Are Denominations Biblical

One of the greatest prayers offered to us in the gospels is Jesus'
high priestly prayer in John 17. Here, we read that Christ asks
that his disciples, and all those who would come to believe in him,
would be one! The appeal for Christian unity is a large theme of
this great prayer offered to the Father from His Son. Christ goes
on to ask that we might be one, even as He and the Father are
one—that is, that the church might display the same type of unity
that the Son and Father display in the Trinity. We know that the
prayers of Jesus Christ are efficacious (producing the desired
effect) and that they are powerful! Yet as we look across the
landscape of Christianity, we see, at least in its visible form,
more division, fragmentation and more separation than at any other
time in its history. Some recent statistics claim that the number
of distinct Protestant denominations in America alone well over
2,000. This immediately raises a host of questions, including: "If
Christ is the only way, why so many denominations?" or "What
exactly is the church anyway"?