A new focus on sin as idolatry
This paper is a response to studies by Chris Wright and G.K. Beale which clearly centre the concept of sin around the biblical notion of idolatry.[1] Those studies are primarily devoted to scriptural interpretation. This paper draws the lesson of their exegesis for practical evangelism. First, I set out the benefits of an approach to presenting the Christian faith that re-centres sin around idolatry in the account it gives of the fundamental human problem. Second, I consider how the concept of idolatry can be applied nowadays in a way that is both faithful to Scripture, and relevant to the purpose of characterizing the worldview of the non-believer interlocutor. Third, I describe the contemporary phenomenon that best corresponds to that concept.
The studies I refer to are: Chris Wright, The Mission of God (2006); Here are your Gods (2020); GK. Beale, We Become what We Worship (2008). By far the most important of these for our purposes is the first. Wright’s study is primarily concerned to offer a ‘missiological theology’ based on an interpretation of the biblical narrative in its entirety. God, as represented in both Testaments, is shown to be a God whose very nature it is to make Himself known for who He is: that is, as One, Unique and without rival. It follows that ‘mission’ is not just something we do in response to divine command; it is an expression of the very character of God, as manifested, in the Old Testament, in the incarnation, and now through the Church as the body of Christ.
The conceptualization of sin as idolatry follows as ‘a fundamental, if negative, aspect of a fully biblical and missional account of biblical monotheism’.[2] For, if the mission of God is to be known and worshiped for what He is, it follows that what resists that mission – namely human sin – will be characterized as the ignorance and perversity of idolatrous worship. Throughout Wright’s study, sin, as manifested in the biblical text, is characterized in these terms – even the first sin committed by Adam and Eve while still in the Garden of Eden. G.K. Beale further corroborates this quasi-equivalence of sin and idolatry, adducing the instance of later Judaism which ‘viewed the sin of the golden calf to be almost equivalent to the notion of Adam’s original sin’.[3]
That Wright himself views the foregrounding of idolatry in the biblical account of sin as a highly significant consequence of his missiological theology, is evidenced, I would suggest, by the recent (2020) publication of a book (Here are Your Gods). This reproduces the relevant sections of the earlier study, and appends a series of chapters that seek to explore, in the wake of the rise of forms of popularist nationalism in US and UK politics, what Wright himself considers to be the dominant manifestations of idolatry in contemporary life.
How can this idea contribute to our presentation of the Gospel to non-believers?
The object of this paper is to propose the application of this idea of a notion of sin centred on idolatry to the context of the presentation of the Gospel to non-believers.
Every missional presentation of the Christian faith that I have encountered begins with an exposition of our human state of spiritual need – or sin. Many characterize sin as ‘selfishness’. “We are all selfish, and the essence of sin is selfishness. “Me”, “I”, “my” … Everything centred around yourself. That is the essence of sin – self-love, self-will, self-seeking, self-pride.”
The work of Wright and Beale would suggest that an explanation of sin in terms of the human propensity to idolatry would be more biblical. I want to argue here that such an explanation would also make more sense. I do not believe myself to be the only person to have recognized this; in fact, and I observe a growing tendency in recent presentations of the Gospel to place a greater emphasis on idolatry. If that is indeed the case, then the findings of Wright and Beale should lend considerable support to a movement already in train. The intention of this paper is to help things on by drawing explicit attention to the practical and evangelical relevance of what these biblical scholars are saying to the way Christian evangelists explain sinfulness – that is, our human state of spiritual need – to our non-believer interlocutors.
Why, then, should evangelists welcome the findings of Wright and Beale? Is it really the case that the biblical emphasis on idolatry, for all its archaic appearance, holds the key to understanding our contemporary sinful experience?
I would argue that it does so far better a traditional emphasis on selfishness – for three reasons.
1.Humanity as homo adorans
First, much human wrong-doing, far from the effect of our inherent disinclination to get beyond our selfish desires, derives from an over-readiness to unselfishly commit ourselves – often to ens that are wrong, or at least unworthy of the personal investment we make in them. The Bible, it seems to me, offers us a far more persuasive ‘psychology’ when it speaks of a human existential compulsion to find or forge objects of common attachment to which we attach absolute value. Illustrations of such a ‘collective existential need’ can be found throughout Scripture. But the paradigm case is surely the episode of the golden calf in Exodus 32.
Such is the relevance of this brief passage to the goals of this paper that it well merits a moment’s attention.
At this stage in the narrative, the people of God have been liberated from their Egyptian captivity. But they still have no prescribed forms of cult. With Moses now long absent on Mt. Sinai (ironically in order to receive from the hand of God himself a blueprint for proper worship), the people, unable to await his return, devise a form of worship for themselves. The precious golden ornaments they have borrowed from the Egyptians – a hitherto strangely redundant element of the story – now find a collective purpose through being forged into an object of idolatrous cult: the golden calf. It’s as if the need to worship were an instinct so fundamental and so urgent, that it threatened to forestall the provision of a proper object. In the words of Aaron, challenged by the furious Moses, it is as though the gold itself, the material expression of that need, had formed itself spontaneously into an idol. ‘They gave me the gold; out of it came this calf’.
