If we hold a basically material concept of church government—while trying to demonstrate spiritual unity at the surface level of specific decision-making—we are apt to reap the fruits of our inconsistency. The need is to see the government of our church, from start to finish, in the light of the spiritual facts that heal.
In the Manual of The Mother Church, Mary Baker Eddy specifies that the government of each branch church "shall be distinctly democratic." Man. Art. XXIII, Sect. 10. The democratic method calls for a group to reach its basic decisions through the expressed wishes of a majority. But do our Leader's words ask for a materially oriented concept of this process? Shall we attribute to "distinctly democratic" church government the matter-based premises and assumptions associated with it in ordinary political usage? Or shall we lift our concept of what "distinctly democratic" means from a material to a spiritual basis?
Working from a spiritual basis, we will find that all the essential elements of democratic church government stem from the one Mind, Spirit, God—and His laws and qualities—not from a source that's mortal, finite, limited, material.
