Mission History

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa represents a union of numerous Lutheran churches in the region. These churches were begun by various European Lutheran mission agencies -- German, Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian -- during the 19th century. American Lutherans joined the mission work in Natal in 1844 by a Norwegian missionary, Hans Schreuder. This effort eventually spread to what was then Zululand. In 1927, the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (later part of The American Lutheran Church, an ELCA predecessor) took over support of the Schreuder Mission. In the following decades, a number of American Lutheran missionaries served in South Africa. Despite the policies of the apartheid government aimed at dividing the people of the country, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa was constituted in 1975 by the merger of four autonomous regional churches.