Christian feast day: Frederick the Wise (Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod)

Frederick III, also known as Frederick the Wise, was Prince-elector of Saxony from 1486 to 1525, who is mostly remembered for the protection given to his subject Martin Luther, the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation. Frederick was the son of Ernest, Elector of Saxony and his wife Elisabeth, daughter of Albert III, Duke of Bavaria.

The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is an orthodox, traditional confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With 1.7 million members as of 2023 it is the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States, behind the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In 2025, Pew Research Center estimated that 1 percent of US adults, approximately 2.6 million people, identified with the LCMS and evangelical Lutheranism in contrast with 2 percent, or approximately 5.2 million people, who identified with the ELCA and mainline Lutheranism. The LCMS was organized in 1847 at a meeting in Chicago as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, a name which partially reflected the geographic locations of the founding congregations.