Adomas Šernas

Adomas Šernas (25 May 1884 – 6 January 1965) was a Lithuanian priest of the Lithuanian Evangelical Reformed Church and its superintendent from 1942 until his resignation in 1964.

Educated at the University of Dorpat, Šernas became an ordained priest in 1913 and was assigned as parson to Švobiškis. During World War I, he evacuated to Russia where he continued to serve communities of evacuated Lithuanian Protestants, both Calvinists and Lutherans. In 1916–1917, he organized aid to deportees from East Prussia on behalf of the Tatiana Committee. In 1917, he returned to Lithuania and worked to organize Vilnius Conference which elected his brother Jokūbas Šernas to the Council of Lithuania. In 1920–1924 and 1934–1940, Šernas was chaplain of the Lithuanian Army. He was pastor in various Evangelical Reformed parishes, including Papilys, Nemunėlio Radviliškis, Kėdainiai, Seirijai. In June 1942, Biržai Synod elected Šernas as the superintendent of the Lithuanian Evangelical Reformed Church. In 1964, at the age of 80, Šernas was diagnosed with terminal cancer and resigned his positions with the church. A month later, his lengthy letter was published in the communist daily Tiesa in which he denounced religion and the church embracing atheism. Circumstances of his apostasy remain unclear, but the Evangelical Reformed Church has rehabilitated him in 2019.

Šernas published several religious texts. In 1934, Šernas published translations of the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. In 1936, he published a shortened Lithuanian version of the Heidelberg Catechism. Šernas worked to edit, newly translate, or write original hymns. These efforts resulted in two ecumenical hymnals – shorter hymnal for Lithuanian soldiers published in 1938 and general hymnal published in 1942. While Lithuanian Lutherans rejected this hymnal, it became the official hymnal of the Evangelical Reformed Church in 1986.