While optimistic about the benefits of ecumenical dialogue, Anglican Paul Ais wrote the following about denominationalism, including how it is a spiritual sickness and even sinful, being an explicit contradiction of Jesus' wish for believers to be truly "one" (cf. John 17:22):
Sometimes
it is when we see ourselves as one church among others that we become
disturbingly conscious of the disunity of the Church of Christ. With the
realization that the disunity is rampant and that schism is a sin comes the
desire to work for reunion. The fact of denominationalism is a standing rebuke
to the churches. It is eloquent testimony to the fact that they have failed—failed
to heed the prayer and command of Christ and the apostles in the New Testament
that the Church should be visibly one. The divisions within the Church—which denominationalism
is perhaps the most blatant manifestation—raise the question of whether the
Church actually exists on earth, or whether what we have is an inferior
substitute, a quasi-church. Only a miracle of grace can preserve the Church on
earth in the teeth of human drive to assert difference and to mark separation.
We cannot be complacent about denominations. To acquiesce in denominationalism
is to confess failure; to glory it in is a sickness. (Paul Ais, “Denomination:
An Anglican Appraisal,” in Paul M. Collins and Barry Ensign-George, eds., Denomination:
Assessing An Ecclesiological Category [Ecclesiological Investigations 11;
London: T&T Clark, 2011], 22-33, here, pp. 26-27)
