Part 1
Congregationalism
Michael A. G. Haykin
Kirk Wellum
Stephen J. Wellum
It is easy to caricature congregationalism and has been at least since the days of Theodore Bèza, as the first chapter below suggests. Of course, bad examples of congregational churches still abound that only aid the critics. In the past century many congregational churches seem to have learned more from democratic systems of government than from the Bible (not that congregationalism is the only form of church government that’s open to abuse and distortion). They have treated their churches as some form of direct democracy, requiring the pastor to gain the whole church’s approval on the most incidental expenses. Meanwhile, they treat their leaders with the suspicion given to politicians on Capitol Hill. A plurality of elders doesn’t seem like such a good idea, then, because it’s much easier to keep only one pastor in his place.
But it’s not an unhealthy and distorted model of congregationalism we wish to defend. Instead, we defend the view that churches should be led and directed by biblically qualified elders, who in turn are accountable to the church as a whole. Ultimately, the congregation as a whole is accountable to the Word of Christ, ensuring that a faithful gospel ministry endures in that place. In short, organizational expression is given to the gospel reality that the church is a group of regenerate-but-not-yet-glorified Christians who are gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the chapters that follow, we will set the historical context and roots of congregationalism in Baptist life, spanning the years 1560–1720 and describing how congregationalism functioned and developed. Then we will turn to the biblical and theological case for congregationalism as the best form of church government for faithfully reflecting the nature of the church as the new covenant people of God. Throughout these chapters (and this book), the word congregationalism with a lowercased “c” refers to the doctrine, while the word with an uppercased “C” refers to a denomination.
Chapter 1
Some Historical Roots of Congregationalism
Michael A. G. Haykin
A comprehensive study of congregationalism, not simply as a denominational stream but as a conviction about church life that has been found in numerous Christian communities, would doubtless require a series of volumes. In what follows, I have taken my cue from Geoffrey F. Nuttall’s brilliant study of congregationalism in the historical period between 1640 and 1660. This present study, however, broadens the time frame to include congregationalist witness in the Reformation period as well as congregationalism among the most significant body of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Baptists, the Particular Baptists. Essential to the Particular Baptist vision in these two centuries was a view of church government that they shared with their Congregationalist brethren, a view that they believed best reflected the scriptural teaching.
Jean Morély: An Early Proponent of Congregationalism
The massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 24, 1572) and the weeks following, when thousands of French Protestants were slaughtered in cold blood, comprised a tragedy of immeasurable proportions. The slaughter decapitated the French Protestant community and radicalized those who survived. And in the long run it was detrimental to the well-being of the French nation.
Among the victims in Paris were the chief supporters of Jean Morély (ca. 1524–ca.1594), one of the earliest known advocates of congregationalism, whose Traicté de la discipline et police Chrestienne (A Treatise on Christian Discipline and Polity) had created a firestorm of controversy within the French Reformed community since its publication at Lyons ten years earlier. Morély was a member of the nobility. Some of his humanist education had been in Zurich, where he was probably converted between 1546 and 1548. After a brief stay at Wittenberg, where he studied under the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), he completed his theological studies at Lausanne, where he became acquainted with Pierre Viret (1511–71), a close friend of John Calvin (1509–64). Between the early 1550s and 1561, Morély split his residence between Paris and Geneva, and in the latter city he completed his treatise on church government. He apparently showed it first to Calvin, but the French reformer was too involved in directing church planting and missions in France to read it. Around 1561, Morély moved to Lyons, where Viret was pastoring. The latter gave Morély’s manuscript a cursory read but did not study it closely enough to see any problems with its arguments. Morély thus went ahead in 1562 and had it printed in an elegant 350-page edition. He dedicated it to Viret and presented it to the national assembly of the French Reformed Church, which was held in Orleans that year. The book was a bombshell.
Traicté de la discipline is divided into four books. In the first Morély argued for the necessity of church discipline. He was concerned that the Reformed churches of his day had significantly inferior moral and lifestyle standards in comparison to the early church (la primitive Église). But how was one to recover the moral ethos of the early church? Morély argued that churches needed to recover the type of governance that marked those halcyon days in the church’s history, namely, “democratic government” (gouvernement Democratique), where authority is vested in the hands of the congregation. Unlike today, the term democracy and its cognates were freighted with deep-seated negative connotations in the sixteenth century. Centuries of political reflection about the ideal type of government in late Antiquity and the medieval era led to the consensus that a monarchical arrangement was best. As a result there was an instinctive rejection of any type of governance that gave the people a major role in decision making. Such governance was regarded as little better than anarchy, lacking both a permanent body of law and administrators for that legal framework. Morély sought to circumvent this instinctive dislike by insisting that the church government he had in mind was not a true or “pure” democracy in the ancient sense because there was a body of law—to be found in the Scriptures—and a body of administration, namely, the pastors and elders of the local church. He further defined the local church as that “union of truly blessed souls chosen in Jesus Christ from eternity for eternal life, who assemble for the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, who are a part and image of the universal church.”
Book 2 focused on the church’s implementation of discipline as it related to excommunication and heresy. To whom has Christ given the authority to receive new members into the local church, or expel them if necessary? Morély is clear: such decisions are ultimately the responsibility of the local church. Pastors and elders must then execute decisions that come from the congregation. On this point Pierre Viret took a similar stand to Morély, but during the controversy sparked by Morély’s ideas, Viret kept his views to himself. To have done otherwise would have meant conflict with his closest friends, including Calvin in Geneva. If the powers of reception and excommunication belong ultimately to the congregation, then it follows, as Morély argued in book 3, that the congregation also has the power to el...
