Icelandic Evangelical Lutheran Synod of America was a Lutheran church body in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

.

The Synod was founded in June 1885 at a constitutional convention in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The early churches in this body were located in Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

 and North Dakota

North Dakota

North Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S....

. Later churches could be found in Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 and Washington in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and in Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

 and Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

 in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. The synod was never a large synod. The synod joined the United Lutheran Church in America

United Lutheran Church in America

The United Lutheran Church in America was established in 1918 with the merger of three independent German-language synods: the General Synod , the General Council and the United Synod of the South . The Slovak Zion Synod joined the United Lutheran Church in America in 1920...

 in 1942 remaining as a separate synod in that denomination. When the United Lutheran Church in America became part of the Lutheran Church in America

Lutheran Church in America

The Lutheran Church in America was a U.S. and Canadian Lutheran church body that existed from 1962 to 1987. It was headquartered in New York City and its publishing house was Fortress Press....

, the Icelandic Synod was dissolved and the member churches were placed in geographical synods.

In 1962, the United Lutheran Church in America became part of the new Lutheran Church in America. On January 1, 1988, the Lutheran Church in America

Lutheran Church in America

The Lutheran Church in America was a U.S. and Canadian Lutheran church body that existed from 1962 to 1987. It was headquartered in New York City and its publishing house was Fortress Press....

 ceased to exist when it, along with the American Lutheran Church and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches

Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches

The Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches 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 in 1976, and ended as an independent body when it became part...

, joined together to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a mainline Protestant denomination headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA officially came into existence on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three churches. As of December 31, 2009, it had 4,543,037 baptized members, with 2,527,941 of them...

, today the largest Lutheran church body in the United States.

Presidents of the synod

• Jon Bjarnason 1885-1908
• Bjorn B. Jonsson 1908-1921
• N.S. Thorlaksson 1921-1923
• Kristinn K. Olafson 1923-1942

Sources

• Wolf, Edmund Jacob. The Lutherans in America; a story of struggle, progress, influence and marvelous growth (New York: J.A. Hill. 1889)
• Bente, F. American Lutheranism Volume II (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. 1919)
• Nichol, Todd W. All These Lutherans (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishers. 1986)