Here then is the great transgression, the ultimate sin of idolatry whose denunciation resounds through biblical prophets and church fathers alike. Does it involve ‘selfishness’? Quite the reverse. Gold, then as now, marked status and the attribution of value. The gold ornaments while in private hands could have been a cause of envy and dissension. So, Aaron invites the people to pool this wealth for a common religious project. Impressively, this meets a willing response.
Of course, in our own case the object of devotion will take other forms. Among the more common objects, we might reckon the aspiration to ‘make the best of ourselves’, the pursuit of security and happiness for our children or our community, the protection of our natural environment. Such forms of devotion, so far from selfish, take us ‘out of ourselves’, as we like to say. Their pursuit may even be sacrificial, especially when our exertions are not rewarded with success. The fact remains, of course, that, from a Christian perspective, where such things become ends in themselves, rather than undertaken in the name of Christ and for the glory of God, the sacrifice is wrongly directed – as surely as the sacrifices offered up to the golden calf or the gods of the Egyptians.
2.Idolatry and institutional sin
Second, the emphasis of ‘selfishness’ is over-individualistic. Much human wrong-doing is institutional and systemic in a manner that simply cannot be properly grasped by explanations seeking to assign moral responsibility to individuals. Increasingly, recent Christian evangelism has desired to identify the impact of our separation from God with, not just with personal moral degradation, but with the ‘broken’ nature of our common life, its exploitative institutions and impoverished ideologies. Some have even gone so far as to locate moral agency at the institutional as well as the individual level. In accordance with this less individualistic approach to sin, we find, in these evangelists, a corresponding emphasis, when speaking of the redemptive power of the Cross and Resurrection, on the restoration of our common life. Their focus on the ‘Kingdom’ suggests a sanctification of our relationships and institutions as much as our individual souls.
For those seeking biblical support for this broader conception of sin and salvation, the Scripture-based argument we find in Chris Wright and G.K. Beale for a re-centring of our understanding of sin on idolatry ought to be very welcome. The psychology of homo adorans, described in Exodus 32, excludes an individualistic concept of sin. The ‘self’, when seen from this perspective, is no longer a self-sufficient inner spiritual essence, but a locus of potential religious attachments binding us into (often destructive) relationship with other beings in our spiritual and social environment. In other words, ‘self’ becomes a matter of identity, ‘who we are’ a question of where – and to whom – we belong. This is entirely consistent with an understanding of sin and salvation that foregrounds the impact of separation from God on our institutional life. Furthermore, it problematizes the idea that only individuals (and not human institutions) are capable of sinful agency.
3.A strategy for evangelism
Third, many non-believer interlocutors – those, for example, who have not failed by the standards of the world – are not particularly beset by a sense of personal sinfulness in the traditional sense. The familiar Christian rejoinder that all have failed in respect to ‘God’s perfect standard’ is not particularly persuasive in this context, given that the existence of such a standard is not a presupposition non-believers can be expected to share.
The focus on idolatry, by contrast, shifts the emphasis to religion, an aspect of human life to which – unlike sin – our believer interlocutor cannot remain indifferent, to the extent that he/she accepts the biblical understanding of religion as arising from a universal existential need for homo adorans to find an object for his/her devotions. The story of Exodus 32, it will be remembered, implies that, in the absence of an appropriate divinely-sanctioned form in which to manifest itself, an alternative, idolatrous form of religion will inevitably result. The presentation of the sinful human predicament as one of false worship carries with it, in the context of the evangelical presentation of the Gospel, the implicit charge that, insofar as the non-believer interlocutor is not a Christian, he/she practices false religion.
This disqualifies entirely that most familiar and tiresome objection of our non-believer interlocutors: ‘We are not religious’. A response that I have found commonly adopted by the apologists is to argue that Christianity is ‘not a religion, but something else entirely – perhaps even the antidote to religion!’ How I long to find an expositor of the Christian faith (whether book or preacher) who would instead respond to the claim ‘not to be religious’: ‘Yes, you are religious, even if you don’t think you are. And this is how’! In other words, we need to bring our non-believer interlocutor to the recognition that choice with which Christianity confronts them is not, as they suppose, a choice of whether or not to take up religion, but a choice between true religion and false. This, I would suggest, would be more likely to lead to fruitful discussion than the conventional locking of horns over ‘the existence of God’.
In other words, Wright’s exegesis challenges us to consider whether it would not be a more effective strategy (as well as a more biblical one) to consider religion as the outcome of a human existential need as much as a response to the existence of a supernatural being. In a climate of post-Enlightenment scepticism, the question of the existence of God is too easily relegated to the realm of philosophical enquiry. Religion, meanwhile, becomes a matter of personal choice, something we are free to take or leave, until such time as the existence of that supernatural being can be conclusively demonstrated.
