The truth is, as anyone may see who has any familiarity at all with the character and history of sects, that no more unpropitious atmosphere for liberty and independence can well be conceived, than that which they everywhere tend to create. Those precisely which make the greatest boast of their liberty, are as a general thing, the least prepared either to exercise it themselves or to allow its exercise in others. The sect habit, as such, is constitutionally unfree. All true emancipation in religion begins only where the power of this habit has begun to be broken, and the sense of a true catholic Christianity is brought to reign in its place. Each sect has its tradition; the fruit of accident or caprice in the history of its founder, conditioned more or less by the outward relations in which he was called to his apostolic mission; a certain scheme of notions and words, passing over always more and more to the character of dead mechanical gibberish and cant; whose authority all are required to swear, within its communion, and whose little circle or ring none may transgress without losing cast.

Take , for instance, the small community of the Albright Brethren. Is it not just as much bound in this respect, full as servile and full as intolerant, to say the least, as the Church of Rome? Is it not, in its way and measure, a papacy, a would-be=ecclesiastical domination, which seeks as far as possible to nullify and kill all independent thought and all free life? It is full indeed of professed zeal for Protestant liberty, free inquiry, an open Bible, universal toleration, the right of all men to think for themselves, and all such high-sounding phrases; but we must be simple enough, if we can be led for a moment to take such professions for anything more than so much sound. The liberty of the sect consists at last, in thinking its particular notions, shouting its shibboleths and passwords, dancing its religious hornpipes, and reading the Bible only through its Theological goggles. These restrictions, at the same time, are so many wires, that lead back at last into the hands of a few leading spirits, enabling them to wield a true hierarchical despotism over all who are thus brought within their power.

All tends to crush thought, and turn the solemn business of religion into a sham. True spiritual independence must ever be an object of jealousy in such a communion, as much so fully as in any popish convent. Let a generous minded man begin really to think for himself, by rising above the life of the mere sect, and it matters not how much he may have the Spirit of Christ, or how truly he may reverence God’s word, he will fall into suspicion and condemnation; and if true to himself, must find it necessary in the end to quit the association altogether, the victim of reproach and persecution, for these very rights of conscience, whose special guardianship the little brotherhood has been affecting to take almost exclusively into its hands.

This is only an instance, to exemplify a general fact. All sects, in proportion as they deserve the name, are narrow, bigoted, and intolerant. They know not what liberty means. They put out men’s eyes, gag their mouths, and manacle their hands and feet. They are intrinsically, constitutionally, incurably popish, enslaved by tradition and prone to persecution. The worst of all schools for the formation of true manly character is the communion of such a sect. The influence of secs is always illiberal; and it should be counted in this view a great moral calamity, in the case of all young persons, especially, to be thrown upon it, in any way, for educational training.

John Williamson Nevin, “The Sect System,” First Article, The Mercersberg Review, September 1849