Mission History
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania
Mission work in Tanzania was begun by a number of European Lutheran groups, especially German and Swedish. Both World War I and World War II presented major crises for work in Tanzania.
American Lutheran work began in 1922 when the Augustana Synod sent Ralph Hult to the former Tanganyika. During the next decades, many more Augustana missionaries arrived and served in central Tanganyika, in the area in and around Singida.
During World War II, 172 German missionaries were interned. Their work in the northern part of the country around Arusha was taken over by Americans in a cooperative program coordinated by the National Lutheran Council. The cooperation between mission groups to respond to the needs of "orphaned missions" was a new dynamic in inter-Lutheran relationships, and was an important factor leading to the formation of the Lutheran World Federation in 1947.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanganyika was officially formed in 1963 by the merger of seven churches, each of which had been established by Lutheran mission work from Europe or the U.S.A. The new ELCT had 400,000 baptized members. It joined the Lutheran World Federation in 1964. Today’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania is one of the largest Lutheran churches in the world.