American Individualism is Destroying the Church (and America)
America has long prided itself on its embrace of individualism. Through its celebration of ideals such as the “self-made man”or its affirmation of individual liberties, it has fostered, nurtured, and established a society where ultimate importance and focus lies on the individual and in one’s self-fulfillment over-and-above the protection and support of the community as a whole. However, whereas the original founders’ intent assumed that people would, outside of government influence, be bound by a personal commitment to “the public good” (and thus advocated for minimal government oversight, trusting people would care for the greater community on their own), the reality of this assumption has only proved to deteriorate over time.
America has demonized any framework that encourages reliance on or care for the community above the individual. Anything that remotely encourages sacrificing comfort for others is labeled as “socialist” or “tyrannical” and is outright disregarded as an infringement on one’s personal rights. For example, in today’s pandemic climate, there are many within America who refuse to wear a mask in public because it “infringes on their rights” — a deep reaction and opposition to anyone “telling them what to do.” Their personal liberty, in their mind, is more important than the protection and safety of the community as a whole. As antithetical to love as this is, this is a celebrated trait of what it means to be American. “Self before others.” And it stems from America’s insistence on individualism.
Let me be clear: individualism, at its core, is not bad. As a mental health therapist, when I work with clients I start with the establishment and nurturing of individual self-love. However, the purpose of this is not for the client to become self-sufficient in their isolated individualism but precisely that they may integrate into community knowing full well that they are worthy of such relational intimacy and pursuit. As Jesus put it, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22.39), which necessitates that you know how to love yourself before you can genuinely love others. If you do not know how to honor and affirm your own wants and needs, any relational sacrifice will not be out of love for the other but out of perceived requirement. Without differentiated individualism, we either lose ourself by sacrificing that which makes us us (our wants, needs, desires, thoughts, opinions, etc.) as a means to avoid conflict and mitigate the possibility of turning the other away from us (e.g. we sacrifice relationship for proximity), or we abandon relationship all-together out of a mistrust that anyone is safe and therefore we are the only one we can trust to care for our wants and needs. The latter is reflective of America’s deteriorating trust in the government as well as its own failure to embrace the pursuit of “the public good.” To continually emphasize the self is to eventually internalize that the other is not to be trusted with your care and inflates one’s ego into believing that you always know best. This safety in one’s self continues to move America toward isolated individualism instead of integrated individualism.
The American Church, most unfortunately, has not been immune to this embrace of individualism. A defining framework for Christianity in America is an emphasis on one’s “personal relationship with God.” Being a follower of Jesus is less about how one is a member and participant of a new kind of community and more about how one is nurturing a one-on-one relationship with God. This is encouraged and nurtured by the structure of a Sunday morning that is more consumer rather than communal, where the church needs people to “sign up” to be relational agents who greet people at the door — betraying a great possibility that the church would not greet without these sacrificial volunteers.
Almost the entirety of the Sunday gathering is spent in non-engagement with the people around you (save for the brief “greet your neighbor” time), focused instead on individual learning. Any attempt to invite a communal dialogue is dismissed as either disruptive or deemed inappropriate because it makes others uncomfortable (an actual excuse I was told when I worked within a church and encouraged structuring services to be more relational and conversational). Such relational engagement is said to be designated for “Life Groups” or “Small Groups,” which are presented as optional side-gatherings apart from the primacy of the Sunday gathering culture knows as “church.” Thus, relationship is optional.
Even though the Sunday gathering is not (and should not be) the sole-definer of what it means to be a member of the Church (big “C”), it is often the sole experience that visitors have with the Christian community as well as, more likely than not, the only engagement during the week that Christians themselves have with the community. Therefore, how we structure Sunday morning is deeply important in revealing and inviting into what Christianity is all about. And with Sunday morning being focused around the sermon rather than the table, the central emphasis presented on what it means to be a member of the church is that you know and believe the right things, which in and of itself is a private affair and requires no engagement with the community. In fact, believe the wrong thing and the community (to the extent that it can be called one) may kick you out.
