What's so bad with 'rugged individualism'?

Reflections on some not so distant evangelical history

A clip from new NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration speech went viral over the weekend. Though there were some who thought Mamdani might moderate his views once in office, the self-described democratic socialist articulated his true political loyalties in no uncertain terms last week, saying, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

That collectivism is anything but warm or untried is obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of the 20th century. What caught my attention, however, was not Mamdani’s historical ignorance but his indictment of ‘rugged individualism.’ I had heard it before. In my conservative-ish evangelical seminary. So what explains the cross-pollination of rhetoric between that institution and the far left ideology of a group like The Squad?

‘Rugged individualism’ was a dirty word by the time I showed up in seminary in 2018. People have told me it remains so in many pulpits, podcasts, and publishing houses throughout the evangelical ecosystem. However, the full-scale denunciation of ‘rugged individualism’ often leaves evangelical listeners with more questions than answers. After all, what exactly is the target? Right-wing economic theory? Modernity? The American political project? It wasn’t always clear to me in seminary and remains less so today.

As far as I can tell, there are three ways evangelicals have employed the ‘rugged individualism’ critique.

The first is nothing more than a sophomoric indictment of anything draped in the flag. It is a shot across the bow, meant to project piety over and against what he or she considers political idolatry. I use the description ‘sophomoric’ intentionally not only because such a posture is immature in and of itself but also because it is wholly uninformed.

Serious students of history will know that American-style individualism has never been particularly rugged or individualistic in the way those making the critique seem to suggest. As books like Tocqueville’s Democracy in America show, the typical American has traditionally lived in, and depended on, a patchwork of social and civic associations. Of course, these mostly private associations were organized and operated outside the domain of state action. Thus, it’s true that Americans are ‘rugged individualists’ but mostly in the sense that they remain suspicious of government intervention and repulsed by state collectivism.

In the end, the evangelicals who wield this critique do so because they want to sound profound, much like the half-drunk, first-year poli-sci student wants to sound profound when he declares gender to be a construct to his dorm buddies. It’s bluster, and not particularly intelligent bluster at that.

A much more honest type of evangelical employs the critique not against America in particular but late modernity broadly speaking. On this point, I suspect Carl Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self has been very influential within evangelical circles. As the story goes, modernity happened when Cartesian epistemology replaced the authority of divine revelation. Over time, objective reality was cast aside so that individuals could realize their subjective, inner truths. Trueman’s term for this phenomenon is ‘expressive individualism’ not ‘rugged individualism,’ but if one isn’t too careful the two can function interchangeably.

Clarity, however, is important. Trueman’s thesis ably proves that left-wing ideology is, on the whole, far more individualist than any conservative politics which someone like Mamdani may have in his sights; it does not, however, explain why the expressive individualists of our day are so comfortable with conformity. The stereotype of what I’m talking about is the Millennial Hipster who was told from childhood to be as eccentric as he wanted to be yet he and all his friends dress the same, listen to the same music, eat the same food, stream the same content, and hold the same political opinions.

Still, the average evangelical’s instincts are right that something about late modernity is amiss. It just isn’t ‘rugged individualism.’ Rather, what evangelicals are calling individualism is really atomization. The distinction is important.

In its most basic and benign form, individualism simply recognizes our free and inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. No doubt individualism can take on aggressive and excessive forms when it elevates individual pleasure-seeking over and against the common good. But individualism does not intrinsically reject the natural social bodies and traditions (i.e. the family or the polis) which individuals are born into and that help shape their conception of the good. The same cannot be said about atomization. Atomization seeks to divorce individuals from all traditions, institutions, and communities that provide us with meaning and purpose.

That is, besides the state.

Now we can start to understand how a democratic socialist mayor can condemn ‘rugged individualism’ in one breath, be a vocal proponent of radical LGTBQ+ policies in the next, all while advocating for the harshest form of collectivism imaginable. I have no doubt that most evangelicals oppose many of Mamdani’s policy proposals, but they should be clear about why it is they oppose them.

I fear too many evangelical leaders and pastors have trained their audiences to hear “rugged individualism” and think, “That’s bad!” without articulating what it is we’re condemning. The fruit of our laziness is confusion in the pews which is an indictment on anyone called to shepherd God’s flock. But what if it’s even worse than that. What if, by mistake or by vanity, we’ve actually been complicit in a far more sinister deployment of the ‘rugged individualism’ critique.

I’m talking about the one that takes on special meaning when its target is our young men. The one that amounts to a total and complete indictment on virtues like resilience, confidence, and tenacity. The one that labels such character traits as ‘toxic’ and reminds us that John Wayne played the rugged individualist and he was really, really bad don’t you know.

I mentioned that I started seminary in 2018. For those who remember, it was two years after the initial evangelical crackup when Donald Trump won his first presidential election and two years from the larger evangelical meltdown following Covid-19 and the George Floyd Riots. The DEI regime was not quite at its zenith, but it was close. Those eager to signal their displeasure with the President, express sympathy for identity politics, or both needed a catch-all critique that was palatable to evangelicals. I believe ‘rugged individualism’ became that critique.

To be clear, I don’t think that’s how early adaptors meant for it to be received. When James Davison Hunter critiqued individualism in his book, To Change The World, he wasn’t really saying anything more controversial than ‘God helps those who help themselves’ isn’t the Gospel. But his insights, transmitted into elite evangelical circles by leaders like Tim Keller, were hijacked by less-responsible people with obvious political agendas and baptized as Gospel truth.

Suddenly, for an evangelical to think that individuals bore responsibility for their outcomes was to be “captured by the spirit of the age.” Publishers, podcasters, and pastors talked much more about systems and power structures. One minister of a prominent evangelical ministry mentioned to me that he heard fewer evangelicals talk about sin. “It’s all about brokenness now.”

I’m not saying that I reject the concept of corporate sin. I wasn’t there that day in the Garden with Adam, but I affirm that I “sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression” (WSC 16). But it is precisely our admission of guilt for the broken state of the world that prepares us to receive the universal offering of forgiveness in the New Adam. That message alone has the power to overcome past injustices and propel us into renewed fellowship and obedience as we await the day of glory.

What I am saying is that for a brief period in the recent past, and perhaps lingering on even now, the ‘rugged individualism’ critique was used to smuggle in a syncretic, Jesus+ paradigm that closely mirrors the secular religion Joshua Mitchell describes in American Awakening. One in which justice completely crowds out grace and mercy and men (especially white men) serve little purpose except as sin-bearers.

To be completely honest, I find this all incredibly difficult to talk about. Grievance politics are distasteful to me, as I imagine they are for many people. But when my wife and I started having children, and started having boys at that (we’re up to four now), I could no longer avert my eyes to what was happening both in our culture and, sadly, within some corners of the church.

I admit, freely, that I want my sons to be ‘rugged individualists.’ So what do I mean?

I mean something like what the Christian historian Herbert Butterfield meant when he said that men shape history. Butterfield wasn’t invoking some Great Man philosophy of history a la Carlyle. He meant that all people, great and small, contribute to the history of peoples and nations as they tend to their duties and fall prey to the cupidities of their dignified but depraved nature.

When I say I want my sons to be rugged individualists I mean that I want them to realize that their life has purpose and meaning beyond what any ideologue or demagogue may tell them. I want them to see a job that needs doing and have the greatness of soul to do it. To be excellent men that others can depend on for a helping hand. To ask not what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country. And I want them to be quick to repent and fast to forgive.

What’s so bad with that?