A well-known Christian apologist comments ruefully:
Never, within Scripture itself, is there an attempt to prove the existence of God; …. On the other hand, Scripture is rife with attempts to demonstrate that Yahweh is God (and not, for example, Baal).[4]
Like the apologist, we might be tempted to regret that Scripture has not been written with the requirements of conventional apologetic in view. Yet, if we focus on the interlocutor’s real-life religious behaviour (i.e. religion) rather than his/her speculations over the arguments for the existence of the object of our religious faith, then we arrive at a perspective that seems much closer to that of Scripture itself, as well as more promising from an evangelical point of view.
What is lacking in the existing literature?
I have argued the benefits of introducing the perspective of idolatry into our presentation of the Gospel to non-believer interlocutors. This brings us to my second question. How do we apply the biblical concept of idolatry to the phenomena of the contemporary world?
This is not a question dealt with at all adequately by the existing literature – and much depends on its being seriously addressed. Recent presentations of the Christian faith do give a place to institutions and systems, and often use the term idolatry in reference to our dependent and collusive relationship with them. Yet, the adoption of a thorough-going attempt to introduce the perspective of idolatry would require greater clarity regarding its contemporary manifestations than currently appears to exist.
Wright and Beale, for example, are of little help. Compared with the long chapters of biblical exegesis, the space in their books devoted to the application of the perspective of idolatry to contemporary life is relatively limited. The merits of their views are discussed below. Wright claims to be building on previous Christian sociological treatments of the question. He cites studies by the following authors (whose views will be considered below): Jacques Ellul; J.A. Walter; Walter Wink; Clinton E. Arnold; Bob Goudzwaard; Craig Bartholomew & Thorsten Moritz; Vinoth Ramachandra. However, the approach Wright himself adopts to identifying contemporary instances of idolatry owes little to theirs. Besides, there is some considerable variation in the approaches adopted by the studies he cites – let alone in the specific instances of idolatry to which these approaches lead. To show one has constructed on such foundations would require a comprehensive preliminary analysis of the material. In the absence of this, Wright’s observations appear casual and haphazard, whatever the solidity of their Scriptural basis.
In seeking a consistent approach to applying biblical notion of idolatry, I shall make this diverse sociological material the basis of my own reflections. Not all of it is equally relevant. For example, the question driving a number of these studies is the concern to find a contemporary application, not so much of the notion of idolatry, but of the NT language of ‘principalities and powers’. Given the multiplicity of interests and motivations represented in these studies, it is vital we retain a clear sense of our objectives. In particular, two considerations will guide our attempts to understand idolatry in the contemporary context.
First, the notion of idolatry that concerns us here is the notion described by the biblical text; second, it is a notion capable of deployment in the context of the presentation of the Gospel to non-believer interlocutors.
Our second guiding consideration requires further explanation.
The Bible’s concern with idolatry relates primarily to the syncretistic practices of backsliding Israelites and their rulers – that is, to the practices of people who would still consider themselves the people of God. However, the Bible also applies the term to the practices of gentile pagans, such as Egyptians, Assyrians, Moabites, Greeks and Romans. In the first case, we are concerned with deviations from the one true religion; in the second, with other religions. From the Bible’s perspective, this distinction is unimportant, since the worship of other gods is, in every circumstance, ‘without excuse’. (Romans 1.20) However, from the perspective of the application of the concept to the context of evangelism to non-believers, the difference between these two senses of idolatry is crucial.
We have, let us imagine, on the one hand, a practice of oriental meditation engaged in by professing Christians which some might regard as involving a potentially dangerous exposure to non-Christian influence. That is the sense of idolatry corresponding to the situation of the Jewish people in the OT. On the other hand, we have the same practice as performed by Singhalese Theravada Buddhists largely ignorant of the Christian faith. It is important to recognize that, in the context of the presentation of the Gospel to non-believers, it is with this latter sense of idolatry with which we are concerned, rather than the sense the word has in relation to the backsliding syncretism of the Israelites. For, if we are applying the biblical notion of idolatry in the context of the presentation of the Gospel to non-believers, our basic assumption must be that whatever constitutes the belief system of our interlocutors has so far left Christianity behind as to constitute a kind of religion that can, and should, be characterized without reference to Christianity.
This crucially influences the approach to be adopted when we set out to identify manifestations of idolatry in contemporary culture. If any syncretistic practice qualifies, the range of phenomena warranting our attention will be broad indeed. But if, on the other hand, what we are trying to characterize in modern practices is idolatrous religion, then far more stringent criteria apply, namely those applying to a religion.
What is idolatrous religion?
When we consider, not just Wright and Beale, but all the sociological literature cited by Wright, we find only limited agreement on the phenomena that qualify as instances of contemporary idolatry. If we take all the studies into account, then the list is bewilderingly long. Such phenomena include: the nation state (in various forms); mammon; the ‘self’; the privatized family; the ‘suburban dream’; culture; ‘alternative’ religions; consumerism; revolution; guaranteed security. Some of these crop up in nearly all studies (e.g. the nation state); others in just one or two (e.g. revolution; consumerism).
