October 20, 2025 Show with Doug Aldrich on “Congregationalism: The Rise, Fall & Rise of the Savoy Declaration & Its Popularity Among the Reformed Churches”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 20th day of October 2025.

Before I introduce my guest today, I want to give you all the exciting news. I gave you half of it last week when I interviewed Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kibwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and founding chancellor of the African Christian University.

I interviewed him last Thursday to pay tribute to the late Vodie Baucom, who was a very close, longtime dear friend of Dr. Mbewe's, and Dr. Mbewe convinced Vodie to labor with him at African Christian University out there in Zambia for nine years before he returned home and then, sadly, not long after that, went home to be with the Lord.

Obviously, that's only sad news for those of us on Earth who knew and loved Vodie Baucom. Not sad news at all for Vodie Baucom himself. But I gave you all the news that Conrad Mbewe has agreed to be my next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free biannual pastor's luncheon, which will be held on Thursday, March 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

And that's 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., as I said, and everything is free. Not only your lunch, but every man who attends will receive a heavy sack of free brand-new books personally selected by me and generously donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom.

Well, I already announced that last week, but the second half of that wonderful news is that Conrad will also be preaching the night before my luncheon at the church where I happen to be a member, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

So that will be Wednesday, March the 4th, 7 p .m. And all are welcome to that event, whereas the pastor's luncheon, you have to be a man in ministry leadership. The Wednesday night meeting is open to all men, women, and children.

And for more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, go to trbccarlisle .org. Trbccarlisle .org. For more information about my pastor's luncheon, go to irontreppanzironradio .com.

Irontreppanzironradio .com. We have not yet updated the website with the news about Dr. Mbewe, so just keep checking in at that website for more details on the pastor's luncheon. But today, I am thrilled to introduce a first-time guest on Iron Treppanziron Radio.

Today's guest is Pastor Doug Aldrich, who is pastor of Trinity Reformed Church of Winchester Center, Connecticut. Today, we're going to be addressing Congregationalism, the rise, fall, and rise of the Savoy Declaration and its popularity among the Reformed churches.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Treppanziron Radio, Pastor Doug Aldrich.

Thank you for having me on, Chris. It's a real honor to be here.

Well, if you could give our listeners a brief description of Trinity Reformed Church of Winchester Center, Connecticut.

It's a new church. It was founded in 2024. We meet in a grange. We are fully committed to the Savoy and Cambridge platforms. We sing psalms and hymns. It's a wonderful little church. Last Sunday, we averaged about 48, but we are of one mind and one purpose, and it's just a real blessing to have godly elders and godly deacons in a church.

So, like I said, we've been around for about a year and a half, but the Lord's been very merciful to us.

And Trinity Reformed Church is not only theologically reformed, but is also a Congregationalist church as far as its polity and ecclesiology are concerned.

Yes, we're committed to the Cambridge platform. We are Congregationally governed. We are currently slowly beginning the process of figuring out where to go. Should we belong to some sort of denomination?

And we're leaning, actually, maybe, to going Presbyterian. But modern Presbyterianism, at least in its American form and its conservative American form, seems to be somewhat Congregational. And that will no doubt lead to a conversation, I would assume.

Praise God. Well, if anybody wants more details about Trinity Reformed Church of Winchester Center, Connecticut, especially if you live in that area, have family, friends, and loved ones in that area, or are traveling through that area, the website is TrinityReformedCT .org.

TrinityReformedCT, the abbreviation for Connecticut .org. And we will, God willing, repeat that website later on in the broadcast. But before we go into our major theme about Congregationalism itself, we have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest such as yourself, that guest will provide for our listeners a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

So we would love to hear your story.

Amen. So I was raised in a very friendly, very liberal Congregational church in Manchester, Connecticut. It was the big church in Manchester, Center Congregational Church. My father and my mother came from the 1940s generation.

And when they moved to Connecticut in the early 50s, they attended the big Congregational church because that's what you do. And I was very active in the church. I think I had near-perfect attendance at Sunday school, became a deacon in, I think it was 18 or 19, taught Sunday school, and had no idea what the gospel was.

No one ever told me the gospel. It was your standard New England 1950s liberal theology. You'll be a nice person. The Lord Jesus is the homeless person you meet on the street and Daniel in a coat of many colors, and that's kind of about it.

