An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

e expelled), in which case it would take its building and property with it.The other main ancestor of the URC was the English Presbyterian Church, which was theEnglish affiliate of the established Scottish Presbyterian Church. Like theCongregationalists, the Presbyterian Church emerged from the settlement after the end ofthe English civil war in 1660, and like the Congregationalists, it espoused democracy of asort. It was, and is, governed by a system of synods to which local congregations sendrepresentatives. But whereas the Congregational union was a federation of independentcongregations who chose whether or not to toe the line set by the Union, the Presbyterianshad to follow the prescriptions of the General Synod and its Moderator, who appointedtheir ministers. Moreover, the Presbyterian Church in Scotland was, as part of thesettlement after the Civil War, recognised as the state church in Scotland, and the Queenworships in its churches when in Scotland. The Presbyterians were thus never nonconformistslike the English non-conformist churches; like the more authoritarianepiscopal Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox Christians they believed inconformity to an official united state religion, differing merely in their templates of the onetrue church. Those who dissented from the official line had to leave, as they did at intervalsthroughout Presbyterian history, to form “free” churches.These differences in Church government were the main difference between theCongregationalists and the Presbyterians. When they came together in 1972 it is difficult toavoid the conclusion that the Congregationalists changed more than the Presbyterians.They changed from being part of a „bottom-up‟ union to being part of a „top-down‟ church,and the Congregational Federation was established to accommodate those congregationswho wished to remain part of a federation of local churches. In abandoning the principle of105