However, if we look at the concept of idolatry determining the selection in each case, it becomes possible to understand these choices, and to evaluate their potential relevance. In other words, what these authors see in the contemporary world as idolatrous largely depends upon what they define as idolatry, what they find upon what they are seeking. Therefore, elucidating the different understandings of idolatry with which these studies set out offers us a way of reconciling their findings, and identifying what is most relevant to our project.
Our studies differ, first, in the extent to which they understand idolatry as idolatrous religion. This, it will be remembered, is a criterion of their relevance to the goals of this paper. They differ also in regard to their definitions of idolatrous religion, though by no means entirely. There is agreement on most aspects; yet a sub-group of our studies render their definition narrower and more exacting in a manner that distinguishes them from the rest.
I will now give an account of these differences by considering the three potential aspects of their definitions in relation to which those differences are expressed. On the first two aspects – the institutional aspect of idolatrous religion, and its meaning-giving aspect – there is a substantial measure of consensus. Agreement on these aspects distinguishes the concept of idolatrous religion adopted by the mainstream from that of certain outliers, as well as from the concept of idolatry found in Wright and Beale. The third aspect of the definition forms the basis of what distinguishes the sub-group mentioned above.
1.The institutional aspect of idolatrous religion
The phenomena identified as idolatrous must have a collective and institutional aspect. We are not, in other words, speaking of purely individual objects of attachment. People do not simply ‘pluck out of thin air’ the gods they worship. ‘We are members of a society which has set up public shrines and altars at which people are either invited or cajoled into worshipping’ (J.A. Walter).[5] In the Bible, idolatry is primarily idolatrous religion, and religion is a collective phenomenon. This is true of the Moabite devotion to Chemosh, or the imperial Roman cult of the ruling Caesar. So, this must also be true of any properly idolatrous devotion in the contemporary world. Our sociological authors are largely united on this (with the exception given below). Walter Wink (Unmasking the Powers) goes further, identifying the ‘principalities and powers’ of the NT with all human collectivities, seen from the point of view of their ‘spiritual interiority’.[6]
Contrast the very different view of idolatry found in Beale, who cites with approval Martin Luther’s definition of idolatry as ‘whatever your heart clings to and relies upon’, or in Wright, who develops an essentially individualistic understanding based on what we personally ‘fear’ or ‘rely on’, or ‘things that attracts us’.[7]
If our concept of idolatry has to be that of the Bible (our first principle), then the concept (mostly) entertained by the sociological literature is to be preferred over that of Wright or Beale. True, biblical idolatry involves a misdirected ‘trust and faith of the heart’. But the Bible envisages such personal attachment in the context of collective religious behaviour. Even where the term idolatry is on occasion employed in a metaphorical sense, the associations of religious cult remain strongly in the background.
Moreover, if our purpose in seeking out contemporary idolatry is to be able to characterize the standpoint of our non-believer interlocutor as religious (our second principle), then simply enumerating every potential object of individual idolatrous attachment will not do the job. We need to be able to characterize for the benefit of the non-believer interlocutor the religion that, for contemporary humanity, occupies the place intended for the worship of the one true God.
The outlier among the sociological studies is Clinton Arnold’s study, Powers of Darkness.[8] Arnold is primarily concerned with how to understand the ‘principalities and powers’ of the NT. His wholesale rejection of the idea that idolatry has an institutional aspect stems from his concern that to identify demonic forces with contemporary institutions or ideologies detracts from their spiritual ‘reality’. For Arnold, hostile spiritual influence (i.e. ‘the Devil’) and hostile human institutions (i.e. ‘the world’) constitute distinct categories of evil which should not be conflated. He backs up this non-institutional understanding of the powers with a survey of ancient idolatrous behaviour based on the extensive evidence of ancient magic that has emerged from recently discovered papyri.
It would not be difficult to challenge Arnold’s position on the grounds that the association of spiritual beings with collective and institutional phenomena by no means necessarily detracts from their reality. But a more fundamental objection is that his exclusive focus on magic leaves out of account a great deal of what the ancients considered to be religion – namely, the officially sanctioned practices associated with the reproduction of the socio-political status quo. Arnold’s unbalanced historical analysis leads to a very one-sided perception of demonic phenomena in the contemporary world, focussed largely on black magic and the occult. Such practices are hardly so dominant in our culture that it would make much sense to characterize contemporary idolatry in terms of them.
2.The meaning-giving aspect of idolatrous religion
Our sociological authors are also largely united (see below for the exception) in their association of this institutional and collective dimension of idolatrous religions with their provision of narratives (‘myths’) and related practices (‘rituals’) that endow collectivities with a common set of assumptions regarding their members’ sense of their place in the world and their proper relations with other members. These include relations with past and future, as well as present, generations. Our authors describe a world of shared meaning, manifested, often not primarily at a speculative level, but in everyday practices, generally transmitted through the training of bodies in childhood. It is this meaning-giving aspect of religion that gives institutions and collectivities their specifically religious character, distinguishing them from others (e.g. public limited companies) that we would not consider religious.
