Subject: Re: Who trusts these know-it-alls?
By the time of the NT, Rome had a democracy for a while, and then lost it.

And the early church experimented with democratic, sometimes even communal forms of self government. Then the church lost it also when they began to ape the governing structure of Imperial Rome.

But through the centuries, the non-Catholic/Orthodox wings of Christendom have had many democratic forms of church polity.