KENYON, Minn. – Serving coffee after Sunday worship outside Holden Lutheran Church, Jeff Davidson said he remains anchored in the congregation his Norwegian ancestors helped found in 1857 among cornfields because it’s “very full of very supportive people.”

An hour’s drive north in a tough Minneapolis neighborhood, Lizete Vega shared the same sentiment as she helped her husband prepare a post-service taco lunch at Iglesia Luterana San Pablo — “a place where I feel that I belong.”

A welcoming, open-minded community is how the sixth-generation farmer, the Mexican immigrant, and many other Minnesotans describe, with characteristic understatement, the foundation of their faith. It’s been in the national political limelight since Gov. Tim Walz, a Lutheran who was raised Catholic, brought his 
progressive legislative record
 onto the Democratic ticket as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.

But the ways Midwest Lutherans live that faith in the public sphere — on social and political hot-button issues from immigrant integration to LGBTQ+ rights — can be as different as a marshmallow-topped hotdish from a prickly pear cactus salad.

And that’s true even within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the more liberal and by far largest Lutheran denomination in the United States with about 3.3 million members. Walz has made occasional references to attending an ELCA church in St. Paul, Minnesota, though his spokesperson declined to discuss details of his faith.