Christian Individualism And The Higher Calling Of Patriarchy
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
-Philippians 2:3-4, ESV
Individualism is as American as apple pie. It is the trait that most defines Americans and by extension most American Christians. For decades, most churches have emphasized the personal relationship with Jesus Christ so much that to many Christians that personal relationship is all there is. It is quite common to hear people say that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship, and that relationship is often described in romantic terms. But this is a gross misunderstanding of what Scripture teaches and is therefore not true Christianity. The Bible is not individualistic: the original authors did not write it that way, and the original audiences did not interpret it that way. The Christian is not defined by individuality but as part of a community that collectively has a relationship with Christ.
The Problem with Individualism
The individualistic mindset is so ubiquitous that we Americans can imagine no other way of living. This was clearly illustrated to me while visiting Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, a living history exhibit representing the colonial capital as it appeared shortly before the American Revolution. One prominent feature is the reconstructed capital building, which included the House of Burgesses (representatives), governor’s council, and high court. While touring that building, the tour guide—a college-aged woman—repeatedly referred to the fact that only free, white land-owning, Protestant men could vote, serve as burgesses, or fill juries.
Her argument was that anyone not meeting those criteria was not represented and therefore had no real voice. She also argued that disputes between the burgesses and governor’s council were often resolved quickly because their similar demographics meant they all thought similarly. While she did not say it, one could deduce that she thought true justice was impossible under such circumstances. She did not consider the possibility that those men could adequately represent, listen to, and ensure justice to every man, woman, and child of every economic class in the colony. Instead, she would argue that people can only be adequately understood and therefore represented by those matching their demographics in every way. This view in its extreme is foundational to the Left, but it is common throughout all of American society. As long as anyone can remember, the emphasis has been on the individual.
This individualism so common to Americans would be a foreign concept to most people outside of the West. Throughout most of human history, identity was not individualistic but communal. In modern times, this is perhaps best captured by the African concept of “ubuntu” which essentially conveys “I am who I am because of what we are”. Here, identity is defined by the community rather than the individual. Similar sentiments can be found in many cultures outside the West both in the present and the past, showing that our individualism is the exception not the rule.
That rule also includes both the Hebrew and Greco-Roman cultures prominent in Scripture. The original authors and audiences of Scripture had a communal rather than individualistic context, so our individualism would be foreign to them. It is evident throughout Scripture that they found their identity in their community rather than in themselves as individuals. God deals with His people through covenants, and those covenants are always made with families rather than individuals. The covenant recipients also understood the multi-generational nature of those covenants, so they knew that they were obligating not only themselves but all their descendants to abide by the terms of the covenant. Specifically, they were members of families before they were individuals. This is because the family has always been paramount from the very beginning.
It was not until God created Eve—and therefore created the household—that He called creation “very good”. When there was only the individual, it was not good. It was only when two individuals were joined together in a household that God’s work of creation was complete. In the Abrahamic covenant, God promised the blessing not to every individual but every family on earth (Genesis 12:3)—a promise God repeated to Jacob (Genesis 28:14). It should be unsurprising then that throughout Acts we see entire households coming to faith. And while the whole Church is referred to as a household (Galatians 6:10, Ephesians 2:19, 1 Timothy 3:15, 1 Peter 4:17), there is an emphasis on individual households throughout the epistles. This is particularly seen in specific instructions to households (Ephesians 5:22-6:9, Colossians 3:18-4:1, 1 Peter 3:1-7 cf. 1 Timothy 5:1-6:2, Titus 2:1-7).
Conversely, ever since the Fall, individualism has signaled rebellion against God. Adam and Eve both chose to act as individuals rather than members of their God-ordained household. Cain followed in their footsteps, as did Lot and his daughters and numerous others in Scripture. While God did cause some individuals like Abraham and Rahab to act in faith by leaving their wicked households to join God’s people, they did not remain individuals but joined or created godly households. When God’s people were in spiritual decline, it was households that repented and turned back to God. In the narratives of Scripture, individuals fared poorly. Some of the strongest condemnation comes from the fact that the Spirit inspired summation of one of the most wicked and chaotic periods of Israel’s history was “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6 cf. 21:25).
