Congregationalist polity, often known as congregationalism,'s a system of church governance in which every local church congregation's independent, ecclesiastically sovereign, or "autonomous." Among those major Protestant Christian traditions that employ congregationalism are those Congregational Churches known by the "Congregationalist" name that descended from the Anglo-American Puritan movement of the 17th century, the Baptist churches, and most of the groups brought about by the Anabaptist m… (More on Congregationalism)