Originally posted by NorrinRadd
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I looked more into it, though, and it looks like I erred when I said NALC was the fourth largest. If we're counting by number of congregations, as noted, the order is ELCA, LCMS, and WELS, but after that it looks like there's the LCMC (Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ) which, like the NALC, split from the ELCA due to its liberal drift, though it did so about a decade earlier (I believe the NALC is the largest after the LCMC). In regards to the question of "what conservative churches ordain women?" it seems to fall into the same category as NALC, where it depends a bit on how you define conservative--I can say that both reject same-sex marriage at least, and both ordain women. I'm not sure if there's much theologically that divides NALC and LCMC--it may be structural issues that have kept them from joining together, as the LCMC went fully congregational after the split with the ELCA whereas the NALC has maintained the mixture of episcopal and congregational structure that the ELCA had.
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