Should we use denominational labels?

A new question I've been wondering about has to do with denominational labels. How much emphasis should we place on using them? This blog has a big one - I identify myself as an "ecumenical Baptist" - but what if this very definition is problematic? In my regular bible reading I've recently come across 1 Corinthians 1, where Paul chastises the Corinthians for divisions, with Corinthian Christians claiming "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas" (1:12-13). Paul says later in 1 Cor. 2 that "we have the mind of Christ." Is our strong emphasis on denominational labels and identities - Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, and so on - holding us back from a more profound identity to which we are called? Would Paul accuse us of saying "I belong to the Baptist identity" or "I belong to the Methodists" instead of saying "I belong to Christ"? Is there something at stake in our language as Christians when we identify ourselves by denominations, rather than as Christians? (A profound gift of recent theology being the discovery that language is so important to who we are as Christians.)

One of the first things I learned in religious studies is where all the denominations came from and what they represent. This is something I loved learning, as I was puzzled as a kid what all the different labels, labels like "Methodist" or "Presbyterian," meant and why some of my friends went to different churches than me. For a long time I tended to give a slight sneer to people who said "I'm just Christian" when I asked for their denominational background. I thought that by calling themselves "just Christian" they were passing over a wealth of theological history and distinctiveness, but perhaps they read 1 Cor. 2 more than I did, and were expressing a more profound theological point than I was realizing.

In my mind, the best Protestant theologians are those who write as if their theology was "for Christians," rather than a particular expression of a historical group. Karl Barth's theology was entitled Church Dogmatics. He wrote assuming that his theological work expressed the way God relates to Christians, and assumed, whether we agree with him or not, that the historical form of Protestantism is the way God intended the Church to exist in the world. Robert Jenson's Systematic theology is a recent example: he says his theology assumes that the Body of Christ is one body, although he laments ecclesial divisions at the beginning of the work. I wonder if theologies that emphasize ecclesial location, like "Baptist theology," "Radical Reformation theology," or "Anglican theology" demonstrate not humility or attention to detail, but a lack of theological verve in the face of our call to have "the mind of Christ" that Paul talks about.