Skinner House is pleased to present a new edition of the Cambridge Platform, the 1648 document that first articulated the foundational principle of congregational polity. This independent form of church governance is the common heritage shared by Unitarians, Universalists and other congregationally ordered churches. Now distinguished historian Peter Hughes has made the Cambridge Platform available and accessible to a new generation of ministers and laypeople, with clarified scriptural citations, modernized spelling and punctuation, and a preface that addresses the contemporary value of this touchstone of religious liberty. Alice Blair Wesley introduces modern readers to the small community of seventeenth-century New England immigrants who gathered at Harvard College to craft a religious declaration of independence.
It is clear and easy to read. I appreciate the time taken to edit it and present it in this format. I also appreciate some of the theological assumptions made by the original writers of the document. But I wish we looked at it more often, as Unitarian Universalists, to see if we need to change anything about our polity.