Although most

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christianity, Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe ...

groups are congregationalist in polity, some have different ecclesiastical organization and adopt an

episcopal polity An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance ("ecclesiastical polity") in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. (The word "bishop" derives, via the British Latin and Vulgar Latin term ''*ebiscopus''/''*bisc ...

governance. In those churches the local congregation has less autonomy and the bishop oversees them, assigning pastors and distributing funds.

Evangelical Baptist Union of Georgia

The Evangelical Baptist Union of Georgia have an episcopal polity, with an archbishop as the

primate Primates are a diverse order (biology), order of mammals. They are divided into the Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the Haplorhini, haplorhines, which include the Tarsiiformes, tarsiers and ...

. Archbishop Malkhaz Songulashvili, pastor of the Cathedral of Tbilisi is a charismatic figure and social activist.

Union of Baptist Churches in Latvia

The Baptists of Latvia are result from a revival among German and Latvian Lutherans and organized their first church in 1861. The union is headed by a bishop.

Episcopal Baptist Church in Congo

The Église Épiscopale Baptiste is a

denomination in

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. It began with evangelical missionaries who accepted the Baptist doctrines and organized this denomination retaining the

. The Church became autonomous in 1956. J. Gordon Melton, Martin Baumann, ''Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices'', ABC-CLIO, USA, 2010, p. 671 In 2007 there were ten bishops, and 105,000 baptized members in 110 territorial parishes. Most of them were in the nine provinces of DRC and some in

Angola , national_anthem = "Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

and

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are ...

. The pastor are under supervision from the bishops, who assign them a church. The EPB is a member of the

World Council of Churches The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most ju ...

and the Église du Christ au Congo.

Among African-American Baptists

A few African-American Baptist congregations have ordained or started calling their senior minister

bishop A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ...

, but without changing congregational polity.

India

The uniting Church of North India received Baptists when in its constitution and had the Baptist Samson Das ordained Bishop of Cuttack in 2006.

References

External links

Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia

Bishop ordained in Virginia
Baptist denominations Christian denominations established in the 19th century Christian denominations established in the 20th century Protestantism in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Protestantism in Georgia (country) {{Baptists-stub