Congregational Church
The Congregational Church is a Protestant Church, distinguished from many of the other Protestant denominations by its insistence that each congregation, i.e. each local church or group of members in a particular locality, has complete autonomy and is free to manage its own affairs as it thinks best. The word Congregationalist, either as an adjective or as a noun, may be applied to a member of the Congregational Church, and the set of doctrines on which the Congregational Church is based is known as Congregationalism.
The Congregational Church is the oldest of the Nonconformist denominations, and traces its origins to the followers of a sixteenth-century Anglican clergyman, Robert Browne (c.1550-c.1633), who challenged the doctrine of episcopal authority, i.e. the doctrine that all local churches and their clergy should be subject to the authority of a bishop. In fact Browne himself recanted his Congregationalist views and returned to the Church of England, but they were taken up and developed by others, most conspicuously by Henry Barrow (c.1550-1593) and John Greenwood (c.1560-1593). Barrow and Greenwood maintained that there should be no connection between Church and State, thereby challenging the status of the Church of England as the Established Church and the position of Queen Elizabeth I as Head of the Church; they refused to acknowledge the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles in matters of religious doctrine; and they insisted that each local group of Christians, i.e., each congregation, had the right to select its own clergy. In 1593 Barrow and Greenwood were hanged for 'devising and circulating seditious books', and for much of the seventeenth century Congregationalists were persecuted in England and forced to live in Holland - there were, e.g., many Congregationalists among the Pilgrim Fathers, i.e. those Protestants who in 1620 sailed on the Mayflower to America to escape religious persecution in Europe. It was only with the accession of William III (1650-1702, reigned 1689-1702) and the Act of Toleration (1689) that Congregationalists in England were free to practise their faith openly.
What distinguishes Congregationalism from most other forms of Protestantism - and indeed gives the denomination its name - is its doctrine with regard to the organisation and government of the Church. Congregationalists believe that each congregation, i.e. each local church, has complete freedom to manage its own affairs and is not subject to any higher authority such as a bishop: it cannot be required by any external authority, whether ecclesiastical or secular, to accept any particular religious beliefs or to follow any particular patterns of worship; it has the freedom to choose its own clergy, and it associates with other like-minded congregations only on the basis of mutual consent. All this notwithstanding, in 1833 the various Congregational Churches in England and Wales agreed to join together to form the Congregational Union of England and Wales, and in 1972 the majority of the churches in the Congregational Union agreed to unite with the Presbyterian Church in England to form the United Reformed Church. Those Congregational Churches which did not become part of the United Reformed Church formed the Congregational Federation.
