2.1.4.1 Meaning of Individualism
Although the concept is much older, the term individualism was first coined in 1840 to describe a fundamental social and cultural shift and is closely linked to the impact of the Enlightenment. This entailed a movement away from the group as the fundamental unit of society, towards the individual. Though all societies demonstrate some awareness of the idea of separate persons, earlier societies worked on the basis that the tribe, clan or family is the basis and transmitter of culture and values. In contrast, the essential feature of modern societies is individualism. Attachments to others are looser than before, and the individual essentially determines his or her own way of life. Rising divorce rates and a significant extension of the time people live alone before marriage - both in themselves markers of individualism - have helped virtually to double the proportion of lone person households, from 17% in 1971 to 31% in 2001.[1] This process is allied to consumer capitalism, underpinned by secular humanism, and expressed in legislation focussed increasingly on individual rights and entitlements. Indeed, the exaltation of the self is experienced most blatantly in the shopping malls which have become the materialist cathedrals of our age. As Don Slater has observed, when the core values of a culture come to derive from consumption, ‘all social relations, activities and objects can in principle be exchanged as commodities’, and this in turn effects ‘one of the most profound secularizations’ that can take place.[2] Or as Rodney Clapp puts it, in contemporary western culture, ‘heaven is a vast supermarket; hell is a corner shop stocking only one brand of aspirin or toilet paper, or more significantly, only one brand of religion, morality or marriage.’[3] One of the political campaigns which the Evangelical Alliance has criticised recently - the move to allow transsexual people legally to change their gender from the one in which they were born and to enshrine this in a new birth certificate - can be seen as a radical manifestation of such individualism and consumerism.
2.1.4.2 Religious Roots of Individualism
Although the Enlightenment was supremely influential, to some extent, the rise of individualism could also be regarded as a natural outworking of the Protestant faith, though the latter of course also emphasised the importance of community. After all, Protestantism characteristically questioned need for both a hierarchical church, and for its clergy to act as intermediaries between the believer and God. Similarly, the stress in modern evangelicalism on the need for people to come to personal faith, rather than to shelter behind parental or cultural faith, has worked in tandem with the rise of individualism.
2.1.4.3 Emergence of Contemporary Individualism
When individualism first rose to prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries, its excesses were restrained by the continuing influence of strong families and voluntary associations - not least the Church and its ancillary groups. Through bodies like the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, the Band of Hope, Sunday Schools, Crusader Camps and Children’s Special Service Missions (CSSMs), individuals learned to work with others for the common good. The decline of the family and such voluntary organisations has led many to fear that individualism is now unrestrained, and detrimental to the maintenance of community or any sense of the common good. Individualism without an allied process of character formation can be destructive, leading to an overweening ‘rights’ culture, to self-centredness, and to the self as the final judge of true doctrine. Since individualism depletes the social capital that is necessary for communities to function effectively, questions are increasingly being raised as to how cultures of individualism will be able to sustain themselves in the future.[4]
2.1.4.4 Implications for the Church
For Christian communities, the implications of all this are numerous. The Church that once did so much to bind social fabric of society is now being portrayed by many, especially in the media, as belonging to a bygone age. The degree to which people are educated in the faith and socialised into Christian values is now far less than it once was. Many are suspicious of authority figures - be they priests, preachers or parents. Increasing numbers seem to resent others telling them what to believe: they like to decide for themselves. The concern for correct doctrine has been replaced by a concern for personal opinion, personal assertion, or personal feeling. Subjectivism reigns: people assume they have the right to come to individual belief or moral choices without being constrained by others, or by Scripture and tradition. Freedom to choose has become a core value in society, and it is increasingly assumed that any cost incurred in the making of choice is one that ‘society’ should be prepared to pay on behalf of the autonomous individual. In a perceptive commentary on such trends, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, claims that we now suffer from the privatisation of morality and the nationalisation of responsibility.[5]
[1] Source: Central Statistical Office, Social Trends: 1996 Edition (London: HMSO), 50-51; “Percentage living alone, by age and sex: Living in Britain” at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE (accessed December 2003).
[2] Don Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 27.
[3] Rodney Clapp, Families at the Crossroads (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP, 1993), 61.
[4] The questions are being asked more urgently in the USA than in the UK but are not far below the surface of many anxious political initiatives. See Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), and Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone, 2000).
[5] Jonathan Sacks, The Politics of Hope (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997), 132.