When I went to University of Connecticut, I was a history and political science major, and I read Augustine and the City of God for the first time. And I started realizing, wait a minute, there's actually something more to Christianity than just being a nice person.

And by the providence of God in a very strange way, I was called and then converted. I decided to go to seminary because I thought that'd be a good thing to do to help people. So, I went to Yale University, and I actually came to the Lord at Yale Divinity School.

So, solely by grace, I just want to say.

Oh, yeah. It would have to be solely by grace.

Amen. Amen. Because YDS, the nickname was Yale Depravity School, as we used to call it. Yale Divinity School was not known for cranking out Bible-believing Christians, especially in the 1990s. But by providence, there was a small group of very devout, strong Christians at Yale, and they led me to the Lord.

I came to the Lord. And it's been my calling ever since to go to mainline churches and encourage them in the gospel and proclaim the gospel because I spent decades in a church. And again, friendly church, nice community church, but no one ever told me the gospel.

No one told me about my sins. No one told me about God's judgment against sin. And no one told me that Christ is our only hope. So, that's been my driving ministry since 1994.

Well, praise God. And how did you know that the Lord had placed the call upon your life to enter into pastoral ministry specifically?

If you had asked me, I would love to go back in time and ask me that question back in the 1980s because I don't know what the answer would be, to be very blunt, because I was a liberal. And so, do I go into politics?

Do I go into teaching? Do I go into ministry? It's all kind of the same thing. You help people. And I thought, you know, this would be a good thing. I'm very active in my church. I'm a deacon. I teach Sunday school.

And so, I'll go to divinity school. That's a good Connecticut congregational thing to do. And like I said, I had no idea what the gospel was. So, after, by God's mercy, I came to faith and repentance and belief in Christ, then the calling became clear.

Before that, it would, like I said, be interesting to go back in time and ask me, and I'd be curious what my answer would have been.

Well, I am thrilled to hear that you are the undershepherd of a new church there in Winchester Center, Connecticut. And I'm looking forward to our conversation today. And by the way, if anybody listening has any questions of their own, feel free to submit them to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. If you live outside of the USA, please only remain anonymous if your questions involve a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are having a difficult time in the church where you are a member. It might even be a Congregationalist church of the leftist stripe, and you don't want to publicly identify yourself with any criticisms you may have of that church.

That's just one example of why you might be compelled to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question about church history, about theology, about this particular church, a Trinity Reformed church in Winchester Center, Connecticut, please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

That's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Well, it might be helpful to hear from you a good working definition of what Congregationalism actually means and how this can be traced back in time through church history.

I know that many people might be absolutely shocked to know when they have some kind of an awareness that the first Congregational church of such and such town, wherever they may live, known publicly for its leftism, for its pro-homosexual stance, for its pro-abortion stance, and all things leftist, they might be shocked to learn that these congregations, many of which are in gorgeous, breathtaking, historic buildings, some of which are centuries old, were actually originally pastored by Puritans, believe it or not.

But in your own words, if you could tell us something about what Congregationalism is and something about the roots of its history.

Unfortunately, Congregationalism has several different meanings. There is small-c Congregationalism, which is a type of church government or polity, and it's known for being, to put it simply, more democratic, where the final say is going to be the voting members of the church and the local church owns its property.

Where it gets a little more complicated is when you define big-c Congregationalism as a theological tradition, and that also has several different definitions. The earliest Congregationalists, going back to the 1580s, generally Robert Brown is considered the first Congregationalist, were radical separatists.

They wanted to leave the Church of England totally. They thought the Church of England had no hope, and many of them started in a church called Scrooby, and they eventually went to Holland, and they eventually ended up in a place called New England and became the Pilgrims.

And the Pilgrims are a little bit different than the Puritans. The Pilgrims are radical separatists. As the Congregational tradition gets more mature, as you get into the 1630s to 1640s, you have a much more creedal form of Congregationalism.

The Puritans start going to New England, they settle mostly first at Salem, and they kind of absorb the early Plymouth Plantation Pilgrims. And they'll create in 1648 the Cambridge Platform, which is the official statement of Congregational government, which looks almost quasi-Presbyterian to modernize.

