For not only will a sect remove itself from the worst, but it will also find itself severed from the best as well. Sects are never as bad as the worst and never as good as the best. Since the members of a sect communicate only with themselves, with all the intellectual and religious inbreeding which that necessitates, they are cut off from the spiritual enlightenment and the highest standards available outside of their particular sect. The consequences of such a course can be ruinous. Their ministers might be qualified, for example, simply because they agree with the majority of those who are in the sect, but outside of it they may not come close to meeting the highest standards.
Infallibility makes education a superfluity.
It is probably not unfair then to say that sects historically came into existence as a protest against inferior standards but end up virtually ignorant of the highest standards of the religious world in general. Since the rest of the religious world has access to the Word of God, too, what they mean is that they understand that Word and no one else does. Because there is little real correspondence between the two groups, they can remain perfectly serene in their conclusion. Chappell, Macartney and Fosdick have been preached in many a pulpit where they would never be welcomed, even where they would be denounced as heretics. There is no reason to believe that sects are going out of style.