What I tend to find most tragic is that this focus on individuality has bled even into the Christian faith. Christianity has changed quite a bit over the course of the rise of exclusive humanism. It is possible to trace the beginning of this shift to around the time of the Protestant Reformation. There was a move away from dependence on the Catholic Priests as the only authority on scripture, and justifiably so. The church’s mistreatment of the Bible has been well documented, and I will not go into it here, but it deserves to be mentioned. The advent of the printing press helped this process along because it put scripture in the hands of the layman. As a result, there developed an increased emphasis on personal devotions, a trend which has continued and has actually increased in recent decades. It has even worked its way into the mainstream Christian vernacular. Almost every Western Christian alive today would describe themselves as having “a personal relationship with Jesus” or would say that they had “accepted Christ as their personal Saviour.” Christ is no longer preached as Saviour of the World, but as a personal Saviour for each individual. Of course, Christians still believe that Christ was crucified for everyone (unless you are a die-hard Calvinist), they simply represent him more often on a personal level.
The “relatability” of this Saviour and his teachings has overflowed into a plethora of denominations that comprise what is today known as the church. Just as society has fractured from unity into divided factions and further into divided individuals, so too has the church. Ever since the Protestant Reformation, the idea of one united church has become an increasingly impossible dream. Churches around the world, but American churches especially, adhere to the same sort of rules of competition as free-market businesses. There is almost a sort of supply and demand aspect to Christianity that caters to individuals. If a person does not happen to like what one church is offering, they will simply pick another one. And this occurrence is not difficult to discern. I have even heard the term “church-shopping” used referring to the process of picking out the “right” church for an individual. Many churches have even adopted similar advertising methods to businesses and have an increasingly consumerist atmosphere, but more on that later. For now, let it suffice to say that even Christians have an individualistic expectation that they will be served.
The church has also developed its own analogous sort of public sphere. It consists of a popular opinion on what it means to be Christianity. The writings of ancient church fathers are progressively more ignored in favour of the latest trend in Christian thought. Fewer Christians know scripture, and Bible studies often consist more of what God has revealed to individuals. It is also becoming easier and easier for people to get their own views and ideas spread to their fellow Christians. Now, I am not saying that all of these new trends are inherently bad things. It is a wonderful thing that Christians are exploring their beliefs and seeking divine revelation from God. It is fantastic that believers in Jesus can communicate their new understandings of scripture with one another. In fact, Christian thinker Rob Bell, one of the greatest perpetuators of the Christian public sphere, argues in his book Velvet Elvis that these new sort of cultural relevancies and interpretations of scripture are acceptable and perhaps even ordained by God (this is perhaps an unfairly brief summary of a very complex idea, but I am on my way to another point). However, when these are taken with an abandonment of teachings that have come before and a disregard for pastoral or even scholarly authority, they can be incredibly dangerous.
This brings me to one of the topics that most concerns me in Western Christianity, and that is the abandonment of the church. I do not necessarily mean the abandonment of religion, though that is quite prevalent in the West as well, but I refer to the disillusionment with organized religion and the disdain for formal services expressed by the more recent generations. There has been a long slow change in and gradual loss of belief in Modern society, but this is something new. It may stem out of the same inclination as the desertion of religion, but what makes it different is that it is a current running within among Christians as well. It is a strange sort of pluralism in which a person can claim Christianity while disregarding what has been its primary vessel for centuries: the church.
Reasons for this disillusionment with the church are as variegated as the reasons most of the modern world has for being disillusioned with religion itself. However, most of them stem from the failings of organized religion or anger at legalistic church policies. There are also many critiques of consumerism and materialism that are present in formal churches (this is probably done without the knowledge that the Reformation helped advance the rise of these concepts through the rejection of mysticism and the Protestant ethic). I admit that I myself have often been disappointed by the organized church and some of its ethics. I will not in any way pretend that mainstream Christianity is perfect. And this is why it can sometimes be so difficult to argue with Christians who renounce the church. They have some valid points. Prominent among these are attacks against churches that have been hostile toward or unaccepting of non-Christians, most notably in recent years, homosexuals. As a result of all of this, it has become almost popular to become independent of the church in favour of non-traditional or personal forms of worship and learning. A healthy personal faith is important for anyone, but it is not enough on its own, and it can far too easily become warped without any accountability. An important Christian principle is that “It is not good for the man to be alone.” So why then do Christians tend to abandon fellowship?
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