Lutherans, a designation originally applied by their adversaries to the Reformers of the 16th century, and afterwards distinctively appropriated among Protestants themselves to those who took part with Martin Luther against the Swiss Reformers, particularly in the controversies regarding the Lord's Supper. It is so employed to this day as the designation of one of the two great sections into which the Protestant Church was soon unhappily divided, the other being known as the Reformed Church (q.v.). To the end of Luther's life perfect harmony subsisted between him and his friend Melanchthon; but already there were some who stood forth as more Lutheran than Luther, and by whom Melanchthon was denounced as a 'crypto-Calvinist' and a traitor to evangelical truth. After Luther's death this party became more confident, and, holding by Luther's words, without having imbibed his spirit, changed his evangelical doctrine into a dry scholasticism and lifeless orthodoxy, whilst extreme heat and violence against their opponents were substituted in the pulpit itself for the zealons preaching of the gospel. The principal seat of their strength was in the university of Jena, which was founded in 1557 for this very object, and maintained their cause against Wittenberg. Great intolerance was manifested by this party; and no controversy was ever conducted with more bitterness than the Sacramentarian Controversy.
Towards the end of the 17th century the Lutherans of Germany found a new object of hostility in the Pietists (q.v.); and in the 18th century they came into conflict with Rationalism (q.v.). When, after the wars of the French Revolution were over, the Prussian government formed and carried into execution a scheme for the union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches into one national church, leaving them free to use either the Lutheran or Heidelberg confession, an active opposition arose on the part of those who now began to be known as Old Lutherans. Separate congregations were formed, and an attitude of open hostility to the government was assumed by some; whilst others, more moderate, but holding the same theological opinions, continued to maintain these opinions within the United Evangelical Church. The separatists were for some time severely dealt with by the government, and about 1837 many left their native country to found Old Lutheran communities in America. After that time greater toleration was practised, and in 1841 the Old Lutherans became a legally-recognised ecclesiastical body in Prussia. A freer New Lutheranism, claiming to represent Luther's spirit rather than the dogmas of the old Lutheran systematists, has since 1848 become practically dominant in most parts of Protestant Germany, in Prussia as well as elsewhere, under the leadership of such men as Hengstenberg, Hofmann, Harless, Luthardt, Thomasius, and Kahnis.
Lutheranism is the prevailing form of Protestantism in Germany; it is the national religion of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; and there are Lutheran churches in the Baltic provinces of Russia, in Holland, France, Poland, and the United States—in which latter country there were in 1890 as many as 7911 churches, with 1,086,048 members. In all there are some thirty millions of Lutherans. Amongst the Lutheran symbolical books the Augsburg Confession (q.v.), Luther's Shorter Catechism, and the Formula Concordiae (see CONFESSIONS) hold the principal place. The chief difference between the Lutherans and the Reformed is as to the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Supper; the Lutherans holding the doctrine of consubstantiation—Christ's body present 'in, with, and under the unchanged bread and wine'—although rejecting transubstantiation (see LORD'S SUPPER; TRANSUBSTANTIATION; and ZWINGLI); whilst some of their more extreme theologians have asserted not only the presence of the human nature of Christ in the Lord's Supper, as Luther did, but the absolute omnipresence or ubiquity of his human nature. Other points of difference relate to the allowance in Christian worship of things indifferent (adiaphora); and many of those things at first retained as merely tolerable by Luther and his fellow-reformers have become favourite characteristics of some of the Lutheran churches—as crucifixes and pictures in places of worship, &c.
In its constitution the Lutheran Church is generally unepiscopal, without being properly presbyterian. It is consistorial (see CONSISTORY), with the civil authorities so far in place of bishops. In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway there are bishops, and in Sweden an archbishop (of Upsala), but their powers are very limited.
See the works of the old systematists Chemnitz, Johann Gerhard, Hutter, Quenstedt; Hase's Hutterus Redivivus (1828; 12th ed. 1883); the dogmatical works of Twisten, Nitzsch, and Martensen; and the church histories.