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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a mainline Protestant denomination headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Formed in 1988 by the merging of three churches and currently having about 4.9 million members, it is the largest of all the Lutheran denominations in the United States.[1] The next two largest Lutheran denominations are the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (with approximately 2.5 million members[2]) and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (with approximately 410,000 members). There are also many smaller Lutheran church bodies in the United States.