The Leipzig debate was preceded by long drawn out attempts by both the local Bishop and the University to prevent it occurring — neither wanted to risk trouble with
high ecclesiastical authority.
Similarly in the church order of Hesse (first introduced in 1531 and revised in 1537,1539, and 1566),
the highest ecclesiastical authority lay in the hands of the prince, but it was less bureaucratic and more representative in character.
Not exact matches
«Respect for
authority, tradition, station, and education eroded,» writes Hatch, and as a result, «American Protestantism has been skewed away from central
ecclesiastical institutions and
high culture; it has been pushed and pulled into its present shape by a democratic or populist orientation.»
It is at the point of conflict with the ruling
ecclesiastical authorities who tried to silence the witness of Christians to their faith that the question of fidelity to the
higher authority of God became most overt.
Mormon women exercise very little
ecclesiastical authority, especially at the
highest levels of the Church.
By the 1850's it was a commonplace observation that in America the Episcopalians «have allowed the laity a share in
ecclesiastical legislation and administration, such as the
high church in England never granted» and that as a matter of fact even a bishop «maintains his
authority for the most part only by his personal character and judicious counsel.
Nevertheless the Supreme Court of Illinois substituted its interpretation of the Diocesan and Mother Church constitutions for that of the
highest ecclesiastical tribunals in which church law vests
authority to make that interpretation.
In this class of cases, we think the rule of action which should govern the civil courts, founded in a broad and sound view of the relations of church and state under our system of laws, and supported by a preponderating weight of judicial
authority, is that whenever the questions of discipline or of faith or
ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law have been decided by the
highest of these church judicatories to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as final and as binding on them in their application to the case before them.