Category:Congregationalism

A Calvinist Protestant tendency, originating from the sixteenth-century English Reformation and Puritan movement within the Church of England that followed it, and more particularly from the Independent Reformed churches of the first Puritan settlers in New England. They are so-named for their ecclesiastical governing structure (polity), whereby local congregations are entirely autonomous and independent, each being sovereign, as contrasted with Episcopal polity (governance by bishops) or Presbyterian polity (governance by the Presbytery, or elders, and synods).