FOR DECADES critics have called them “a scandal,” “a blight,” “factionalism,” and “a caste system,” but denominations remain the institutional hallmark of modern Christianity. Criticism is understandable. Any Christian reading his New Testament senses the difference between the faith of the apostles and the Christianity of our day. The apostle Paul, for example, speaks of the church as the temple of God, unified in devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, but we find in our time only a menagerie of cults, sects, denominations, and isms. We sense deeply that this divided state of Christianity ought
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