The Cambridge Platform - Governance

Governance

The platform defines and establishes a congregational polity—meaning that churches are independent both of any higher ecclesiastical authority, and of one another. It affirms that authority to choose officers, admit members, admonish or expel members, or restore those who have been expelled rests in the gathered members of each congregation.

Though distinct and without authority over one another, the platform affirms that there is to be a community of churches in relationship with one another. When an internal dispute cannot be resolved within a church, that church, at its own request, could convene a council of nearby churches to hear the dispute and offer non-binding advice which church members could then vote to act on, or not. Six ways of showing the communion of churches are identified:

1. taking thought for each others' welfare
2. consulting on any topic of cause where another church has more familiarity or information about a topic
3. admonishing another church, even to the point of convening a synod of neighboring churches and ceasing communion with the offending church
4. allowing members of one church to fully participate and receive communion in another church
5. sending letters of recommendation when a member is goes to a new church, due to a seasonal or permanent relocation
6. financial support for poor churches

The document has real ramifications for the polity of some denominations today. For example, the congregations of the United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist churches, and other modern-day descendants of the Puritan churches, continue to organize themselves in this way. When some Churches of the Standing Order in New England became Unitarian following the Unitarian Controversy, they kept a congregational polity. That polity continued to deeply influence the polity and organization of the American Unitarian Association, and, in turn, that of the Unitarian Universalist Association -- an organization that, while radically different theologically than the signers of the 1648 document, nonetheless shares a great deal of the same polity.