RT Article
T1 Appropriating The Cambridge Platform’s Neo-Congregational Polity
JF Ecclesiology
VO 21
IS 1
SP 80
OP 104
A1 Rutherford, J. Alexander
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1919476407
AB This article argues that Baptists can learn, with regard to their practice of governance, from the seventeenth-century Congregational churches of New-England. After showing that The Cambridge Platform of Discipline (1648) offers two accounts of polity, ‘congregational’ and ‘neo-congregational’, it is argued that neo-congregational polity is not only more desirable than congregational polity (as the Platform argued) but offers a more consistent account of biblical ecclesiology. Baptist churches, sharing similar roots and ecclesiology with Congregationalism, stand to benefit from the insights of their seventeenth-century brothers and sisters.
K1 1689 London Confession
K1 1644 London Confession
K1 Cambridge Platform of Discipline
K1 Neo-Congregationalism
K1 Baptist theology
K1 Congregationalism
K1 Ecclesiastical Polity
K1 Ecclesiology
DO 10.1163/17455316-bja10050