Church Worship.— Because the Lutheran churches in Europe always had great diversity in their forms of public worship the Lutheran Church of America shows no uniformity in this respect, the different bodies having at first followed the usages of their mother churches to a greater or less degree. However, a greater uniformity has been brought about since the so-called °Common Service,° based upon the consensus of the Lutheran liturgies of the 16th century, was nrepared by a corn mittee representing the General Synod, the General Council, and the United Synod in the South. This form of service is used also by a number of congregations in other Lutheran bodies, especially after they had introduced English language in their services.
Church the church bodies named are very active in various forms of educational, missionary and benevolent work.. They maintain a high standard of ministerial education and have founded a large number of theological seminaries. They have their own colleges and academies preparing their men for the theological courses and giving a general education. They prosecute intensively home mission work, conducting such work also among the Indians and negroes in the United States, and maintain foreign mission fields in the dif ferent parts of the globe. The American Lutheran Church is indeed a polyglot church proclaiming the gospel in no less than 20 lan guages. All of the larger bodies have their own publishing houses for the printing of their church papers and the dissemination of Lutheran literature. The statistics of 1917 report 27 theological seminaries, the largest among them being Concordia Seminary at Saint Louis, Mo. (Missouri Synod, 344 students) ; Concordia Seminary at Springfield, Ill. (Missouri Synod, 127 students) ; Augustana Seminary at Rock Island, Ill. (Augustana Synod, 101 students) ; Norwegian Seminaries, combined in 1917, at Saint Paul, Minn. (88 students) ; Lutheran Seminary at Mount Airy, Philadelphia (Gen eral Council, 58 students) ; Lutheran Seminary at Maywood, Chicago (General Council, 52 students) ; Wartburg Seminary at Dubuque, Iowa (Iowa Synod, 48 students) ; Lutheran Seminary at Wauwatosa, Milwaukee, Wis.
(Wisconsin Synod, 42 students) ; Wittenberg Seminary at Springfield, Ohio (General Synod, 38 students) ; Lutheran Seminary at Columbus, Ohio (Ohio Synod, 38 students) ; Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa. (General Synod, 34 students) ; Luther Seminary at Saint Paul, Minn. (Ohio Synod, 30 students). The num ber of Lutheran colleges in 1917 was 41 ; of academies 58, a number of them coeducational ; of ladies' colleges 7. The General Synod con ducts foreign mission work in India and Liberia ; the General Council in India, Burma, Japan ; the Missouri Synod in India and China; the different Scandinavian bodies in India, China, Natal, Madagascar ; the Ohio Synod in India. Missions among the American Indians are conducted by the Scandinavians, the Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod ; among the negroes by the Synodical Confer ence and by the Ohio Synod. The statistics for 1917 enumerate 66 orphanages, 46 homes for the aged, 7 homes for defectives, 9 dea coness mother-houses, 50 hospitals, 18 immigrant and seamen's missions, 12 miscellaneous insti tutions, 13 home finding and children's friend societies. There are 13 official Lutheran pub lishing houses, the more important ones being located in Philadelphia (General Synod and General Council) ; Saint Louis (Missouri Synod) ; Rock Island (Augustana Synod) ; Minneapolis (Norwegian Synod) ; Chicago (Iowa Synod) ; Columbus, Ohio (Ohio Synod) ; Milwaukee (Wisconsin Synod) ; Columbia, S. C. (United Synod in the South). The number of Lutheran periodicals goes well into the hundreds.
General
The Lutheran Church is the fourth largest denomination in the United States coming after the Roman Catholics, Methodists and Baptists. The statistics here with given are obtained from official sources and are published in the