That the various instances of idolatrous religion mentioned in the Bible possess this meaning-giving character is not immediately obvious from the biblical text. The Bible does not interest itself in the narratives and practices of the religions of its neighbours, though it attests the existence of their temples. However, it seems natural to assume they possessed such a character, on the basis of the analogy that these idolatrous religions present, qua religions, with the religion of the one true God. Furthermore, that assumption finds abundant confirmation in modern studies of some of these ancient religions.[9]
It follows that, in accordance with our first principle, we should be on the look-out for collective phenomena of the contemporary world that possess the same meaning-giving character. It is also only to the extent that contemporary collective phenomena embody this character that our Christian evangelist can consider them as offering the contemporary post-Christian world a pagan alternative to the Christian faith. And that, of course, is the demand placed on our definition of idolatrous religion by the need for evangelical relevance (our second principle).
The latter point is well illustrated by the only one of our sociological studies not to make the association with meaning-giving narratives and practices a criterion for inclusion amongst the contemporary phenomena it brings to our attention. This is Walter Wink’s Unmasking the Powers. Like Arnold, Wink (at least, in this book) is not primarily concerned with idolatrous religion, but with our understanding of the ‘principalities and powers’. For Wink, they are spiritual beings who embody the ‘spiritual interiority’ of every collective institution apparently without distinction. Like individual human souls, these beings share in the consequences of the fall, but are capable of redemption to the extent that they come to take their proper place in the divine order, as subject to the Lordship of God in Christ.
Regarding the issue of idolatry itself, all Wink has to say is that our service of these beings is idolatrous so long as it isn’t ordered to the higher and more encompassing worship that we owe our Lord and Saviour. As a general principle, applying at all times and places, this may indeed be true. But, in practice, the characteristic forms of idolatry are culturally specific. There will be forms of idolatrous religion specific to our own time and place, which we should want to identify in order to recall our fellow humans to a sense of where their own spiritual allegiances diverge from those of the one true God. This time- and culture-bound aspect of the idolatrous phenomenon is just not something in which Wink demonstrates any interest. His definition of idolatry is a definition without specific cultural content. Consequently, it can only have very limited relevance for contemporary evangelism.
3.The ideational aspect of idolatrous religion
The two aspects considered so far delimit a consensus that unites the majority of our sociological studies in their definition of religion. But there is a third aspect, the explicit recognition of which distinguishes a small sub-group of those studies. This third aspect qualifies our understanding of idolatrous religion in a way that is highly relevant to the purposes of this paper.
This third aspect is the system-like and totalizing quality of an idolatrous religion which enables the imposition of a coherent worldview. Not that religions constitute discrete totalities, exactly; but the capacity for religions – like language – to make sense of the world through establishing relations between things goes along with the establishment of an overall perspective (or a series of interlocking perspectives). For if, on the one hand, the capacity to establish relationships is necessary to the establishment of a coherent perspective, it is only from such a perspective that the interrelatedness can be apprehended. It is in attempting to grasp this elusive system-like and totalizing quality that our sociological authors have recourse to the term ideology. Bob Goudzwaard’s definition of the term demonstrates its heuristic value in this context.
In its original sense, ideology means an entire system of values, conceptions, convictions and norms which are used as a set of tools for reaching a single, concrete, all-encompassing societal end.[10]
Unfortunately, whatever its ‘original’ sense may have been, in its real-language use, the term ideology implies that the belief system in question has been cynically contrived with a view to concealing truth in the interests of a societal goal. Where idolatrous religion is concerned, we are evidently speaking of perspectives inculcated by long traditions of thought and practice that, for all their favouring of elites, have evidently not been confected in furtherance of an immediate political interests. For this reason, I prefer to substitute the term ideation or ideational system. This conveniently sums up all that Goudzwaard seeks to convey by his use of term ideology, but without any of the unwanted connotations.
There is no reason to suspect that the definition of idolatrous religion as an ideational system departs from the biblical concept of idolatry (our first principle). If we want evidence of the ideational aspect of idolatrous cults, we will not find it in the Bible – any more than evidence that they are meaning-giving. Yet such evidence is abundant in the recent academic literature on ancient religions.
Regarding the relevance of the application of this aspect of idolatrous religion to the context of presenting the Gospel to non-believer interlocutors (our second principle), it is only to the extent that the various institutional and meaning-giving elements serve to establish a unifying perspective that a fundamentally distinct alternative to Christianity emerges. This is most clearly demonstrated in studies where the failure to recognize the fundamentally ideational character of religion results in a characterization of contemporary idolatry that departs insufficiently from Christianity to constitute a distinct alternative to it. J.A. Walter, for example, focuses on a range of contemporary phenomena constitutive of what he terms ‘the suburban dream’. These include simultaneously institutional and meaning-giving elements such as the modern ‘private’ family, erotic love, ‘the job’, an individualistic lifestyle. But he fails to trace, through the interrelationships of these phenomena within a totalizing system, an overall religious perspective that could stand in opposition to that of Christianity. As a result, idolatry turns out to consist in an overvaluation of the institutional and meaning-giving things he describes. From an ethical perspective such a view is entirely unproblematic. But it does not offer the understanding we require in order to characterize an alternative (i.e. non-Christian) worldview for the purposes of evangelism.
