Evangelical Covenant Churches

Worship in the Evangelical Covenant Church has been shaped by its Lutheran background in Sweden, by the Pietist movement of the seventeenth century, and by the evangelistic awakening of the nineteenth century. It has preserved the lectionary, the feast days, and a more frequent celebration of the Lord's Supper. Recent trends include the introduction of praise-and-worship music and the use of dramatic arts. The Evangelical Covenant Church was organized in America in 1885. It was a church of immigrant Swedes who had experienced the spiritual renewal movements engendered by German Pietism, Moravianism, and Methodism. The Covenant Church in Sweden, organized in 1878, stemmed from the churchly tradition of the Lutheran state church and the conventicle tradition of Pietism. Covenanters in Sweden. In the Lutheran church, worship was conducted according to the festivals of the church year, the assigned lectionary texts for reading and preaching, the given liturgical formulas used in worshi…