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Our History
On September 4, 1962, Augustana Theological Seminary, Grand View Seminary, Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, and Suomi Theological Seminary consolidated to form the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC). The context and impetus for that union was the merger that same year of the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, Augustana Lutheran Church, Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America—Suomi Synod, and United Lutheran Church in America, that came together as the Lutheran Church in America (LCA).
For the next five years, the Lutheran School of Theology operated from two locations: the Augustana campus in Rock Island and Chicago Lutheran campus in Maywood, Ill., while an urban, university-related setting in the greater Chicagoland area was found. Three months before the seminary officially opened its doors adjacent to the University of Chicago campus, Central Lutheran Theological Seminary became the fifth LCA seminary to enter the merger. On October 22, 1967, the campus in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood was dedicated.
In 1983, 10 members of the faculty of Christ Seminary-Seminex, St. Louis, Mo. (1974), relocated to LSTC. On December 31, 1987, the two schools merged so they might enter as a unified body into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) as it officially came into existence on January 1, 1988.