In those studies where the ideational aspect of religion is taken fully into account, it tends to drive the Christian apologist down one of two different routes. I need to distinguish these, as they are of very unequal value in serving the purposes of evangelism.
The wrong path (from our own perspective, at least) can be illustrated once again by Walter Wink, this time by the approach adopted in the third book of his trilogy: Engaging the Powers.[11] Here Wink takes forward his earlier work on the principalities and powers by demonstrating how they can come to together to form a ‘system’. This occurs in one of two ways. Either it does so on the basis of their insubordination to God in Christ – in which case they come to form, through their mutual interrelationships, what he terms ‘the domination system’, based ultimately on violence. The second way is on the basis of ‘God’s domination-free world order’, founded on non-violence.
To an extent, Wink’s approach to the ideational dimension of religion just further exhibits the consequences of his distinctively ‘culture-free’ definition of human institutions. But it also conveniently illustrates a more widespread tendency of the sociological literature when it tries to take account of the ideational dimension of idolatrous religion. The perception that non-Christian systems are animated by a spirit of opposition to God (i.e. Satan and the demonic powers) often leads to a failure to recognize the autonomy of the systematizing principles operating within idolatrous religions. The author’s keen awareness of the opposition between alternative (idolatrous) perspectives and the perspective of the one true God gives rise, very understandably, to the collapsing of all distinction between alternative systems – as though the fact that these systems are opposed to the true faith reduces them all to variations of the same thing. The Bible appears to give some sanction to such an approach with its language of Satan and the demonic.
By contrast, the value of Goudzwaard’s term ideology (and our own term ideation) lies in the recognition of the possibility of a plurality of idolatrous systems, not characterized simply by their opposition to Christianity, but based on autonomous principles – to all of which, each in its own way, Christianity finds itself opposed. A number of studies, including those in the compilation edited by Craig Bartholomew & Thorsten Moritz (Christ and Consumerism)[12] demonstrate the general approach to the systemic dimension of religion advocated by Goudzwaard rather than Wink, even where they do not use the term ideology. Their consumerism is a good example of the characterization of modern Western society as an ideational system. It suggests not only the existence of a set of institutions and practices (i.e. ‘the market’), but a unifying ideational perspective that exists in relation to them. As an ideational system, consumerism can be argued to constitute an alternative to Christianity, as, for example, ‘the market’, cannot. We are all of us implicated in ‘the market’ – just as we are in Walter’s ‘privatized family’; consumerism suggests a unifying set of beliefs and values that can stand opposed to Christianity. In this respect, it corresponds to Goudzwaard’s notion of an ideology.
From this survey of the literature of idolatry, I draw a definitive conclusion. That it is the definition of religion we find proposed by Goudzwaard and Thorsten & Moritz – as an autonomous ideational system – which offers the concept of idolatry that Christian evangelism requires if it wants to characterize the pagan alternative confronting Christianity in today’s world.
Where do we find contemporary idolatry?
The path of our investigation thus far has been long and tortuous; but, I would claim, it has not been without fruit.
I say this, not because any of the phenomena identified in the literature we have surveyed stands out as the dominant manifestation of idolatry in our culture, though there are no doubt phenomena that our investigation would enable us to exclude (Mammon) and others that recommend themselves as conforming to a definition of idolatry that is consistent with the aims of this paper (consumerism).
The really important outcome of our investigation has been the specification of a concept which any supposed idolatry would need to meet in order to be considered relevant to the kind of Gospel presentation we have in mind. For, with this specification clearly set out, we begin to see that, when it comes to the status of dominant idolatry of our age, there is only one candidate in the field.
This is an ideational system that stares us in the face in whatever direction we look. It lies behind the ‘wokeness’ of LGBTQ+ without being identical to it. It would certainly find its perfect emblem in the ‘rainbow banner’, had that not already been appropriated to the narrower aims of Gay Pride. It takes on an overtly religious aspect in the manifestations of spiritual immanentism to be found in the various forms of ‘alternative spirituality’ or – as Paul Heelas more accurately describes it – ‘life spirituality’.[13] It finds its vernacular expression in the consumerism of Bartholomew & Moritz. Its sacrament is the work of ‘epiphanic art’ as defined most famously by the philosopher Charles Taylor.[14] And the list could go on … Finally, many of the idolatrous phenomena brought to our attention in the works described in the previous section find their place in their relation to it: namely, the ‘privatized’ conceptualization of personal and family life as ‘a world of our own’ (Walter)[15]; the aestheticization of commodities ‘providing the basis for the negotiation of meaning and personal identity’ (Bartholomew)[16]; the fetishization of sex, freedom and personal identity (Ellul).
