Confessional Lutheranism

Churches of the larger Lutheran World Federation subscribe to the Book of Concord as an exposition of faith in so far as (quatenus) it agrees with their interpretation of the Bible.

The Old Lutheran and Neo-Lutheran movements spread to the United States with the Neo-Lutheran Loehe and the Old Lutheran free church leader Friedrich August Brünn,[3] both sending missionaries to newly arrived German immigrants in the Midwest, and with the immigration of groups including the Saxons who settled in Missouri under Martin Stephan and C. F. W. Walther, the Germans who settled in Indiana under F. C .D.

The Lutheran Church - International, which has an Evangelical Catholic churchmanship, describes itself as adhering to Confessional Lutheranism as it holds that it "preaches, teaches, and confesses the Gospel of Jesus Christ as faithfully witnessed by the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and the Book of Concord.

The autonomous congregations within the AFLC are only required to officially subscribe to the unaltered Augsburg Confession and Luther's Small Catechism,[13] but many member congregations officially subscribe to more, or all, of the Book of Concord, while others do so unofficially in matters of doctrine and practice.

All internally trained AFLC pastors are taught a quia subscription of the Book of Concord, leaving the denomination as a whole "unofficially" confessional in matters of preaching and teaching.

[citation needed] Though there are some congregations in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which would call themselves "confessional", many of those congregations have decided to leave the ELCA due to the liberal leanings of the denomination, most notably their stances expressed in the 2009 ELCA convention.

Lutheran church bodies and Lutheran individuals that identify themselves as confessional generally hold to a "quia" (Latin for "because") rather than a "quatenus" (Latin for "insofar as") subscription to the Book of Concord, which contains the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, Luther's Small Catechism, Luther's Large Catechism, the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, and the Formula of Concord.

C. F. W. Walther explained the meaning of confessional subscription: An unconditional subscription is the solemn declaration which the individual who wants to serve the church makes under oath (1) that he accepts the doctrinal content of our Lutheran Confessions, because he recognizes the fact that they are in full agreement with Scripture and do not militate against Scripture in any point, whether the point be of major or minor importance; and (2) that he therefore heartily believes in this divine truth and is determined to preach this doctrine.

All popes hold the same office over the church and promote the same antichristian belief so they all are part of the reign of the Antichrist.