Ready to Harvest is a YouTube Channel that makes educational videos about differences between Christian Denominations. And overall I consider them pretty good and would recommend. But there are a couple doctrinal issues relevant to these differences that I feel he defines incorrectly.
The relevant one today is Congregational Polity, because every time that comes up in one of his videos he defines it as simply meaning Local Autonomy with no reference to the fact that Congregational Polity is supposed to be Democracy. He's not alone in this, sometimes even Wikipedia seems to do this.
Ready to Harvest doesn't usually mention his own denominational affiliation in these videos, but it's not that hard to figure out he is an Independent Baptist. I know in the past some of the Independent Baptist Pastors I've listened to who are a lot less interested in discussing Denominational Disagreements politely will often when they discus the Authority of the Local Pastor sound more Episcopal then the Episcopalians. They seem to believe the only way to become a Pastor is to be ordained by another Pastor and that his authority over the Congregation is supposed to be absolute, the idea even of removing a pastor because the flock no longer approves of him seems anathema to them.
An emphasis on Local Autonomy was always a part of Congregationalism, but it was intended to help protect the Democracy. Because it has always been the argument of some that true Direct Democracy can only work on a local level, the wider a scale you apply it to the more you risk situations where what's the majority opinion over all may have no support in certain areas. There are schools of thought in both Liberalism and Socialism that come to this conclusion in opposition to Centralism. Even Rousseau saw it that way.
The proof that Congregationalism was originally about Democracy lies in simply looking at the English Civil War which happened when English Congregationalism in both it's Pedo-Baptist and Credo-Baptist forms was still young. Because as I discussed in my Reformation and the Resurgence of Democracy post during that era positions on Clerical Polity and Civil Politics almost always mostly lined up exactly, the Episcopalians were the Monarchists, the Presbyterians were the Parliamentarians and the Congregationalist Puritans and Baptists and Quakers were the ones trying to make England more Democratic.
Sometimes I feel like having the office of Pastor at all is the gateway drug to becoming functionally Episcopalian.
But it's important to acknowledge that there is a school of thought that suggests that there is a certain kind of Monarchy that is compatible with Democracy, that under the right circumstances a leader with true overwhelming popular support should be allowed to just do what he sees best for the people unchecked until he loses that popular support. Even John Locke said some things supportive of that idea. In Game of Thrones that's exactly how the Wildings reconcile their rather Anarchist worldview with occasionally having a King Beyond The Wall.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to that since I have became a bit of an apologist for Oliver Cromwell who was a Congregationalist. I also know some of the Founding Fathers wanted the President to be such a Popular Monarch, some of the lesser known Congregationalist influenced Federalists wanted the President to have even more authority but also elected by direct popular vote. Hamilton himself however was an Episcopalian at his core so he wanted a President who was King in all but name and definitely not chosen by popular vote.
It goes back to how the word "Tyrant" didn't originally have the inherently negative connotations in Ancient Greece that it has to our ears, Tyrants were Popular rulers and the term's evolution towards being inherently derogatory began with how it was used negatively by the exact same Philosophers who openly didn't like Democracy either like Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon. This is also partially the reasoning behind support for Dictators among Marxist-Lenninists, I've seen Tankie YouTubers argue that Stalin wanted to step down actually but the people just wouldn't let him.
In that prior post I linked to above I also discussed potential documentation that the Church was still Congregational from a certain POV even past Nicaea deep into the 4th Century. But in that case it's no longer direct democracy or localism but entirely lies in the the popular support certain regional Bishops had like Athanasius of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, Cyril of Jerusalem and the Arab Bishop Moses who was allied with Queen Mavia. Or maybe Regional isn't the right term, but they at least had authority over an entire City.
The real reason why American Baptists in particular lost sight of the original point of Congregational Polity is indirectly tied to another issue that greatly effected the history of Baptists in America, the issue of Slavery and Abolitionism in the 19th Century.
Baptists first came to America in the North with other Congregationalists while the Sothern Colonies were founded by Episcopalians with a very Neofeudalist ideology. When the Southern Baptists broke off from the greater Baptist Community to support Slavery they inevitably also adopted the so called "States Rights" ideology of the Southern Democrats that came with that. Then once the Fugitive Slave Act came along the Anti-Slavery Northern Baptists had their own reason to emphasize local autonomy seeing that act as a violation of every Local Church's Right to help runaway slaves if that's what their Conscience or The Holy Spirit demanded them to do.
