Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 20:2 (Fall 2023)
Article: Baptist Polity Inherited From Congregationalism
Author: John B. Carpenter

Baptist Polity Inherited From Congregationalism

John B. Carpenter

John Carpenter is Pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Providence, North Carolina. He is the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022) and the Covenant Caswell substack.

The fact that Baptist polity – known as (small-c) congregationalism – is inherited from Congregationalism has been obscured by several bizarre historical anomalies.1 One is that New England Congregationalism, once so dominant that early American Baptists feared persecution from it, seems to have disappeared into the thin air of history. Congregationalism has so diminished as a movement, we Baptists sometimes have to be reminded that the term applies to a denomination as well as a polity. They have no large, living institution faithfully preserving their theology and traditions today. (Harvard, sadly, doesn’t count.) The result is that we have few latter-day Congregationalists reminding Baptists of their family resemblance. Westminster Seminary, J. Gresham Machen, and R. C. Sproul remind Presbyterians of their heritage. Few have done so for orthodox Congregationalists and made the connection to modern Baptists. Yet, as Stanley Grenz (1950–2005) wrote, “One crucial and lasting product of the Puritan movement of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [-- which was largely Congregationalism in America --] is the existence of a worldwide Baptist denomination”.2 But Baptists typically see Puritans – and thus Congregationalists (who in early America were virtually synonymous) – as people they are contrasted to rather than favorably compared with. The result of the fog around Baptist origins is that modern Baptists typically

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do not see their connection to Congregationalism. But any fair-minded Baptist historian would admit that we can trace Baptists, both General and Particular, arising from Congregationalism, both in England, where Congregationalists and Baptists were thoroughly intermingled, and in America where Congregationalism was the seed-bed from which Baptists sprung. Congregationalism was a significant minority of the Puritan movement in England and almost the unanimous polity of Puritans in New England. Thomas Edwards (1599–1647) said Baptists were “the highest form of Independency,” thus identifying Baptists as a type of Congregationalist.3 As such, Baptists inherited all the major – and many of the minor – features of their polity.

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