Denominationalism

Nevin (Catholic Unity) knows the arguments for denominationalism:

“We frequently hear apologies made for the existence of sects in the Church. They are said to be necessary. The freedom and purity of the Church, we are told, can be maintained only in this way. They provoke each other to zeal and good works. Without them, the Church would stagnate and grow corrupt. They are but different divisions of the same grand army, furnished for battle variously according to their several tastes, but all moving in the same direction against the common foe, and forming together in this order a more powerful array than if no such divisions had place.”

But he’s not buying it. Though theoretically possible, this vision of cooperative diversity is a mystification, a comforting mythology: “Our various sects, as they actually exist, are an immense evil in the Church. Whatever may be said of the possibility of their standing in friendly correspondence, and only stimulating the whole body to a more vigorous life, it is certain that they mar the unity of this body in fact, and deprive it of its proper beauty and strength. The evil may indeed in a certain sense be necessary; but the necessity is like that which exists for the rise of heresies, itself the presence of a deep seated evil, in which the Church has no right quietly to acquiesce. Our sects, as they actually stand at this time, are a vast reproach to the Christian cause. By no possibility could they be countenanced and approved as good, by the Lord Jesus Christ, if he should appear again in the world as the visible head of his people. This all must feel.”

Nevin doesn’t think that the solution is to unite the churches under a single head. But he does look for a renewal of the gospel of the broken barrier: “the middle walls of partition as they now divide sect from sect should be broken down, and the whole Christian world brought not only to acknowledge and feel, but also to show itself evidently one.”