History
Issues of church governance appear in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles; the first act recorded after the ascension is the election of Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot. Over the years a system of episcopal polity developed.
During the Protestant Reformation, arguments were made that the New Testament prescribed structures quite different from that of the Roman Catholic Church of the day, and different Protestant bodies used different types of polity. It was during this period that Richard Hooker wrote Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity to defend the polity of the Church of England against the Puritans.
Read more about this topic: Ecclesiastical Polity
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