Suomi Synod

On March 25, 1890, nine Lutheran congregations, representing twelve hundred Finnish immigrants, assembled at Trinity Lutheran Church in Calumet and organized the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church In America - Suomi Synod. Four pastors and seventeen laymen from congregations in Calumet, Hancock, Jacobsville, Republic, Ishpeming, Negaunee, and Ironwood, Michigan, as well as Savo, South Dakota, chose the Reverend Juho K. Nikander as the first president of the synod. By the 1920s the synod had become a national church body with 153 congregations and thirty-six thousand members. In 1963 it merged with Lutheran churches of Swedish, German, and Danish descent to form the Lutheran Church In America. The Calumet congregation, Faith Lutheran Church, is a continuation of the Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian group that met in Trinity Lutheran in 1890.