Balancing individualism and collectivism

Further thoughts

I’d like to pick up where I left off in yesterday’s reflection on reading the Bible from an individualist vs. a collectivist perspective, sharing some further thoughts.¹

First, I think it’s inevitable that we will live out our faith within our cultural context, reading the Bible (or whatever sacred texts) through the lens of how our people and culture view the world, etc.

As I have experienced Christian faith and life in an American (and broadly western) individualist culture, I have become aware of several tendencies:

• We emphasize individual choice and responsibility (think of the hymns, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus,” “Just as I am, Without One Plea,” “I Come to the Garden Alone,”² etc.). I have known people who were willing to be cut off from their family for their choice to become Christian or be baptized, because that was their decision and their family had to “live with it.”

• I have seen and heard teaching on how to live as a disciple of Jesus / what to do once one comes to faith, that emphasize individual actions, e.g., you need to read your Bible, pray, find fellowship / join a church, etc. The emphasis on finding community is often for the purpose of your growth as an individual (community as a means to an individual end).

• In individualist culture (especially one which is commercial, as American culture is), church is seen and functions as everything else does, as a club, a voluntary association, subject to individual choice and joining - you “shop around,” find a church you like, and join and participate for your own individual purposes and growth (you like the teaching, or the worship, or the fellowship, or whatever). If you come to a point where you feel that you are not benefiting from the church, you leave and find another one. Contrast this with collectivist settings, in which someone is part of a church because of their family, because they are born into it, etc., and they stick with their church because it is “their people.” In Jordan, many churches are almost tribal, with whole families and tribes being centered in particular churches.³

• In individualist culture, people make themselves what they want to be, and change as they decide to change. For the most part, in the Middle East (and other collectivist cultures), people who are born into Christian families consider themselves by virtue of that fact to be “Christian,” and don’t think they might become “not Christian.” Not so in individualist America - individuals can choose to “deconstruct” their faith, and to not be Christian any more, but to be something else of their individual choosing (or to remake their faith, redefining “being Christian” in a way that suits them).

• The American cultural teaching that you should “be true to yourself,” “find yourself,” not let anyone else interfere with this process, tell you what to do or who to be, has definitely permeated the church and Christian culture.

Second, I think we can expand how we see, and balance our perspective and our practice, as we seek to become aware of our own culture and that of others. We can consider the points above, for example, and consider where the tension(s) may lie, between our cultural ways of being Christian, and Biblical teaching. We can consider how we view the church and community, and our role and responsibilities in community. And we can make changes in how we live.

This does not mean that we become collectivists, but we can move a bit on the spectrum toward that pole, we can become individualists who are more tempered and balanced than the extremes of our culture.

Also let me note: in every culture there are subcultures. There are plenty of Christian / church subcultures in the United States, which are more toward the collectivist end of the spectrum. These might include ethnically centered churches (Korean, Hmong, Chinese, Hispanic, other), made up of people who are culturally collectivist, and which function in a more collectivist way (have you seen examples of this?). For those on the collectivist end of the spectrum, seeking balance would involve moving in the other direction.

One way we can pursue growth and balance is by getting to know people of faith from the end of the individualist-collectivist spectrum opposite ours, and learning about how they see community, and the role of the individual in community. This might include, what bothers them, what would they like to be different, how they are pursuing growth within their context.⁴

In my perspective, the Bible does not support either being Christian in an individualist way, or being Christian in a collectivist way, but a mix and balance between the two, which will be unique to each cultural context. People within their own cultural context can pursue a life of faith and worship and God-centeredness within their context.⁵

1. See “Does (my interpretation of) the Bible support individualism?” (April 16, 2025).

2. I remember a line from a Ken Medema song which addressed this, asking, “have you come to the garden alone for so long that you’ve forgotten community?” - which I think is a real danger in an individualist cultural setting.

3. You may see that the Catholic church, even in individualist America, may function more like this, where people are born into it and stick with it because of their family, regardless of whether they “like” or “enjoy” particular features or not.

4. I have friends who are culturally collectivist who complain about everyone in their family always “being in their business,” telling them what to do, how to live, etc. They might say, “I’m a grown man, head of my family, and my mother is still telling me what to do”!

5. Miroslav Volf, in his excellent book Exclusion and Embrace, has profound reflections on the relationship of Christians to their culture. I will consider some of his thoughts in another post.