Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lithuania

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lithuania (, ELCL) is a Lutheran church body comprising congregations in Lithuania. The ELCL is a member of the Porvoo Communion and the Lutheran World Federation. In 2018 the ELCL reported having 19,000 active members. There are 52 congregations, and around 30 ordained clergy, including the bishop and two deacons. The current bishop of the church is the Rt Revd Mindaugas Sabutis. Around 0.56% of the population of Lithuania are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania. The abbreviated name for the church is in Latin, Unitas Lithuaniae or in Polish, Jednota Litewska (Lithuanian church provincial union).

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania dates back to the Reformation, when Kaunas, a large town in Lithuania, accepted the Augsburg Confession in 1550. In the 16th century Lutheranism started to spread from the two German controlled neighbouring states of Livonia to the north and the Protestant formerly monastic, Teutonic State of Prussia to its south. A united reformed church organization in Lithuania's church province can be counted from the year 1557 at the Synod in Vilnius on December 14 of that year. From that year the Synod met regularly forming all the church provinces of The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at first from two and later growing to six districts and representative district synods. It sent its representatives to the General Polish/Lithuanian Synods; however in its administration it was in fact a self governing Church. The first Superintendent was Simonas Zacijus (Szymon Zacjusz, approx 1507–1591). In 1565 the anti Trinitarian Lithuanian Brotherhood who rejected the learning of the Trinity separated from the church. The parish network covered nearly all of The Grand Duchy. Its district centers were Vilnius, Kedainai, Biržai, Slucke, Kojdanove and Zabludove later Izabeline.

Since 1945 the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania has included Lutheran congregations in the formerly German Klaipėda Region, the northern part of Lithuania Minor, where Lutheranism dates back to 1525. The majority of Prussian Lithuanians living in East Prussia and in Memelland (what is now the Klaipėda Region of modern Lithuania) were members of the Evangelical Church of the old Prussian Union, and most of them were resettled in the Federal Republic of Germany along with the rest of the East Prussian German inhabitants after World War II. Since 1525 Lutheranism started spreading among Lithuanians in Lithuania Minor, which comprised about a quarter of Ducal Prussia, the first state to officially adopt Lutheranism as state religion. Ducal Prussia emerged from the Roman Catholic Teutonic Prussia, which, however, only had superficially missioned the rural, mostly Lithuanian population and thus only erected few churches. The Prussian Lithuanians were only thoroughly Christianised starting with the Reformation in Prussia, the Prussian estates established the Lutheran Church in Prussia by the Church Order decided on 10 December 1525. More refugees from Lithuania proper followed and became pastors in various parishes, such as Martynas Mažvydas, who published the Lutheran Catechismusa Prasty Szadei in 1547. Thus the Reformation brought to Lithuania Minor and Lithuania proper the first printed book in the Lithuanian language, the Lutheran Catechism (1547), and later (1591) the first Lithuanian Bible, which was not printed before the 18th century, however.

With the dwindling of Protestantism in Lithuania proper after the 17th century, the Prussian Lithuanian Lutheran clergy consisted mostly of natives, many of German language, who had learned Lithuanian only as a second language. By the end of the 17th century, the number of Lutheran parishes in Lithuania Minor reached 112, with 68 offering Lithuanian services before the great plague (1709–1711), which killed about half the population and reduced the parishes with Lithuanian services to 59.

Before World War II there were 80 Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lithuania congregations in Lithuania proper, and 72 pastors were serving about 25,000 members. Whereas in the Klaipėda Region (a Lithuanian autonomous region between 1924 and 1939) 40 pastors, many maintaining services in Lithuanian, served about 137,750 mostly Lutheran parishioners (among them 35,650 Prussian Lithuanians) in 1930. The parishes formed the Memel deanery, the Heydekrug/Šilutė deanery and the new Pogegen/Pagėgiai deanery, comprising since 1919 those parishes of the deanery of Tilsit, itself remaining with Germany, which were located north of the Memel/Nemunas river and thus disentangled. Both parties had stipulated that the Lutheran parishes and the single Reformed congregation in Memel should form the Regional Synodal Federation of the Memel Territory (Landessynodalverband Memelgebiet) with its own consistory led by an elected general superintendent. However, the evacuation started too late since the Red Army approached much faster than expected and could cut off the territorial connection with German held territories by January 26, 1945. Many refugees perished due to Soviet low flying strafing attacks. With the emigration of many Lithuanians to overseas or the assimilation of the remaining Lithuanians and Prussian Lithuanians, who hold German citizenship, in West Germany the number shrunk to a mere one, Litauisches Gymnasium/Vasario 16 osios gimnazija (Lithuanian High School) in Lampertheim in Hesse. The remaining inhabitants of Lithuania Minor underwent terrible years under the Soviet annexation, especially those in the Russian Kaliningrad oblast. They were generally robbed and plundered, many imprisoned in labour camps, some deported to Siberia, and generally refused any access to ordinary food supplies causing most of them to perish. Reflecting its conservative confessional Lutheran stance, the ELCL declared itself in full fellowship with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, from the United States, in 2000.