Church covenant

The church covenant is a declaration, which some churches draw up and call their members to sign, in which their duties as church members towards God and their fellow believers are outlined. It is a fraternal agreement, freely endorsed, that establishes what are, according to the Holy Scriptures, the duties of a Christian and the responsibilities which each church member pledges himself or herself to honour, in the best way possible. A church covenant is not generally considered indispensable for a church. As such, in fact, it is not mentioned in the Scriptures, but it outlines, in a summarised way, those duties which the New Testament requires as members of a church.

The idea of a church covenant is an expression of the free-church ecclesiology and it issues from within the context of the English Puritanism, becoming afterwards one of the characteristic traits of the Baptist churches.

In the 16th century, the Church in England, confronted with the teaching of the Bible under the impulse of continental Protestantism, engaged itself in a reformation which disconnected it from many persuasions, practices and traditions of Roman Catholicism. In particular, from the time of Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Queen Anne Boleyn, it reflected on the meaning, structure and function of being a church and was involved in heated discussions on the measure according to which this reformation must occur.

To the end of the reign of Edward VI the model of the Reformed Genevan ecclesiology prevailed. After the parenthesis of Mary I, in which Roman Catholicism was restored, with Elizabeth I a line of compromise prevailed and lasted until the time of Charles I when, caused by the English Civil War, Calvinist Presbyterianism was reintroduced. With Charles II, the Elizabethan settlement was reconfirmed and again imposed a compromise line between Catholicism and Protestantism.

...
Wikipedia