Is Christianity essentially individualistic or social? Is following Jesus personal or communal?
I find a disappointing irony in progressive Christian reticence, critique, and sometimes dismissal of revival, especially as it comes to thinking about the Asbury Revival (if ‘revival’ is a good name for it).
Down with Individualism!
On the one hand, most progressives critique the persistent individualism infecting conservative-fundamentalist Christianity, distorting biblical interpretation, church function, and mission. And I agree with them on that.
And we do need to recover a more social and communal understanding of the gospel, salvation, and the Kingdom!
I agree with this.
Down with Mass Hysteria and Social Manipulation!
But on the other hand, when it comes to understanding the Asbury Revival I see handwringing about the…
- manipulation of mass movements,
- social hysteria,
- youthful catharsis,
- social contagions,
- and collective effervescence.
I hear a persistent reframe that corporate spiritual experience can’t be trusted because it can be manipulated and that only personal, individual experience should be trusted (if that can even be trusted as an actual experience of God and not just some attachment longing…and I’m a big fan of attachment theory, as long as it isn’t used reductively).
So, which is it?
Is Christianity individual or social?
It seems that many progressive Christians are repeating the old Enlightenment dichotomy of private religion and public life (which is why I call it “progressive-liberalism”, because of the continuing parallels with older versions of Liberal (Enlightenment) Protestantism.
It seems the public work of social justice and peace work is properly social and anti-individualistic (which I generally agree with).
But it seems the spiritual life of worship, prayer, confession of sins, and of being “touched by God” are still part of the private life of individuals.
Can’t the Spirit be in the Sociology
…but not reduced to it?
I understand there is a kind of “revivalist theology” that is destructive of the true life of discipleship. It is a revivalism that looks for, even seeks to manufacture, movements of the Spirit. Long term this harms the true cultivation of life in the Spirit.
And I know there has been really harm and trauma caused by these approaches. And I’m grieved by that.
But we should be able to affirm that the Spirit moves in and through the sociology, in and through the movements of the masses, as a true work of the Spirit.
Revival is Messy: Weeping & Rejoicing
It always has been.
But if we are going to emphasize the social nature of discipleship as God-given and true, then that has to include whatever it is we call revival.
Any kind of revival led by the Spirit of Jesus should help us weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice (Rom 12:15).
- We weep with those who have been harmed, abused, and traumatized by revivalism and revivalist manipulation.
- We rejoice with those who feel a special filling, a special peace, and a special healing from the Spirit of God
Anything less is to fall into the old Enlightenment dichotomies of modern Christianity on the Right and on the Left.
For more on how classical evangelicalism united spiritual revival and social reform, download my Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.
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