The ideational system encompassing all these phenomena, and to which they all point from their different angles – the ideational system which I have no problem labelling an ‘idolatrous religion’, and the dominant religion of our times – is expressivist individualism, as defined by the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, and more recently described in its relation to the LGBTQ+ phenomenon, by Carl Trueman in The Triumph of Self.[17]
Taylor is fully aware of the theological implications of expressivist individualism, which he associates with the popularity of a non-theistic, immanentist world view (the ‘immanent frame’). Yet Taylor himself would not, I suspect, describe expressivist individualism as a ‘religion’ – still less an idolatry. Neither would Trueman.
I propose, in what follows, to explain why. First, however, I need to explain what Taylor and Trueman mean by expressivist individualism.
What is expressivist individualism?
Rather than launch into an explanation, I shall give an example. The following is an extract from a strongly autobiographical work written by the Surrealist André Breton in the 1920s.
Over and above the various prejudices I acknowledge, the affinities I feel, the attractions I succumb to, the events which occur to me and to me alone – over and above a sum of movements I am conscious of making, of emotions I alone experience – I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference (‘différenciation’) from them. Is it not precisely to the degree I become conscious of this difference that I shall have the revelation (‘je me révélerai’) of what I alone have been put on this earth to do, what unique message I alone may bear so as to have to answer for it with my life (‘pour ne pouvoir répondre de son sort que sur ma tête’)
To my mind, this passage perfectly encapsulates expressivist individualism as I understand it. The sentiment is altogether familiar to us – almost, if I dare say it, banal. But that is perhaps what might be expected if I am right about the ubiquity of expressivist individualism in the modern world! Given the nature of the content, I found myself, on first encountering the text, rather taken aback at the solemn and somewhat portentous manner of its literary expression – for example, the use of words like ‘revelation’, ‘unique message’ etc.. We might conclude that the ideas that the passage expresses – entirely characteristic, I would suggest, of contemporary expressivist individualism – were not so widely disseminated back in the 1920s. But it is perhaps more relevant here that the Surrealist project of restoring a sense of the ‘sacred’ to the everyday characteristically involved the poetic use of language to de-familiarize the hackneyed ‘rationalism’ of our habitual perceptions. The portentously religious tone of the language here is, in fact, highly characteristic.
Indeed, it is just this effect of defamiliarization that constitutes the particular value of this text our purposes. For, I would suggest, Breton is essentially correct to read his experience of personal vocation in explicitly religious terms. What we have here is not a mystification of a personal belief with a perfectly adequate rational and secular explanation, but the restitution of a proper sense of the ‘mystical’ nature of that belief, when stripped of the reassuring veil cast by our over-familiarity.
We come now to the belief that is expressed. How should we characterize it?
The theorists of expressivist individualism focus on two points. First, the understanding of individual experience as the progressive manifestation – Breton would say ‘revelation’ – of something inward (i.e. the ‘self’). Obviously, there is a more general sense in which we use the term self to designate the part of us that persists over time. But the ‘self’ of Breton and expressivist individualism, as defined by Charles Taylor et al., is something rather different. With the latter we are not speaking of some part of us which simply exists, but rather something that needs to be retrieved, discovered, or revealed; ‘who we truly are’, that is, or who we are ‘underneath’. Far from ‘simply existing’, this self becomes manifest to the extent that we bring it to realization. As Taylor puts it:
The direction of this élan wasn’t and couldn’t be clear prior to this manifestation. In realizing my nature, I have to define it in the sense of giving it some formulation; but this is also a definition in a stronger sense: I am realizing this formulation and thus giving my life a definitive shape.[18]
Unlike the notion of self as continuity of consciousness, this idea of individual experience as a quest after some inner personal truth, is, I would argue, an ideational construct, and nothing but its ideational entrenchment in our culture could explain our failure to recognize its peculiarity!
The second aspect of expressivist individualism is closely related to the first, an obvious implication of the understanding of ‘self’ as a manifestation or revelation of something inward rather than something to be taken for granted. If the revelation of existence – our sense of spiritual meaning – comes from inside us, then it will necessarily be indexed to the particularity of our lived experience, and will give ultimate value to that particularity. Religious truth will seem to be lodged in the effable ‘quiddity’ of what makes each of us unique, the distinctive ‘colour’ of our individual life-world. Hence, the religious value Breton – and our modern ‘secular’ culture – attaches to personal difference (‘differentiation’). Taylor carefully distinguishes how this differs from what went before:
Just the notion of individual difference is, of course, not new. Nothing is more evident, or more banal. What is new is the idea that … each one of us has an original path which we ought to tread; … the obligation on each of us to live up to our originality.[19] (my italics)
The introduction into the notion of individual difference of the element of obligation – also strongly present in the Breton text – suggests we have left behind the purely private and personal sphere. Even if the obligation in this case concerns what we do with ourselves, there are implications arising from such an attitude that extend into the public ethical domain. If the pursuit of personal differentiation is a supreme good for each individual, then this imposes at the societal level a corresponding political ethic of ‘toleration’ and ‘inclusion’. Hence, I would suggest Taylor’s foregrounding of ‘difference’, and the value attached by contemporary identity politics, or environmentalism to ‘diversity’ represent different angles on essentially the same thing. ‘Diversity’ is the public and political corollary of a religious ethic based on the obligation of individuality.
