The College at Hancock and the Merger of 1962

Within six years of its founding the Suomi Synod moved to secure its own future clergy. In 1896 it established Suomi College and Theological Seminary at Hancock, Michigan, opening under the Reverend J. K. Nikander with an enrollment of only twenty seven students. The college's purpose was practical and cultural at once: it trained Finnish speaking pastors for the synod's growing number of congregations, taught English to the immigrant generation, and worked to keep Finnish language and culture alive in the mining towns of the Upper Peninsula. As the American born generation grew larger through the 1920s, the college broadened into a liberal arts institution while continuing to house the seminary. In 1958 the seminary separated from the college as a distinct institution. The Suomi Synod's own institutional life ended a few years later. In 1962 it joined the United Lutheran Church in America, the Augustana Lutheran Church and the American Evangelical Lutheran Church to form the Lutheran Church in America, the smallest of the four founding bodies by membership. Suomi Theological Seminary was folded into the same year's academic merger, joining the Augustana, Chicago Lutheran and Grand View seminaries to found the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. The Lutheran Church in America itself lasted until 1988, when it merged with two further Lutheran bodies to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Suomi Synod's present day successor. The college campus at Hancock continued on its own path and, under a different name, is still standing today.