I have read books where high church advocates blame all the problems of the modern church (including the forever increasing schism) on the "independent spirit" of the low church (no creeds, no central authority, etc), and associate it with the American principles of democracy and the frontier. They have a good point there, but they also ignore that this splintering often begins when those high church sytems go corrupt. (Why there was a Reformation needed in the first place).
Interesting, I wouldnt blame independence of spirit per se, or American principles such as frontier democracy, those things where exports and Burke associates democracy not with political revolution but norms derived from the refomed churches.
In the UK at least I see the splits as a consequence of more radical and splinter groups not caring about traditions or norms, wether they are corrupt or not, and more favourable to fashions and vogues, particularly cultural ones, such as affirming homosexuality, disdain for the family life, intergenerational strife etc.
I personally dont think there was a reformation required, I think the schismatic fragmentation and then the rise of protestantism were European tragedies which were not repeated in the same fashion in other cultures.
There were corrections and adjustments carrying on a pace within the hierarchy of the church, Erasmus and others were leading it and it provided a version of Christianity, if you consider the discourses on free will, which is at once more modern but not positively modernist, its a paragon of a sort of reflective conservationism.
Unfortunately Luther et al didnt see it that way and often unleashed forces they couldnt contain, Luther's horror at the German Peasant war and eventual alliance with the principalities in an authoritarian attempt to end it all by force should have been a forewarning to the revolutionaries political, social, other, which followed in his stead. He was even horrified at Calvin's Geneva's attempts to out do the Inquisition in persecuting dissidents if I'm not wrong.
I'm sure that the ultimate goals of Luther et al were fine, as are the goals of pretty much all revolutionaries, all those seeking change for the better, but it had terrible and foreseeable consequences when translated into action.