Comparative structures of church government from early Christianity to modern denominations

Church Government

The Early Church

The Catholic Church Government

Church Government and Secular Government

Government and Protestantism

Ongoing Changes

Church government is a self-explanatory phrase for the mode of governance of the church, but the phrase has different meanings. The basic structure of governance in the Christian church derives from interpretations of the biblical text, with this structure mirroring the relationship between God and His followers. The structure of governance in the church ranges from the complexities of the Catholic Church, complexities in part created by the centralization of power in the Church as well as by its size and long history, to leaner and more decentralized structures for many Protestant groups, down to much simpler structures for smaller church groups that may not be linked to a larger external church structure. Many of the elements followed by most Christian churches, with the relationship of leader-flock between the priest/preacher and the congregation, derive from the relationship between Christ and the Apostles and then the relationship they had with other followers. This was certainly the derivation of the basic structure of the Catholic Church, which itself had variations in terms of that structure and the nature of the leadership, a structure that changed through history as various forces had an impact on the Church. Church government may be highly centralized or almost completely decentralized, with an extensive hierarchy or with a relatively simple hierarchy. The very idea of church government, though, implies some form of hierarchy, as does almost any type of government. Differences are found in how that hierarchy is formed, identified, operated, and viewed by the congregation. In many cases, the governance is imposed by the church itself. In other cases, the congregation decides many matters, including who will be given the role of preacher and spiritual advisor. Again, most of the differences derive from historical roots.

In a comparison of the Catholic church with a major Protestant group, the United Church of Christ (UCC), McMullen shows that the two have very different institutional structures, or "polities, " "where a polity refers to a denomination's form of government. The Catholic church is an episcopal polity that has a hierarchical structure invested with formal authority; the UCC is a congregational polity with a decentralized structure, where all formal authority is situated in the local church." There is a range of governing structures possible between the two on a scale of hierarchical strength.

Over time, the nature of church government changed, and it should be considered that the form which the government of the church takes in any given age is "an outward expression of a spirit working from within -- the embodiment of some intelligible purpose." Meaning can be found in the changes which have taken place in ecclesiastical organization, and these forms show at any moment in history what interests were paramount.

The Early Church

The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus himself through his apostle Peter. Jesus announced the formation of the Church and appointed Peter as its head. When Peter was dying he appointed Linus to take his place and continue his teachings, and when Linus was about to die he appointed Cletus, and so on so that there was always a leader or Pope to lead and to interpret the teachings of Jesus to the members of the Church. By the second century a.D., the Christian church had developed as an institution to the point where it had a clearly defined system of authority based primarily on its Scriptures, its creed, and its hierarchy of bishop, priest, and deacon. The history of this development is in some dispute. The Church was based on the belief that it had been founded by Jesus who had conferred authority over the church on his twelve apostles. The Church was created by the resurrection of Jesus, a miraculous act of God. The two most important rituals in the early church were first the Eucharist, which was celebrated by repeating Christ's words at the Last Supper over bread and wine in obedience to his command to remember him and in the conviction that he was present as their risen Lord, and second was the initiation rite of baptism, a cleansing with water that was regarded as an essential part of conversion to Christ and admission to the community. The authoritative structure that was developed for the Church was intended to avoid the problems that were foreseen: "There was a real danger of its tradition being swamped in a mass of conflicting interpretations of the meaning of Christ's life and resurrection." This structure was highly successful at maintaining the core of the Church against the challenges of other sects and of various divisions within the church itself, often leading to massive schisms and to the separation of portions of the old Church into new factions. Perhaps the most massive such change came with the development of Protestantism, but the Catholic Church survived even that challenge and continues today to serve as a bastion for the protection of core values and ideas.

This process began with the Apostles, the followers of Christ who knew Him directly before his death and who were witnesses to the resurrection that followed. Much of this is discussed in the Acts of the Apostles, where the issue of leadership is given considerable attention and is shaped around the words of Peter as he speaks following the healing of the lame man in Acts 3. This all relates to an offer that is made as Peter offers a warning along with a promise. He promises that those who repent will share in the wonders of God and will benefit greatly, and he tells these people that they are the sons of the prophets and the sons of the covenant made with god by their ancestors. This is the offer being made, but those who reject the offer, warns Peter, will be separated from the chosen people. Here as elsewhere in this book, Peter takes the leadership role for the developing church and acts as spokesperson for Christ and his followers.

The Acts of the Apostles depicts the development of the church after Christ's death and shows how authority developed in the church as an entity and in certain members of the church to, and that authority was based on the effort to bring the jews and the Gentiles together in the new church. Paul is portrayed in a positive light in the Acts as an important figure who carries the word outside the community and who is seen as a chosen instrument to carry the word to the Gentiles. Paul encounters Christ after the later's death in the form of a voice and a light. While Paul does become the messenger to the Gentiles, that was not his first intent. He becomes a leader in this aspect of the movement after he is repeatedly rejected in the synagogues. The first time he is rejected, he says that he will now turn to the Gentiles. In fact, though, he continues to try to preach in the synagogues and is rejected again and again. Paul always defines his mission in terms of God's concern for Israel. He is carrying on the messianic work of Christ and in a larger sense of the Jewish community extending back long before Christ.

