Culture Influenced Christianity part 2: Individualism

The Bible speaks both of salvation and judgement coming to groups of people, such as the people of God, as well as the reward or judgement of the individual. Various traditions tend to emphasize one over the other. Cyprian of Carthage’s phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus “outside the church there is no salvation” reflects strongly in the Roman Catholic tradition, among others. The Wesleyan-Arminian holds that the Church is chosen in Jesus,¹ yet as part of Evangelicalism in the United State we are also influenced by the teaching of individual election by God. A biblical case may be made for either position, with ramifications throughout our doctrine of salvation, but in my opinion, the flow of Scripture does not move from corporate to individual accountability and salvation, but both threads move throughout.

A practical outworking of this in my own life was in my sharing of the good news of Jesus with others. When I had more hard-line Calvinist beliefs, unconditional election and irresistible grace when applied to the individual made me very confident when I shared, but did not press on me the urgency to share. My misguided thinking was that if God called an individual, they would get saved, so he did not have to use me. I call this wrong thinking because even John Calvin did not approach evangelism in this way. Instead, he, not knowing who was elect, knew he must share with all. Thus, I would not necessarily call my experience in Calvinism typical to all, but for me, a genuine call of “whosoever will come . . .” is more of a motivator to speak.

In the U.S., Reformation principles, Great Awakening preaching, and an individualistic social culture, pushes us more toward individual salvation thinking, and this thinking spills over into our views beyond salvation doctrine. Why are people poor? Is it because the poor do not work hard enough or because our society is set up to keep the poor as the poor and the rich as the rich? One response is that it depends on the individual. We can probably all name an individual in each of these categories:

Poor person that worked hard and improved their situation.
Poor person that did nor work hard and whose life stayed the same or got worse.
Poor person that worked hard and still do not succeed.
Well-off person that worked hard and improved their situation.
Well-off person that did nor work hard and whose life stayed the same or got worse.
Well-off person that worked hard and still do not succeed.

The question we must then ask ourselves is which of these people is exceptional, and which is the norm. If we take individualism as a core value, we will more likely see hard work equals success as the norm for all, and possibly miss the social constructs that make that not true for all. For some, the hard work leading to their success makes them exceptional because societal factors are stacked against them. Graduating college is rarely simple for anyone, but the average while male college graduate most likely had parents with a greater net worth, a better education before college, and did not have to beat the odds of being killed, incarcerated, or otherwise involved with the justice system, as did the African American male college graduate. That makes the African-American male college graduate exceptional, and in order to make his success normal we will have to change society.

1. See Roger E. Olson’s post Karl Barth the Arminian? for more on this.

photo credit: IronRodArt – Royce Bair via photopin cc

Emerson, Michael O. & Smith, Christian. (2000). Divided by faith: Evangelical religion and the problem of race in America. Oxford University Press.