Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey, 1986. Com-
piles essays on Reagan’s policies written by Ameri-
can and European scholars in the middle of the
decade. The majority are favorable toward the
president.
Granatstein, J. L., and Robert Bothwell.Pirouette: Pi-
erre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1990. Analysis of the
Liberal prime minister’s foreign policy by two of
Canada’s most prolific historians.
Michaud, Nelson, and Kim Richard Nossal, eds.Dip-
lomatic Departures: The Conservative Era in Cana-
dian Foreign Policy, 1984-1993.Vancouver: UCB
Press, 2001. An analysis of Conservative prime
minister Brian Mulroney’s policies in the crucial
years of the mid- and late 1980’s by two distin-
guished political scientists.
Morley, Morris H., ed.Crisis and Confrontation: Ron-
ald Reagan’s Foreign Policy. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman
and Littlefield, 1988. A collection of academic es-
says on U.S. foreign affairs in the 1980’s, includ-
ing two on Europe.
Nossal, Kim Richard.The Politics of Canadian Foreign
Policy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985.
Analysis of Canadian political institutions and
the making of foreign policy by a distinguished
scholar.
Smith, Steven K., and Douglas A. Wertman.U.S-West
European Relations During the Reagan Years: The Per-
spective of West European Publics. New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1992. Account by two distinguished
political scientists of Western Europeans’ percep-
tions of their nations’ diplomatic relations with
the United States. Contains bibliographical mate-
rial.
Vanhoonacker, Sophie.The Bush Administration, 1989-
1993, and the Development of a European Security
Identity. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. Examines
and analyzes the Bush administration’s policies
regarding European security during the post-Cold
War era.
Frederick B. Char y
See also Berlin Wall; Foreign policy of Canada;
Foreign policy of the United States; Haig, Alexander;
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty;
Lévesque, René; Mulroney, Brian; Pan Am Flight
103 bombing; Quebec referendum of 1980; Reagan,
Ronald; Trudeau, Pierre; United Nations; West Ber-
lin discotheque bombing.
Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America
Definition The largest Lutheran church in North
America, formed by the merger of several
Lutheran bodies
Date Created January 1, 1988
After years of discussions and smaller mergers, the majority
of North American Lutherans came together in one church
headquartered in Chicago, the ELCA.
As a result of the mass northern European immigra-
tion to North America during the nineteenth cen-
tury, Lutheranism grew quickly on the continent,
as more than fifty Lutheran organizational groups
were formed. Over time, these groups merged or
disbanded until, by the 1960’s, three large churches
had emerged: the Lutheran Church in America
(LCA), the American Lutheran Church (ALC), and
the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). Al-
though the ALC and LCMS had declared altar and
pulpit fellowship in the 1960’s, the ALC’s decision to
ordain women pastors later led the LCMS to with-
draw from the fellowship. At the same time, the
LCMS began removing professors at Concordia
Seminary in St. Louis who used critical-scientific
methods to interpret the Bible. These professors es-
tablished a seminary in exile (Seminex) in 1974 that
continued to provide pastors to congregations until
four LCMS district presidents were removed for
ordaining those pastors. In 1976, three hundred
LCMS congregations left the organization to form
the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches
(AELC), which immediately issued the “Call to Lu-
theran Union” and began meeting with the LCA and
ALC to discuss merging the three groups.
On September 8, 1982, the LCA, the ALC, and
the AELC each met in convention, simultaneously
communicating with one another via telephone
hookup. The three church bodies voted to merge
into one. The seventy-member Commission for a
New Lutheran Church, intentionally selected to rep-
resent a broad specrum of church members, then
met ten times to study the theological understand-
ings of each predecessor body and to discuss ecclesi-
astical principles. The formal process to bring the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)
into being began at a constituting convention in Co-
lumbus, Ohio, in May, 1987. The three previous
bishops—James Crumley, David Preus, and Will346 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America The Eighties in America