Topic summary
Congregationalist polity
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Congregational polity.
Congregational or congregationalist polity is a system of ecclesiastical polity in which every local church is completely independent and ecclesiastically sovereign. Its first articulation in writing is the Cambridge Platform of 1648 in New England. The name comes from Congregationalism, a Protestant tradition descended from English Puritanism, a 16th and 17th century Reformed Protestant movement in the Church of England.