Two examples that may appear to contradict this are Elijah and Paul. While they lacked physical family in their ministry, they were accompanied by people who formed a spiritual family. In short, there is no biblical precedent but in fact much biblical opposition to the individualism that is so prevalent in our churches today. Our culture considers us merely as individuals, but Scripture emphasizes our corporate identity: “Contrary to modern individualism, it is the household that is the basic unit in society. We still function as individuals and are responsible for our actions, but we are not mere individuals”.[1]
How We Got Here
The vast chasm between Scripture and the modern Western church raises the question of how we got here. The individualist mindset that is so common in our churches and forms the lens through which so many Christians view Scripture has resulted from a steady migration away from Scripture over several centuries. Essentially, the culture has become individualistic, and the Western church has followed, using creative methods of interpretation to make Scripture appear to agree.
As we saw here, bringing our own meaning into the text is the dangerous sin of eisegesis. We have previously seen that many Christians commit eisegesis when they read long ages into Genesis in order to make Scripture fit into the godless origin theories that our culture accepts as fact rather than rightly interpreting Scripture and then using it as the standard of truth. In the same way, our culture assumes individualism, leading many Christians to read it into the text. The English language doesn’t help, since “you” can be either singular or plural. Our individualistic presupposition leads us to assume when we see “you” in Scripture, it is singular. However, the vast majority of occurrences of “you” in the New Testament are actually plural. Even without that distinction, we must remember that the bulk of Scripture was written to groups rather than individuals. Also, the letters written to individuals were intended to be read to groups associated with them. Therefore, since we must consider the original audience when interpreting Scripture, we should default to communal rather than individualistic understanding.
How then did individualism become so entrenched in Western society, especially considering the West’s long and rich Christian heritage? Since feminism has contributed to many of the problems we face today, it should be unsurprising that there is a clearly demonstrable link between feminism and the rise of individualism. As far back as First Wave Feminism, its proponents rejected the household as the basis of society and therefore stressed the importance of the individual. Therefore, they like the tour guide saw the household model as inherently oppressive to women by restricting their freedom and voice. In their view, families were simply groups of individuals, so women were individuals being silenced.[2]
That meant that in order to achieve the equality they desired, the individual had to replace the family, and egalitarianism would have to displace patriarchy. They realized this put them in direct conflict with the Bible. We have discussed this in some length when dealing with the beauty of God’s design for marriage, purpose of gender distinction, roles of husband and wife, and the nature of submission in the church, workplace, community, marriage, and the parent-child relationship. In all of these we found that Scripture clearly teaches that God created families and all other social structures modeled after them with hierarchy as part of His “very good” design. Since the head of this hierarchy in the home was the husband, feminists from the earliest days of the movement knew they had to topple that design—and that is exactly what they labored to do. Suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton even published The Woman’s Bible that excluded any passage deemed unfavorable toward women.[3] While many churches have readily accepted feminism, the movement has always been anti-Christian:
First-wave feminism at its roots was an anti-Christian movement, and its desire for cultural change was driven, not by biblical Christianity, but by secular progressivism. The later forms of feminism built on the first wave’s radical philosophical foundation …. Secular progressivism, which is anti-Christian, affirms egalitarianism. Egalitarians despise authority and therefore scorn hierarchy. They begin by rejecting God’s authority, and they in turn reject biblical authority structures. On the other hand, biblical, historic Christianity affirms hierarchy. God holds authority over all creation, and He has set certain authority structures in place. Men have authority over their wives in the marriage covenant, parents have authority over their children, elders have authority over the congregation in Christ’s church, and civil officials have authority over citizens. Of course, authority can be abused, but this does not change the fact that authority still exists.
-Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity, Ann Arbor, MI: Reformation Zion Publishing: 2021: 8-9.
In short, feminism and its inseparably-linked individualism are unbiblical. But feminism is not the origin of our anti-Christian individualism, being merely an evolution of ideas from the Enlightenment.[4] Ultimately, the seeds of individualism in the Church were sown in the Thirteenth Century. One of these seeds was the rise of Bridal Mysticism, which took the analogy of the Church corporate as the Bride of Christ and applied it to the individual, thereby promoting a feminine way of relating to God.[5] This even led to an eroticized view of Jesus resembling the “boyfriend Jesus” idol that is worshipped in many American churches. Instead, Scripture teaches that all believers—both men and women—are sons of God and therefore relate individually to God in a masculine way: “The Christian, because he is a son of God, has a primarily masculine identity …. Women as well as men are called to be sons of God and brothers of Jesus Christ”.[6]
Another seed was a women’s movement that arose out of the fact that high male mortality at the time resulted in many women needing to care for themselves outside of households. As they comprised ever-increasing proportions of congregations, the individual steadily replaced the household in many churches.[7] Therefore, individualism is nothing new, but has long existed and has always been contrary to Scripture. To build the Kingdom of God, we must therefore return to an emphasis on the household over the individual. Jesus came to reverse the Curse and calls us to join in that work. Since God established the household and appointed the man as its head before the Fall, reversing the curse in this case means we must reject individualism in favor of households headed by fathers. In other words, we must embrace biblical patriarchy.
