a number of Lutheran churches of the Evangelical Catholic and High Church Lutheran churchmanship in the United States of America have accepted the doctrine of apostolic succession and have successfully recovered it, generally from Independent Catholic churches. At present, most of these church bodies have memberships numbering in the hundreds. The Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church (LEPC) were some of the earliest Lutherans in America. They have autonomous and congregationally oriented ministries and consecrate male and female deacons, priests and bishops in apostolic succession with the laying on of hands during celebration of Word and Sacrament. The Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church recovered the apostolic succession from Old Catholic and Independent Catholic churches, and adopted a strict episcopal polity. All of its clergy have been ordained (or re-ordained) into the historic apostolic succession. This Church was formed in 1997, with its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. The Lutheran Orthodox Church, founded in 2004 traces its historic lineage of apostolic succession through Anglican, Lutheran, and Old Catholic lines. The Lutheran Church - International is another North American Lutheran church which reports that it has recovered the historic apostolic succession. Indifference to the issue Many German Lutherans appear to demur on this issue, which may be sourced in the church governance views of Martin Luther. Luther's reform movement usually did not abrogate the ecclesiastic office of bishop. An important historical context to explicate the wide differences among German Lutheran churches is the Prussian Union of 1817, whereby the secular government directed the Lutheran churches in Prussia to merge with non-Lutheran Reformed churches in Prussia. The Reformed churches generally oppose on principle the traditional doctrine of ecclesiastic Apostolic Succession, e.g., not usually even recognising the church office of bishop. Later in the 19th century, other Lutheran and Reformed congregations merged to form united church bodies in some of the other 39 states of the German Confederation, e.g., in Anhalt, Baden, Bremen, Hesse and Nassau, Hesse-Kassel and Waldeck, and the Palatinate. Yet the partial nature of this list also serves to show that in Germany there remained many Lutherans who never united with the Reformed. Other Lutheran churches are indifferent as a matter of doctrine regarding this particular issue of ecclesiastical governance. In America, the conservative Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) places its church authority in the congregation rather than in the bishop, although its founder, C. F. W. Walther, while establishing congregational polity for the LCMS, considered