The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With 2.3 million members, it is both the eighth largest Protestant denomination and the second-largest Lutheran body in the U.S. after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Synod was founded at Chicago, Illinois, in 1847 by German-American immigrants. The LCMS is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.
Approximately half of the LCMS members are located in the Upper Midwest, although it is represented in all 50 U.S. states, and is affiliated with other Lutheran sister churches worldwide. It also has several congregations in Ontario and one in Quebec that remained with the LCMS after most of the Synod's Canadian congregations formed the autonomous Lutheran Church–Canada in 1988. The LCMS is divided into 35 districts—33 geographic and two (the English District and SELC) non-geographic districts. The current president is the Rev. Matthew C. Harrison, who took office on September 1, 2010.
he Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members. It is also the largest Christian body in the United States, since the Catholic Church - rejects the Gospel (review the Council of Trent, which the Pope still holds to).
The word Southern in Southern Baptist Convention stems from its having been founded and rooted in the Southern United States. The SBC became a separate denomination in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, following a regional split with northern Baptists over the issues of slavery. After the American Civil War, another split occurred: most black Baptists in the South separated from white churches and set up their own congregations.
Since the 1940s, the SBC has moved away from some of its regional identification. While still heavily concentrated in the US South, the SBC has member churches across the United States and 41 affiliated state conventions. Southern Baptists emphasize the significance of the individual conversion experience, affirmed by a total immersion in water for a believer's baptism, and rejection of infant baptism. SBC churches are evangelical in doctrine and practice. Specific beliefs based on biblical interpretation can vary somewhat due to the congregational governance system that gives autonomy to individual local Baptist churches.
About half of SBC Baptists are also - Reformed Baptists (sometimes known as Calvinistic Baptists) which are Baptists that hold to a Calvinist soteriology (doctrine of Salvation). They can trace their history through the early modern Particular Baptists of England. The first Reformed Baptist church was formed in the 1630s. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith was written along Reformed Baptist lines.
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