Lutheranism: Websites

When it comes to finding online information, blogs have been very helpful. But, traditional websites still tend to have more in-depth, permanent information, provided in a less polemical manner. Thus, this first post of Lutheranism links is all about the traditional website article. What is Lutheranism? Well, it depends who you ask.

A great starting place is the Wikipedia article on Lutheranism. The article on Wikipedia is constantly being edited by persons from all points of view, and so represents a "neutral" definition of Lutheranism. One distinct advantage of the Wikipedia article, is that through the links you can find info about all different aspects of Lutheran theology, history, and churches.

Shorter encyclopedia style entries can be found on the Christian Cyclopedia, the online version of the earlier Lutheran Cyclopedia, hosted & updated by the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. Especially of interest are the entries for Lutheran, and Lutheran Reformation.

One more long, encyclopedia-style article comes from the on-line version of the Catholic Encylopedia. If you can take into account that the article is quite dated and has a very clear bias, there is some good information there as well. If nothing else, it isn't a bad read for people who are already Lutherans, as it provides an insight into how people outside of our tradition see us.

The homepage of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) provides two articles on Lutheranism: What ELCA Lutherans Believe and the ELCA Confession of Faith.

The LC-MS provides a longish article in pdf format here. Of particular interest is the section entitled "What do Lutherans Believe?" on pages 3-7.

A website entitled "Believe" has three essays on Lutheranism, written by George Wolfgang Forell, J F Johnson, and Martin Marty.

ReligionFacts has a nice write-up on Lutheranism, including links and a helpful bibliography.

Walter Snyder, a pastor in the LC-MS and host of the Xysostom website, and offers this "Comparison of Lutheranism with other Churches."

If you have another useful link about what it means to be a Lutheran, leave me a note in the comments (note that I have avoided articles about Lutheran history, a topic for another time). Please leave a comment if a link goes dead.