Church labels have split families, pews and whole movements. God's Word calls believers to guard the unity Jesus prayed for, even where honest convictions differ.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
Most lines between churches were drawn by people. Jesus’ prayer that His followers would be one asks believers to examine every one of them.
Absalom Jones was still on his knees when the trustee reached him. It was a Sunday morning at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and Black members had been told to move to the gallery for worship. As the congregation prayed, a trustee began pulling Jones up and told him he "must not kneel here." Jones asked him to wait until the prayer was over.
Richard Allen, a formerly enslaved preacher kneeling nearby, later wrote in his account that when the prayer ended, the Black worshipers "all went out of the church in a body." Tradition dates the walkout to 1787, though historian Richard S. Newman places it in 1792 or 1793. Allen opened Bethel Church in a former blacksmith shop in 1794.
In 1816, he and other Black Methodist leaders formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the United States. No doctrinal dispute drove Allen out. He remained committed to the Methodist faith. He left a church that would not let Black believers pray beside white ones.
His story brings to the surface a question many Christians ask about the names on their church signs: Did God ordain denominations, or did people build them?
The word "denomination" appears nowhere in the Bible. The New Testament describes one church gathered in many places, and the apostles addressed congregations by their cities: the church of God at Corinth, the churches of Galatia, the saints at Philippi.
Corinth is also where Scripture comes closest to the subject. Believers there had begun lining up behind favorite leaders, and Paul answered firmly: "Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?" (1 Corinthians 1:12-13).
Paul, Apollos and Peter were never rivals. The parties formed around their names, and Paul called that partisan spirit carnal (1 Corinthians 3:3-4). He was addressing quarrels inside one congregation, and his letter does not resolve every question about modern church structures. His warning still exposes the misplaced loyalty that turns servants of Christ into banners for competing camps.
Every believer, from every tradition, race, culture and nation, belongs to one body, and that body belongs to Christ.
One Greek word the New Testament uses for religious parties and factions is hairesis, and its meaning depends on context. Luke uses it as a simple label for the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and opponents applied it to the early believers, calling Paul a ringleader of "the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5).
In Galatians 5:20, where the King James Version renders it "heresies," it appears among the works of the flesh, and lexicons define it there as dissension arising from differing opinions and aims. Peter uses the same word for "damnable heresies," false teaching that denies the Lord (2 Peter 2:1).
The positive command is unity. Jesus prayed for every future believer: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:21). Paul told the Ephesians to keep "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:3). The Spirit has already made believers one, and their task is to protect that unity.
That same Paul drew hard lines around the Gospel itself, pronouncing a curse on anyone who preached another (Galatians 1:8). In Romans 14, he told believers who disagreed over food and holy days to receive one another without judging each other's convictions.
Not every disagreement between traditions is that small. Christians hold serious, long-standing convictions about baptism, church authority and the sacraments, and some traditions treat those convictions as essential. Scripture asks believers to weigh each difference honestly, guarding the Gospel without making every disputed matter a test of fellowship.
The modern understanding of denominations took shape in 17th-century England. At the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s, a small group of Independent ministers known as the Dissenting Brethren argued that Christians divided over church government could still recognize one another as one church.
One of them, Jeremiah Burroughs, insisted that "love and unity are Christ's badge." The word caught on during the 18th-century Evangelical Revival because it was neutral. Each group was "denominated," or named, as one member of the larger church. A term adopted to hold Christians together became shorthand for what keeps them apart.
Christians have disagreed over church government for centuries. Jesus gave them love as the one mark every disciple should share (John 13:35).
In 1929, theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, who later taught at Yale, wrote in The Social Sources of Denominationalism that "denominationalism represents the moral failure of Christianity." He argued that wealth, nationality, region and race had shaped America's church divisions, so that churches mirrored the social lines the Gospel calls believers to overcome.
Allen’s walkout fits Niebuhr’s thesis, and so does the revival that gave birth to modern Pentecostalism. In 1906, Black and white worshipers prayed side by side at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles under Black preacher William J. Seymour. Eyewitness Frank Bartleman rejoiced that “the color line was washed away in the blood.” Within two decades, historians note, that line had been redrawn, and Pentecostals were organizing into largely separate Black and white denominations.
The Center for the Study of Global Christianity now estimates about 53,000 denominations worldwide, up from 45,100 in 2020. The figure is often quoted as proof of hopeless division, though its researchers count a church body separately in every country where it operates. By that method, the Catholic Church alone counts as more than 200 denominations.
By one research center’s count, Christians worship in about 53,000 denominations. Scripture names “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5).
Christians reaching for unity often quote a motto credited to Augustine: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Augustine did not write it. Its earliest known appearance is in a 1617 work by Marco Antonio de Dominis, a former Catholic archbishop, and Lutheran pastor Peter Meiderlin used it in the 1620s.
Some believers have pursued unity by leaving denominations altogether. Nondenominational congregations now form the largest Protestant grouping in the United States by adherents, with more than 44,000 congregations and about 21 million people, according to the 2020 U.S. Religion Census.
Defenders of denominations warn that dropping the label does not solve the problem. Writers at The Gospel Coalition say denominations provide doctrinal clarity, accountability for pastors and shared mission work. They also note that many independent churches end up operating as denominations anyway, only with fewer safeguards. Theologian Roger Olson calls denominations “human creations even if some are also divine gifts.” A nondenominational sign can become a banner too.
So is a denomination manmade? Its structures are, and many grew from honest efforts to obey Scripture. The biblical stance is to hold the Gospel firmly and one’s own tradition humbly, recognizing fellow believers across denominational lines as members of Christ’s body. Where pride or racism drew the line, Scripture calls for repentance.
Two Philadelphia congregations have answered that call. On Oct. 25, 2009, Mother Bethel members returned to St. George’s for their first joint Sunday morning worship service since the walkout, the Inquirer reported.
The Rev. Fred Day, St. George’s pastor, presented the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler of Mother Bethel with a cross made from nails taken from the balcony built to segregate Black worshipers.
More than two centuries after Absalom Jones was pulled from his knees, the congregation born of that walkout filled the sanctuary where he had been told he could not pray. Paul asked Corinth, “Is Christ divided?” That Sunday in Philadelphia, Mark Kelly Tyler held the answer in his hands.
