the largest Lutheran church in North America; formed in 1988 by the merger of two major Lutheran denominations, the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America, along with the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches; cut across ethnic lines and was designed to give Lutherans a more coherent voice in ecumenical discussions with other Christian churches in the U.S.; at its founding the church had more than 5,000,000 members and comprised about two-thirds of the Lutherans in the U.S.; headquarters in Chicago.