And then in 1658, they would create the Savoy Declaration of Faith, basically the Westminster Confession of Faith, but made for Congregational government with a couple of other tweaks. These Congregationalists, and I think in a lot of ways they founded conservative Congregationalism in the 1640s, is very creedal.

They said they're not independents. They don't believe in a radical independency, but they believe the final say in the end should be in the Congregation. And thus Congregationalism and Presbyterianism are very, very close.

Unfortunately, by the judgment of God, this form of Congregationalism doesn't last too.

Long.

And the great place of Congregationalism in New England, and they take over New England, goes liberal really quick and really fast. To such a point, most people this day and age, including the vast majority of Congregational ministers, defined Big C Congregationalism, the tradition of Congregationalism, as really theological liberalism, that you can believe anything you want.

I know when I introduce myself as a Congregational minister, everyone always looks at me as though I'm a heretic, and that's not necessarily wrong because the tradition goes so liberal so quickly. And this great creedal tradition, this great reformed tradition, is really quite small.

And I sometimes wonder if it's actually almost dead, though I'd be curious, your last point of your thesis, we can maybe talk about it later, that there seems to be a rise of interest in the Savoy Declaration, and that would be interesting to talk about.

Now, do you have any explanation, or even if it has to be some kind of a guess, on how on earth you had this major shift of Congregationalists that went from strict, separatist, biblical inerratists, and so on, all the way to the other left wing of the spectrum, and as you put it, so quickly?

How on earth did that happen?

That's a great question.

There's many, many factors. In my opinion, the main thing is, well, two things. One's classical liberalism. They really go liberal, but in the full sense. And as my advisor at seminary said, I think it's a great line, when it comes to church history, nothing fails like success.

New England Congregationalists tremendously prosper. I mean, they create Boston, one of the great cities of the early colonies. They create Yale, and Harvard, and these other amazing institutions, these incredibly beautiful churches in Boston, and they become very successful.

I think the thing that really turns it, and again, there are many factors, though, is they go from, as one historian put it, from being Puritans to being Yankees, and there is a real focus on freedom, on liberty, on that's what Congregationalism is all about, because, well, what happens in the 1770s, New England leads the way against the British Empire, and really creates the American Revolution.

And I think they just bought into it totally. And it's amazing and terrifying how quickly everything falls away. If I could just tell just a quick story, just give you one example. In 1829, around there, there was a pastor named Abiel Holmes, who was the pastor of First Church of Boston, a very big church.

He remains conservative. He remains creedal, and the congregation liked him, but he just wasn't being liberal enough. He wasn't talking to the other pastors who were all Unitarians, liberals at the time.

So, they fired him. He creates Shepherd Congregational Church in Boston, and a few decades later, that goes liberal. His son was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and in 1858, writes a very famous poem, The One Horse Shay, which is this one axle, beautifully made horse carriage that's just going down the road, and then just completely collapses.

And it's viewed as an allegory of Calvinism in New England. It's incredibly built, it's well-designed, and it just completely falls apart. And of course, from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., you get Junior, the famous Supreme Court justice, who pushed the legal system to the left.

But you have, within just two generations, a solid conservative pastor, his son kind of goes liberal, almost Unitarian, and his son goes completely Unitarian. It just collapses in New England. So, I think those are probably the main reasons.

Mark.

Wow. Well, actually, we do have a listener with a question. We have Terrence in Albany, New York. And Terrence asks, do you think that the very nature of Congregationalism had something to do with its demise in regard to biblical faithfulness, because it could be considered a reflection of mob rule, where the majority wins?

Maybe. The only problem with that is theological liberalism takes over everything. I mean, it sweeps across the Presbyterians, it sweeps across the Anglicans. And, I mean, I don't think the Roman Catholic Church, of course, has the gospel, but we're seeing the Roman Catholic Church, just a few centuries later, go liberal.

Sure, the congregation can go liberal, and that is a problem. But if you read the Cambridge Platform in historical Congregationalism, it has elders that govern the church. It has regional gatherings called senates that were supposed to keep it in check.

Theological liberalism is just the beast of the 18th and 19th century, and it swarms across all things. It's interesting that, of course, the Baptists, who have Congregational government, they generally remain more conservative for a longer period of time.

But I think it's because they weren't so successful in New England. They were pushed out to the fringes, out to the South and out to the Midwest, as opposed to the rich parts of New England, which just, again, just completely went Congregational.