I understand that there are Christian communities and churches out there that are doing wonderful, beautiful, creative things to nurture communities of people who are deeply relational, loving, and sacrificial. However, we must paint in broad strokes in order to speak to the general experience of the American church, of which I do not believe my examples above are even that wildly broad to the general experience. Nor am I saying that the church’s increasing embrace of individualism leaves the church completely devoid of relationship. As it is said, a broken clock is right twice a day. However, even in this regard, a focus on individualism will lead to conditional communities — communities where “relationship” happens so long as one’s individual freedom is not asked of them and such participation in the community individualized. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of community Jesus established. Jesus did not come to save your individual liberties but to ask them of you (see Luke 9:57–62).
Jesus said he came that we may “have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10b) and if we take a look at the Gospels we find a ministry constantly inviting people away from individual security and into sacrificial relationship. The lost sheep is independently and individually important but the shepherd seeks it out in order to bring it back into the fold (Luke 15:1–7). The prodigal son has every right to take his inheritance and run off with it. His “liberty” allows him that. However, life is not found in isolated, self-preservation but in the welcoming embrace of the community (Luke 15:11–32). And this is seen in Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool who, in his own right, hoards up his fortunes to establish security and control over the rest of his life, yet loses his life (figuratively and literally) in isolation (Luke 12:13–21). How difficult it is, Jesus declares, “for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24b), not because riches are bad, but precisely because riches invite a self-reliance that removes one’s trust and dependence from the community. And this, according to Jesus, is contrary to what it means to have life to the full.
Ultimate fulfillment being found in self-reliance is the great deception of American individualism. To not need anything from anyone is heralded as a state of “making it.” Yet, the irony of this is visually played out in that the more you “make it” the more gated and private your home and life becomes. This individualism fails to disclose that the more “secure” and “in-control” of your life you become, the more isolated you become — because the greatest state of control is isolation. Individualism feels safe because it’s under your control. It’s predictable because you create and define it. Within the church this great deception reveals itself as a security in one’s salvation through “believing the right things” rather than, as Paul describes, “work[ing] out your salvation with fear and trembling [read: humility]” (Philippians 2:12), which he had already described in the relational terms of “do[ing] nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider[ing] others more important than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2: 3–4).
For both Jesus and Paul, salvation was less about securing some intangible state in the afterlife through one’s own isolated means and instead was about stepping into a new kind of life, here and now. They believed that there is something about the way humans are wired, being made to be like an inherently relational God, that binds the fullness of life to relationship and the experience of isolation to death. This is why relational disappointment hurts so much: our very being longs for connection. Our disappointment reveals our desire. But to pursue such desire, to work out your salvation and step into such life, is a risky endeavor because it involves another you cannot control. Any attempt to control the other is the moment you sabotage your own longing for authentic connection. Salvation through “believing the right things,” however, feels safe because it’s static. You can do it on your own and no relationship, even with God, is required. You hold the keys to your own salvation (freely given, of course…). The thing is, you’re holding keys to a gift that is made to be enjoyed with others now.
American individualism, to the extent America has embodied it, is destructive to the very core of what it means to be human. It creates a callousness toward others because anything less is to risk security, while within the church it creates an illusion of eternal security through individualized cognitive assent without any real invitation into the salvific nature of vulnerable relationship — which is what the church is called to embody. American individualism, on the whole, is destroying the Church and America. As Jesus (and Abraham Lincoln) said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12:25). Any system that focuses on the individual over-and-against the community as a whole turns individuals of that system against each other. Within the church, individualism leads to an isolated Christian experience devoid of community and therefore devoid of the very salvation Jesus says is available to us now. America cannot survive so long as the individual is seen as more important than the collective whole. Nor can the church survive when it fails to transform individuals into relational beings.
Calvin Miller, in his mythic and poetic retelling of the New Testament, perhaps says all of this best. In his trilogy The Singer, The Song, and The Finale, Miller describes the Antichrist as “The Prince of Mirrors” who, in his hatred of humanity, seeks to destroy it by convincing people to turn away from each-other and instead embrace the security of, what we have called, individualism. Miller writes:
“Look!” the Dark Prince cried. “Come wear the chain and seal. Look…” he repeated pulling a mirror from his tunic. “In this glass lies the hope. Behold your face and live.”
For the Prince of Mirrors, to destroy the church — to destroy humanity — is to turn it in on itself; to convince individuals that life and security is to be found in themselves and themselves alone. That the individual knows best and relationship is dangerous.
May we choose, as the Prodigal Son did, to teshuva (repent) — which means “to return.” May we not find security in our own self, but return to community and find life in vulnerability.
