The Communion of Nordic Lutheran Dioceses are Lutheran dioceses that entered into schism with their nordic traditional national churches in 2003 due to what they perceived as "the secularization of the national/state churches in their respective countries involving matters of both Christian doctrine and ethics".
[3][4] Their lines of apostolic succession derive from other traditional Lutheran Churches, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya; Walter Obare Omwanza, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya, assisted by bishops Leonid Zviki from Belarus, David Tswaedi from South Africa, Børre Knudsen and Ulf Asp from Norway, consecrated Arne Olsson in apostolic succession as the Ordinary for the Mission Province.
[2] The first bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, Risto Soramies, was then ordained by Matti Väisänen of the Mission Province of the Church of Sweden.
[6][4] As such, the Communion of Nordic Lutheran Dioceses affirms:[6] We believe, teach and confess that biblical faith and doctrine which is founded on the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the New and the Old Testament and which has been expressed in the three main creeds of the Early Church, that is, the Apostolic, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and the Athanasian Creed, and in the unaltered Augsburg Confession, and that is rightly and bindingly explained by all the books accepted into the Book of Concord of the Lutheran Church.
[6]In the view of the Communion of Nordic Lutheran Dioceses, "it has retained the historic teachings and practice that the politically selected church structure has abandoned, it is a believing remnant of those churches.