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168 Law & Just. - Christian L. Rev. 5 (2012)
Baptist Church Polity and Practice

handle is hein.journals/ljusclr168 and id is 5 raw text is: BAPTIST CHURCH POLITY AND PRACTICE PAUL GOODLIFF Abstract: Baptists occupy a distinctive middle ground between those traditions that operate with a centralised and hierarchical legal structure supported by either canon or other statutory law enshrining the polity of the church in a variety of dimensions, and those independent congregations who conduct their life without any reference to a wider ecclesial body, and organise themselves according to their own decision-making powers alone. All, of course, are subject to civil law, especially law of property, charity law and, increasingly, employment law. This article, however, seeks to explore the way in which Baptists (and here, I specifically mean those Baptist churches in membership with the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB)) straddle a middle ground between local congregational independence and Union-wide policy and regulation. Introduction Baptist churches in membership with the Union are both inter-related and independent, with some specific areas of their life governed by the decisions and policy of the wider Union, and other areas entirely independent of any external control. This gives expression to the Baptist conviction that while the embodiment of the church is normally the local congregation, it is not the totality of the church. The wider union of churches in association with BUGB is ecclesial, but not a 'church' or (ekklesia) as such.' 'While Baptists have always held that the local church is wholly the church, they have also committed to the conviction that it is not fully the church - that is the church in all its fullness.'2 The bodies governing BUGB give rise to a matrix of co-operating and Steven R. Harmon, The Ecumenical Dimensions of Baptist Denominational Identity, in. (ed.) Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, Denomination. Assessing an Ecclesiological Category, (London, T&T Clark, 20011,) pp.34- 49. p.43 2 Brian Haymes, Ruth Gouldbourne and Antony Cross, On Being the Church. Revisioning Baptist Identity. Studies in Baptist History and Thought, Vol 21. Milton Keynes, Paternoster, 2008. p.195.

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