So is there a weakness in Congregationalism? Sure, but any form of church government can go wrong. And it's interesting, one of the few organizations that have been able to turn from liberalism to conservatism, the Southern Baptist Convention back in the 80s, and the Lutheran Church, Missouri Senate in the 1970s, were Congregational governed.

So you could have lay revolt. Once the top goes liberal, as we've seen in Presbyterianism, there's not much that can stop it back in the 1920s.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. And if you have a question of your own, as I said before, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

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Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film, Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

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So please go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And I am now back with my guest today, Pastor Doug Ulrich of Trinity Reformed Church, a Reformed and Congregationalist church in Winchester Center, Connecticut, and we are discussing Congregationalism, the rise and fall and rise of the Savoy Declaration and its popularity among the Reformed churches.

If you have a question, our email address is chrislarsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence. Our listener in Albany, New York, Terrence, had an interesting question that he brought up, bringing up what he perceived as a pitfall or a danger of Congregationalism.

And as you mentioned, basically any form of church government can be corrupted depending upon who are the individuals who are members of that church. If they have themselves become apostates, then obviously the church is going to become apostate, no matter what kind of government it may adhere to.

And even as everyone knows, many of the leftist churches today that we would categorize as apostate also had rich biblical histories to them, and they over the years completely abandoned the very roots from which they came, which makes you wonder why on earth they continue the masquerade of calling themselves Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Anglicans, or Christians at all.

But if you could, Pastor Doug, give us some of the pros and cons in your own mind of Congregationalism in general.

Assuming we're talking about Cambridge platform Congregationalism, the historic biblical creedal form, probably its greatest strength is, its favorite text is 1 Peter 2, that we are all saints. Congregationalism's greatest strength, I think, is to take that aspect and push it fully, that we are all saints, that it's a covenant community, and that the worship of the congregation is the focus.

Now, again, historic creedal Congregationalism very much has elders, very much has deacons, believes the elders should deal with the daily governance of the church, and that local congregational churches should hold each other accountable.

But that notion that all Christians are saints, I think, is a beautiful thing. And that Congregationalism, that the local body, in the end, is responsible for themselves. And so you have to have an educated, pious congregation.

I mean, it's very easy if you just give one person, the priest, total power in the local church, then the congregation doesn't have to be that educated. But once you have voting membership and they have the final check in the local church, they are held accountable and they're called to a higher standard.

So when it works, it is a beautiful system of government. But when it goes wrong, it is absolutely mob rule. It is the blind leading the blind.

You mentioned Baptists earlier. I happen to be, as you know, a Reformed Baptist, a confessionally Reformed Baptist. Adhering to the 1689 1N Baptist Confession, as does my church, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

They were, for quite a long time, Baptists in general, preserved from the collapse to leftism, as you mentioned. And I wonder if it has something to do with an aspect of polity that I view as a superior model.

Obviously, my Presbyterian friends will be adamantly opposed to what I'm about to say. But I believe in the independence and autonomy of local congregations of Christians. I believe in a congregational form of government.

I do believe in a plurality of elders also. But I do not believe in denominational hierarchies outside of those local congregations, where you have presbyteries and other things making decisions about major areas of practice over the congregations in that denomination.

Can you give us an example or share with us as much as you know about the history of Baptists and congregationalism? Because from what I know, the vast majority of Baptist churches, whether they are Reformed or Arminian, whether they are confessional or not—and by the way, for those of you non-confessional folks listening, I believe everybody is confessional, they just don't know it.

Once you say, we have no creed but Christ, that is a confessional statement. But anyway, can you tell us about the Baptists and the way that the Lord had enabled them to preserve a large amount of biblical purity up until the 20th century at some point, when many of them became just as liberal as the mainline denominations, especially when you consider denominations like the American Baptist Association?

It's interesting because, of course, the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession is the Savoy Declaration modified. Obviously, the main thing they modified about it was rejection of infant baptism and putting creedal baptism because they're Baptists.

But if you look at the section of 1689, they actually expanded the definition of the church and has one of the great statements of congregationalism ever, that elders are elected by universal suffrage of the local church.

So very congregational. Historically, the Congregationalists veered more to the Presbyterians for very regional and academic reasons. The Baptists, I always thought, were Congregationalists. At least back in the 80s and 90s when I first started studying this, if you ask what are the two fundamental traits of Baptists, well, they believe in congregational government and they believe in creedal baptism.

