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The year was 1945. United States military service personnel were returning to live the hopes and dreams of post-World War II America. It was the year that the churches of the National Lutheran Council (NLC) moved from their wartime ministries to add another dimension of service.

As a ministry to those returning veterans, the eight ELCA predecessor churches began an official presence with the federal government in Washington, D.C. During those early years, the international aspect of church-state relations played a significant role as a succession of German church leaders conferred with State Department officials about the problems of German reconstruction.

1948 marked a ministry turning point. The NLC expanded its service to its participating bodies in order to keep them informed of important congressional activities and to channel information about the churches and their work to key government officials. Special relationships between the churches and the government developed around programs of relief and rehabilitation, and movement of refugees.

The focus of the nation turned to civil rights and racial equality in the 1960s. The Lutheran churches spoke out through their Washington office as staff worked with Lutheran legislators and ecumenical colleagues on civil rights and justice issues. At the beginning of the decade, the eight NLC churches merged to become The American Lutheran Church (TALC, then simply ALC) and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA). The office now represented a two-church presence.

From 1967 to 1987, the ALC and LCA were joined by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) in the cooperative work of the Lutheran Council in the USA (LCUSA). The Office of Public Affairs continued the functions of representing the interests of the church bodies, analyzing public issues, informing government officials of church body positions, and planning and conducting seminars.

Since 1988, the ELCA Washington Office (formerly  known as the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs) has served as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Washington, D.C. office for advocacy to the U.S. and foreign governments.

The ELCA Washington Office seeks to enable effective interaction between the church and the federal government. Through providing education and information, it...

• witnesses for social justice on domestic and foreign policy issues facing the nation.
• educates, informs and enables effective interaction between the ELCA and the federal government, and
• represents the ELCA's positions within the arena of public debate.

The ELCA Washington Office is a program area of the ELCA's Church in Society unit, working in cooperation with others.