But up North there was no conflict between that and Democracy, while down South supporting Slavery did conflict with Democracy because in many regions the majority of people, even the majority of professing Baptists, were the Slaves themselves. Keeping them Enslaved was fundamentally Undemocratic.
Today the SBC is the largest Baptist Denomination in the world and largest Protestant denomination in the US, and many other Baptist groups broke off from them, including I suspect the lineages of most Independent Baptist Churches inevitably go back to Churches that left the SBC. I live in Racine WI a city in the most Northern State where when I was growing up 50% of the Independent Baptist Churches had a Pastor with a Southern Accent.
And that's how Baptist Pastors went from being Democrats to being Tyrants that don't even pretend to care about popular support.
Update August: But let's go back to how Rousseau had argued that Direct Democracy can only work on a local level.
In Gary Kates book The Cercel Social, the Girdonins, and the French Revolution, it is documented how some followers of Rousseau during the early stages of the Revolution felt advancements made in Mass Communications had rendered Rousseau's reasoning out of date and now Direct Democracy across large swarths of land was doable. In hindsight the idea that late18th Century Newsletters were sufficient to solve this problem was absurd, but modern mass communication absolutely can solve it thanks to TV and The Internet.
Ready to Harvest has a video on the issue with Multisite Churches and how they supposedly can't qualify as Congregational. It's because of this modern understanding of Congregational Polity that sees it as about localism but still usually with an absolute Monarchial Pastor that makes it a problem. But a true Democratic Assembly of Believers that Assembles via The Internet absolutely can work.
Update September: I want to make clear I do still mostly agree with the Localism principle of Congregationalism. But Independent Baptists in particular have become a bit too extreme with it.
Churches, plural, occurs 37 times in the KJV New Testament but not a single one in a context that supports the idea of a single city having more then one Church. The only Epistle to use Churches rather then The Church at/in/of a given location in it's opening address is Galatians, which was to an entire region Paul visited multiple cities in. The ones that are to Cities are addressed singularly as are the messages to the Seven Churches in Revelation even if in some of those cases their scope might be more then one city.
If you go back to Acts17 most of Paul's success in the area of Thessalonica was actually in the near by city of Berea, I feel like there's no way they aren't included in the original audience of those Epistles. I also have been speculating about the Scope of the Churches associated with Ephesus and Laodicea in Revelation since only they Jesus addresses as being The Church of ____ rather then The Church in _____. Paul met with the Elders of Ephesus at Miletus in Acts 20.
Some have interpreted what's said of the Seven Churches as implying they account for all of the Christians in Asia. Hierapolis and Colossae near Laodicea are known to have had Christian communities before Revelation was written while Magnesia and Tralles between Ephesus and Miletus are documented as having some not to long after via Ignatius.
Update June 5th 2024: Looking into the history more, originally the groups defined by their belief in Local Church Autonomy were called Independents and disagreed with each other about how the Local Church should be organized.
Robert Browne was much more absolute in his calls for Democracy, but also to him Separations from the Church of England was a means to an end not an end in itself, he did want some degree of relationship with the Church of England maintained. All these people are often called Brownists even when they had significant disagreements with Browne himself.
Henry Barrowe was more absolute in his separatism but distrusted full Democracy, he wanted basically Local Presbyterianism.
Barrowe also called Browne a "Renegade" because he felt Browne has betrayed his earlier principals when in actuality Browne was very consistent, the context around him simply changed. So because of that I consider Robert Browne the Karl Kautsky of Puritanism.
Some American Evangelicals like to say the Pilgrims weren't Puritans, this is is a misnomer that ignores how broad the Puritan label was. The Plymouth Pilgrims were I would argue the purest Puritans in that they were more like Barrowe on separatism but more like Browne on Democracy being initially lead by John Robinson who ultimately sided with Henry Ainsworth in his dispute with Francis Johnson who was another Local Presbyterian like Barrowe. The Baptists, especially Particular Baptists also had their origins among followers of John Robinson who agreed with Henry Ainsworth on Democracy.
The Puritans who founded Boston and Connecticut do seem to have been the most actually Brownist.
Congregational as a term for a Polity Position seems to have been coined originally in reference to Bronwe and Ainsworth's position on Church Governance regardless of how local it was, in contrast to Barrowe.
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