Core tenet of The Baptists
Every congregation governs itself.
No bishop above the local church: each congregation calls its pastor and minds its own discipline.
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held
Local church autonomy is the Baptist structural principle: each congregation calls its own pastor, owns its own property, and answers to no bishop or synod. Conventions and associations exist for cooperation but hold no authority over member churches. The strength is responsiveness and lay ownership; the cost is that the family has fractured repeatedly, most consequentially over slavery in 1845, a division the Southern Baptist Convention formally apologized for in 1995.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideas
Satsang — the singing evening.
Hinduism · rite
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The fourfold sangha.
Buddhism · community
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Micchami dukkadam.
Jainism · rite
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Argument, for the sake of heaven, is sacred.
Judaism
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The church is the body of Christ.
Christianity
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Jumu'ah — the Friday assembly.
Islam · rite
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