Patriarchy and Representation
At this point, many would join the tour guide and protest that patriarchy is inherently oppressive to all but the few men who hold power, leaving many—especially women—vulnerable and without a voice. Certainly such oppression has occurred throughout history, but returning to biblical patriarchy means rejecting that oppression by emphasizing godly households led by godly men who care for rather than oppress everyone God has entrusted to them. This starts with men accepting their God-given responsibilities. As I have previously noted, God gives people authority for the purpose of obeying Him in fulfilling their responsibilities, so authority cannot exist apart from responsibility. The converse is also true: responsibility cannot exist without authority. Only when we understand and embrace this will male domination be constructive rather than destructive. I observed when exhorting single men like myself to accept that responsibility and take on the challenge of building families in our difficult relationship climate that male dominance can be either constructive or destructive. It can oppress women just as easily by passive abdication as it can by domineering or violence. Regardless, male domination is inescapable.
Constructive male domination begins with men acknowledging that God has placed others in their care and that He will hold them accountable for how well they fulfill their responsibilities in this role, especially their responsibility of representation. In biblical patriarchy, the patriarch represents everyone in the household. They do not lose their voices but rather exercise their voices to the patriarch so that he can speak for them. Therefore, the expectation is that whenever the patriarch makes a decision or speaks outside of the household, he does it with the concerns and best interests of his entire household in mind.
As I observed in my leadership paper, good leaders in all spheres serve their people by considering the needs and ultimate good of their people as more important than themselves (Philippians 2:3-4)—and that is what God expects. Many men throughout history have understood this contrary to the tour guide who thought that no one who was not a free, white, Protestant, land-owning man could be adequately represented by the colony’s leaders. Ironically, that was disproven just before that tour by a monologue from a man depicting Patrick Henry. He retold the story of his big break as a lawyer in which he took the side of poor farmers in their dispute against the tax-funded Anglican parsons. He was representing those who were outside of his demographic, ensuring their voice was heard and demonstrating a true understanding of patriarchal representation.
Contrary to popular belief, in biblical patriarchy, everyone has a voice, which can be quite strong. People from the tour guide all the way back to First Wave Feminists have erred by assuming that under patriarchy women have no voice. They neglect the significant influence a wife wields with her husband, and anyone who has observed a “girl dad” will note the almost spell-like influence of a daughter. Under biblical patriarchy, everyone is cared for, and everyone’s perspective and best interests are considered.
The biblical ideal is that everyone should be part of a male-led household. Also contrary to our current model, those biblical households are multi-generational including children, parents, grandparents, and sometimes others. Therefore, the church was to care for widows only when they did not have households to fulfill their God-given responsibility of caring for such widows (1 Timothy 5:3-16). But since individualism is so ingrained in our society and took centuries to reach this point, it will take at least a few generations to return to a place where our churches are comprised of households rather than individuals.
Churches (and therefore pastors) also bear some responsibility in caring for their unmarried members and strengthening households. This includes caring for and including singles, discipling both single and married men, and performing pastoral home visits to all members. One practical step toward this is something I recommended when discussing singleness: families should consider inviting single women into their lives on a regular and recurring basis both to care for their needs as well as to cultivate them into submissive, godly, marriageable women. Similarly, single men in the church need to be discipled by the married men to teach them how to lead their future households with respect and humility.
Ultimately, the shift from an individual to household emphasis in our churches will be a massive and multi-generational endeavor, but obedience to Scripture requires it and the blessings of God await us for that obedience. God’s ways are better than ours, which includes His design of biblical patriarchy as opposed to our individualism. So embrace the patriarchy and build godly households!
NOTES
[1] Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity, Ann Arbor, MI: Reformation Zion Publishing: 2021: 162.
[2] Ibid: 7.
[3] Ibid: 13.
[4] Ibid: 9.
[5] Leon J. Podles, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, Moscow, ID: Canon Press: 2024 (orig. 1999): 162-171.
[6] Ibid: 136-137.
[7] Ibid: 172-177.
