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Russian partner churches together make history

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  1. Daniel Mattson says:

    The Missouri Synod may have discovered the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria in Russia in 1992, but this church has a history going back almost to the beginning of the Reformation. These people have paid a high price for their Lutheran faithfulness. The following is a Google translation from Russian as to what the ELCIR says about its own history.

    Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria in Russia (ELTSI) – one of the two oldest historic Lutheran churches, distributed in the Russian Federation. The first documentary mention of the Church of Ingria refers to 1611.
    Historically, the emergence of the Church can be traced to the time when the Lutheran faith spread throughout Scandinavia and Finland. In 1655 the Church of Ingria in 58 parishes, 36 religious buildings and 42 cleric. Before the revolution of 1917, congregations of the Church of Ingria were distributed throughout Ingermanlandii and serves about 800 villages comprising about 300 elementary schools and the teachers’ seminary. In the 30 – 40s of the XX century the activity of the Church was officially banned and all Christian service was held in secret. Only in the 1970s, when the government allowed the faithful openly carry out the ministry in Petrozavodsk (1970) and Pushkin (1977) have been recreated the first parishes . In May 1995, the Training Center opens later Theological Institute of the Church of Ingria, to train clergy and church workers.

    http://www.elci.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=31