible Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book of Concord as the true and faithful exposition of the Word of God." The member church bodies are not required to be in church-fellowship with one another, though many of them are.
The organization was constituted in 1993 at a council held in Antigua, Guatemala, although it traces its roots back to theological conferences held in various locations during the 1950s and 1960s. It is to be distinguished from the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference.
The council has 59 participating churches as of 2022.[1] Among its larger members are the Malagasy Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil, and the Lutheran Church – Canada. Altogether, approximately 7,150,000 adherents belong to ILC member churches.[2]
The council's chairman is Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland.[3] The executive secretary is Albert B. Collver III of the LCMS. Delegates to the ILC meet every two years.
The organization has not accepted the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, an agreement reached by the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) and the Lutheran World Federation, in 1999. However, the ILC has been involved in dialogue with the PCPCU, with a final report released on 30 November 2021.[4][5]
ILC Welcomes
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).