Leadership is therefore shaped for both Peter and Paul around the word of Christ, around the messianic mission, and around the desire to bring the communities they minister to together under the same church rule. Each has his mission, and the missions are complementary. In the early period, the church was controlled by God in a sovereign manner. Events occurred without the intervention of God, and the apostles then had to analyze and evaluate these events and their meaning to them. Paul returns to Jerusalem and reports on what he has accomplished and so points to the future of the church as it is spread beyond the walls of Jerusalem. Leadership throughout is related to the development of the church and the dissemination of its word. Three main models of church government can be identified: Episcopal, with presiding bishop / archbishop councils; Presbyterial, with authority in the hands of the elders; and Congregational, with a democratic leadership of the church members.

Some elements are set by scripture, however. Biblical references to how the church is to be structured can be found in passages stating that Christ is the head of the church and its supreme authority (Ephesians 1:22; 4:15; Colossians 1:18). The local church is meant to be free from any external control and has the right of self-government (Titus 1:5). The church is instead to be governed by spiritual leadership by elders and deacons.

The Elders were a leadership body for the Israelites and had been so since the time of Moses. In the Catholic church, the term "Elders" was never used, and the bishops represented that class. The deacons were a separate group charged with assisting the Elders or the bishops, and their qualifications are similar to those for the Elders (1 Timothy 3:8-13).

The Catholic Church Government

The internal government of the early Church was formed within the framework of the Roman Empire, and bishops exercised authority over the Christian community in each Roman municipium. By the third century, a shift took place as the bishops of each Roman province formed the habit of meeting in a provincial synod, presided over by the bishop of the capital city, meaning the metropolitan bishop or archbishop. In the fifth century, the hierarchical evolution of Church government would be complete with the universal recognition of the Bishop of Rome.

In the Catholic Church, these leadership groups assumed a somewhat different form over time. From the first, three orders were thought to stand by themselves, these being bishops, presbyters (or priests), and deacons, and these were the only orders considered necessary to a church. By the third century, a number of other orders were introduced, all lower than that of deacons and so called "sub-deacons," those who helped the deacons in the care of the poor and with the property belonging to the church, including the "acolytes" who lighted the lamps, and assisted in the celebration of the sacraments; the "exorcists" who cared for persons suffering from afflictions resembling the possession by devils; the "readers" who read the Scriptures in church; and the "doorkeepers." All these were viewed as belonging to the clergy. There were also women members of the clergy called deaconesses, employed among Christians of their own sex for such works of mercy and instruction as were considered not fit for men to do. This order did not last long. As for bishops, it was found convenient for the government of the Church that some of them should be placed higher than others. Meetings at which such things wee decided were called "synods" or "councils" and were eventually held once or twice a year. The bishop considered the leader in each area was called a "metropolitan" because each was bishop of the metropolis (or mother-city) of the country in which the council was held. These bishops were now seen as higher than their brethren. In time, it was considered natural that the bishops of very great cities should be considered as even higher than the ordinary metropolitans, and so thus the bishoprics of Rome, of Alexandria, and of Antioch, which were the three greatest cities of the empire, were regarded as the chief bishoprics and as superior to all others:

Those of Rome and Antioch were both supposed to have been founded by St. Peter, and Alexandria was believed to have been founded by St. Mark, under the direction of St. Peter. Hence it afterwards came to be thought that this was the cause of their greatness; and the bishops of Rome, especially, liked to have this believed, because they could then pretend to claim some sort of especial power, which they said that our Lord had given to St. Peter above the other Apostles, and that St. Peter had left it to his successors. But such claims were quite unfounded, and it is clear that the real reason why these three churches stood higher than others was that they were in the three greatest cities of the whole empire.

Rome would become the supreme center of power where the Pope would reside and rule over the whole of the Catholic Church, developing as well a hierarchy of offices and officers to aid in various ways, leading today to the central power in the Congregation of the Holy Office, which "publishes solemn decrees which clarify the Church's teaching or condemn some particular theory. The layman, by virtue of the bond of discipline, is in duty bound to pay heed to these decrees, but he may submit them to the judgment of his conscience and is permitted to criticize their premises as debatable. In matters of doctrinal interpretation the final word belongs, however, to the Church hierarchy and the Pope.."

It was in the fourth century that Pope Damasus I countered the claims of the Council of Constantinople by stating that the authority of Rome was not derived from a synodal decision but stemmed instead from Christ's commission to St. Peter (Matt. 16:18-19).