I know there's been a trend, and I am not well-read on this, but I'm curious of your opinion, that has gone to elder rule. In other words, the elders are elected by the elders and only the elders can fire themselves and they believe in local autonomy.

I don't think that's historical to Baptists, but I'm definitely open to correction on that. Congregationalism, one of the many reasons it fell is because it lost that sense of elders. Most modern congregational churches that you go into are basically run like a 1950s business.

They have a council system where all the various committees and the usual little fiefdoms who do their own little thing. They send a representative to the council and the council governs the day-to-day operations of the church.

It focuses on things based as the money in the building because it's usually some ancient church that has a very fancy church in the center of town. Then the deacons take care of spiritual things, whatever that might be.

The tie between Congregationalism and Baptists, there's a really huge divide because as you pointed out, Congregationalism goes so militantly liberal. But as for the rise of 1689, if I can ask you a question, it sounds like there's a renewed interest in the Savoy Declaration among Baptists.

I've never heard that before. That's interesting.

There is a renewed awareness. Perhaps this awareness has always existed in the minds of seminarians and pastors and those that know more about Baptist history who would have been aware of how much the Second London Confession, 1689 London Baptist Confession, borrowed from the Savoy in addition to the Westminster.

But it seems that there is a renewed interest that I have witnessed amongst Reformed Baptist churches to go back to emphasizing the Congregational aspect of ecclesiology, which is in our confession already.

As you said, there had been probably starting somewhere in the 1970s, a rise in more of an elder rule concept amongst Reformed Baptists with the plurality and parity of elders. And that had led to my people, the Reformed Baptists, to some abuses.

And there seems to be a zeal to put that behind us and to make corrections in the way God's people are governed. And that would include the Congregational aspect. In fact, there is, for those of you listening who might be interested in this, there is a church, a Reformed Baptist church in Fargo, North Dakota, a community Baptist church pastored by Douglas Vandermuhlen, who have annual conferences on ecclesiology.

They have a ministry underneath the authority of that congregation called the 3535 Foundation, and that comes from their actual address in Fargo, North Dakota, 3535 25th Street South in Fargo. But every year they have ecclesiology conferences, and the Congregational aspect, at least in the more recent conference that was held in 2025, emphasized that aspect of polity.

But the other abuse that has arisen amongst Baptists has been prominent among the independent fundamentalist Baptists who have typically a single pastor rule. They don't have a plurality of elders. Some of them actually teach against that, which is mind-boggling for people who put such an emphasis on the inerrancy of Scripture.

But that's where you have a problem that could lead to tyranny with one man. And then you have probably the more dominant problem amongst Baptists, those Baptist churches that are not Reformed, that are ruled by a deacon board rather than elders, and perhaps the ladies knitting circle and the people who have been in membership in the church the longest.

They may have been a part of the wealthiest families, and they get their way, perhaps not in an official way on paper, but there are many Baptist pastors throughout the United States who are terrified to offend certain people.

And I guess that could exist in any church, no matter what kind of polity the church officially has, where you have men of God, shepherds of God's flocks, fearing men more than God, or women in the congregation more than God.

But that's basically, in a nutshell, what I've observed. Of course, I'm no historian. I'm no expert on even Baptist history and ecclesiology and polity, but that's just from my observation. I've been saved since the 1980s, and I've been in the radio industry, Christian radio industry, since the 90s, and have met and fellowshiped with and worshiped with and gotten to know very closely a whole spectrum of evangelicals over the years.

So that's basically what I've gathered.

Like I said, I was fascinated by it because I started running into Reformed Baptist brothers and sisters, and I remember, oh, you have congregational government. They're like, no. And I'm like, oh, I thought that was a standard thing.

And I tried to do some research on it. I couldn't find it. I'm not that well-read in Baptist history. But it does seem like it's at this elder-only role as a fairly modern thing. It's interesting. I would recommend to my Baptist friends out there that are interested in congregational government.

The great statement is not Savoy. It's Cambridge. Savoy is, of course, the great statement of systematic theology. But that happens in 1658. Ten years before it, in New England, the Congregationalists in New England who want to encourage the Westminster Assembly to go congregational write the Cambridge Platform.