Independent congregations are distinct in having no denominational affiliation or oversight at all, so that membership, property, doctrine, and the calling of pastors rest entirely with the local church.
Independent congregations are single local churches, or informal fellowships of such churches, that stand outside every denomination. Many are evangelical and baptistic in practice, baptizing believers by immersion and observing the Lord's Supper as a memorial, but there is no shared confession binding them. Their modern growth in the United States is closely tied to the Bible church movement and to large nondenominational congregations founded in the later twentieth century.
Sources
Primary
- The Cambridge Platform (1648), the historic Congregational statement of the independence of the local church
Secondary
- Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (1893)