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Concept
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania
Summary
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT; Kanisa la Kiinjili la Kilutheri Tanzania) is the federation of Lutheran churches in Tanzania and one of the largest Lutheran denominations in the world, with more than 6 million members, or 13% of the Tanzanian population. It is the second largest Lutheran church in the world and the largest Lutheran church in East Africa.
The church is led by a presiding bishop and twenty-five diocesan bishops, representing 26 dioceses. The Head Office of the Church is in Arusha, where it has owned the New Safari Hotel since 1967. The church is affiliated with the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), the Christian Council of Tanzania, the Global Confessional and Missional Lutheran Forum, and the Lutheran World Federation.
The ELCT is an organization which reaches out to the people of Tanzania offering worship opportunities, Christian education, and numerous social services, including disaster response, healthcare, and AIDS education and relief.
The first Lutheran missionaries arrived in what was then German East Africa in 1887, when the Evangelical Missionary Society for East Africa (EMS), based in Berlin, Germany, established a missionary station at Kigamboni, Dar es Salaam. The second group of missionaries was also from Germany, entering via South Africa and settling in the Southern Highlands region of Tanzania. Similar missions from Germany continued to arrive in the region continuously throughout the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. This mission activity continued in spite of the interruption of the Hehe Wars in 1891, the Maji Maji Uprising of 1905–1907, World War I, and World War II.
In 1938, seven Lutheran churches were loosely gathered into the Federation of Lutheran Churches in Tanganyika. The member churches then merged to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.
In 1964, Johannes Lilje, then presiding bishop of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, consecrated Stefano Moshi, who had been elected as the first president of the newly formed church body and who had been an advocate for the establishment of episcopacy, as the first presiding bishop of the ELCT.
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