Government and Protestantism

Protestantism necessarily shifted toward the City of Man for support of a different vision of the City of God because that was the only way to overcome the power of the government of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church even before that had experienced opposition because its independence and self-sufficiency produced a good deal of anti-clericalism. It did more than that, however:

By an even stranger paradox it was made a ground for strengthening secular power. The mechanics of this result was simple: the reformer discovered that he was dependent on royal support to coerce the pope and the hierarchy, even in the interest of reform. It was thus that Martin Luther was thrown into the arms of the German princes, and that the divine right of the king became almost an official philosophy for Lutherans and Anglicans.

A document from France in 1791 cites the belief that the secular authority is waging a war against the Catholic Church as the National Assembly passed a Civil Constitution of the Clergy that would "change the universal practice of the Church, disregard the opinions of the holy Fathers and the decrees of the councils, overturn the order of the hierarchy and control the election of bishops, destroy episcopal sees, and introduce a worse form into the Church after removing the better.."

The essential form of the Catholic Church was set by the middle of the third century, shown in part by the fact that martyrs and relics more and more had to be approved by ecclesiastical authority and not merely adopted by the people. This suggests one of the key consequences of the development of a church hierarchy as "significant changes were going on among the clergy themselves which increased the distance between them and the mass of the faithful."

The development of Protestantism from the Reformation can be seen in part as a reaction to the rigidity of Church government up to that time, with a shift away from part of the rationale for much of the government of the Catholic Church, that being that those higher up in the hierarchy had a more direct access to God: "Before, a vast institution had been interposed between the individual and the objects of religious faith and hope. The Reformation changed all this; it opened to the individual a direct access to the heavenly good offered him in the Gospel."

Ongoing Changes

This does not mean that Protestantism was simply a liberating force that gave the laity more responsibility and more power, for many Protestant groups have also been just as concerned with central authority. In the seventeenth century, the Puritans insisted that one particular form of church government was required in Scripture and was essential to the faith, so that soon presbyterian synods and congregational independency were being urged as the sole justified forms of polity for the Church of England. This produced a movement by episcopalians to defend themselves in the same way:

The Laudian divines discovered Eastern Orthodoxy and the fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, which gave them more pride in their episcopal government. They stopped being apologetic about their peculiarities among the Reformed churches and started to make virtues of them. They did not yet go so far as to unchurch those churches without bishops, but they now regarded this lack as a defect on the part of the other Reformed churches. The Romanist Queen provided pressure to conceive Anglicanism as different from the other Reformed churches in kind as in degree. Archbishop Laud, however, still accepted Lutheran superintendents as the thing without the name, and most explained the loss of bishops at the Reformation as the unfortunate necessity of the crisis.

The sort of control exercised by Rome over the Catholic Church has been labeled Papacy by many in the Protestant church, and the modern church is seen as makng "the clergy (if not the pope, on the principle, l'eglise c'est moi). The laity are purely passive in administration as in teaching." The Protestant holds that all believers are their own priests and that under this circumstance, the government of the church can never be absolutist and must instead be representative of the local congregation.

Conclusion

The nature of church government depends on which church is being discussed, which denomination informs that church, and how that church developed historically. In spite of efforts on the part of some to claim that there is a "right" type of church government, there is little support for this, and generally the form has been developed after extensive interpretation of scripture and some imposition of external ideas onto the hierarchy developed. Wayne a. Grudem notes this when he points out that no one form of church government can be found promoted in the New Tetament, and the idea of church government itself "is not a major doctrine like the Trinity, the deity of Christ, substitutionary atonement, or the authority of the Scripture." The more rigid Catholic structure gave way to a less defined Protestant structure after the Reformation, though some of the same concerns have brought change to the Catholic Church as well, with a revised code that now "reflects the Second Vatican Council's affirmation that lay persons, through baptism, have an indispensable role in the mission of the church."

In any case, church government serves to organize and manage the church in each denomination and sometimes the denomination as a whole. The government further may decide church doctrine to a greater or lesser extent, meaning settling theological issues, clearly a role for the leadership of the Catholic Church, and sometimes for the leadership in Protestant sects. In each case, though, the basic pattern developed first with the Catholic Church after the beginnings in the early church, with many Protestant groups either emulating aspects of the Catholic church government or deliberately seeking to counter that pattern with something quite different. Even then, the essential pattern of a "priest" who helps define and explain theology to the congregation remains key, with some groups giving more freedom of interpretation to the laity and the followers than do others. The leadership of all churches, Catholic and Protestant, are is under pressure from followers to make certain changes or to avoid making changes, depending on the bent of the congregation. Certain issues recur again and again, like celibacy for the Catholic clergy, or the issue of women "priests" for both Catholic and Protestant churches. These are doctrinal issues that the leadership decides even in churches that give more authority to the individual.