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- Form of church government adopted by those
- Protestant Christians known as
- Congregationalists, who let each congregation
- manage its own affairs. The first
- Congregationalists were the Brownists, named
- after Robert Browne, who defined the
- congregational principle 1580. In the
- 17th-century they were known as Independents,
- for example, the Puritan leader Cromwell and
- many of his Ironsides, and in 1662 hundreds
- of their ministers were driven from their
- churches and established separate
- congregations. The Congregational Church in
- England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church
- in England merged in 1972 to form the United
- Reformed Church. The latter, like its
- counterpart the Congregational Union of
- Scotland, has no control over individual
- churches but is simply consultative. Similar
- unions have been carried out in Canada
- (United Church of Canada, 1925) and USA
- (United Church of Christ, 1957).
-