Draft:Murman Evangelical Lutheran Parish

The Murman Evangelical Lutheran Parish was an Evangelical Lutheran congregation established in 1903 in the town of Alexandrovsk, located on the western shore of the Kola Bay. The founding of the congregation had first been planned in the 1880s. The parish operated mainly with the funds of the Grand Duchy of Finland. The congregation's activities ceased in the late spring of 1917 when its Finnish pastor, Antti Kustaa Vuotila, was deported from Russia to Finland during the Russian Revolution.

The majority of the parish's members were Kola Finns, Finnish settlers and their descendants living in the Murman Coast, but it also included Kola Norwegians. Before the establishment of the parish, Finnish pastors from Finnish and Ingrian congregations were responsible for the spiritual care and ecclesiastical services of the Finnish settlers during their travels among them from 1870 to 1902. Although the residence of the parish was in Aleksandrovsk, since 1904 its pastor visited the colonies and villages established and inhabited by Finns, of which in the Murman Coast were dozens between the Norway–Russia border and Teriberka as well as in the inner parts of the Kola Peninsula.

The Pechenga area, a part of the Murman Coast, was incorporated as a province into Finland by the Treaty of Tartu, and in 1921, the new Finnish Evangelical Lutheran parish in Petsamo began its operations under exceptional arrangements. It did not continue the activities of the former Murman Parsih, because of it did not receive the church records or archives of the Murmansk parish, which remained in Russia after the last pastor was expelled. The Petsamo Province was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1944.

Nowadays, there is a parish in called Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Murmansk, which is part of the Northern Deanery of the Church of Ingria.