Finally, this broad-brush characterization of expressivist individualism would not be complete without some reference to the crucial role played in its emergence and continued inculturation by what has come to be known since Taylor’s seminal work as ‘epiphanic’ art. By epiphanic is designated the idea that the vision of the artist, as expressed in his/her work, ‘creates radically new possibilities of experience’. The ‘give-away’ mark of its presence is the familiar profession of the poet, author, song-writer, artist etc. to be not fully in control of the process in which they are engaged. This is, of course, practically a commonplace of the discourse of art, ‘popular’ as much as traditional. Here are some examples from the literary domain:
‘The poem’, Charles Simic comments, ‘mostly writes itself’; ‘The poet does not write what he knows but what he does not know’, concurs W.S. Graham. ‘Writing reveals to you what you wanted to say in the first place’, remarks J.M. Coetzee; ‘In fact it sometimes constructs what you want or wanted to say’; … ‘Writing shows or creates … what your desire was, a moment ago’[20]
If we find in such testimonies the same discourse of personal revelation that expressivist individualism imputes to everyday experience, it also results in the same ultimate value being placed on individual difference. Here, for example, is a characteristic statement, this time from an eminent visual artist:
The urge to represent is very deep in us …. And this urge is there because each individual person feels or knows that he or she has a unique sort of experience.
For Taylor, artistic creation as actively practised since the beginnings of modern culture in Romanticism – i.e. epiphanic art – supplies, not just a historical origin for the dominant ideational system of our times, or the means of its dissemination, but the ‘paradigm mode’ in which the modern self ‘finds definition’.[21] In other words, artistic practice constitutes a model for everyday self-realization – rather in the sense that a Christian might see the Christ-event actualized in their Eucharist as constituting a model for everyday sacrificial living.
As it turns out, the passage from Breton’s famous autobiographical novel, cited above, happens to offer the perfect demonstration. Breton’s programmatic statements of poetic creation elsewhere make it abundantly clear that the word ‘message’, and his language of revelation, are to be taken self-referentially as an allusion to what is sought through the poetic creation itself (i.e. that of the text before us). To put things bluntly, the self of expressivist individualism is represented here as finding its ultimate fulfilment in the project that this epiphanic action (Surrealism always abhorred the concept of ‘art’) brings to realization. Passages like this – and the Surrealism of which they are utterly characteristic – make entirely explicit the paradigmatic relationship of expressivist life-goals to the goals of epiphanic ‘art’ with an unembarrassed frankness found nowhere else.
‘Subjective turn’ or ‘life spirituality’?
There can be no doubt that, for Taylor, expressivist individualism has important religious implications. It presupposes what he calls the ‘immanent frame’ – an immanentist teleology that is inconsistent with the Christian understanding of a transcendent God, and renders Christian belief much less self-evident nowadays than it used to be. Here, then, in this concept, is an ideational structure of an obviously religious nature that is polarized in a non- or anti-Christian direction.
So, how is it that the identification of Taylor’s ideational structure with religion seems less than natural? Why would Taylor himself not describe his expressivist individualism as idolatrous?
On reflection, the reason is plain enough. It is simply that the focus of Taylor’s immanentist worldview around the self invites the characterization of that worldview as the outcome of a ‘subjective turn’. A strand of sociological literature in which Taylor has, I suspect, invested,[22] has seen the rise of individualism as taking place at the expense of religious and communal (non-individualistic) values. The balance of accounts between old and new typically ranges religion on the side of old-fashioned communal values, and regards individualism as inherently anti-communal and metaphysically ungrounded. Modern society is characterized as lacking an adequate metaphysical basis to sustain it, and on the brink of imminent collapse.[23]
This dismissive appraisal of expressivist individualism needs to be re-considered. For a start, the endeavour of self-realization is by no means necessarily selfish. Think, for example, of those who find their personal fulfilment as teachers and parents. A moment’s reflection suffices to appreciate that our own self-realization more often than not involves enabling the self-realization of others. There seems no reason, therefore, why ethical values might not as easily be founded on a principle of maximizing individual flourishing as on the more ‘altruistic’ basis of moral obligation. Certainly, such a shift does not require the abandonment of any conceivable ethical basis for human action.
Equally, the absence of ‘metaphysical grounding’ seems to arise out of the mistaken assumption that the ‘subjective turn’ of expressivist individualism (if that is really what it is) presupposes a solipsistic worldview. This is evidently not the case – if for no other reason because of the value we attach to epiphanic art. For a start, such art fills our lives with things (i.e. songs, poems, pictures etc.) that embody human value in a way that is publicly acknowledged. Think, for example, of the widespread public lamentation frequently expressed over the destruction of cultural heritage. But there is also the enhancement in status enjoyed by the phenomena of experience themselves in view of their potential for creative transvaluation. Epiphanic art teaches us to see each of the everyday phenomena susceptible to its alchemy as the potential site of an epiphany. In short, the expressivist self inhabits a ‘world’, somewhat different, no doubt, from that of traditional religion – but a world, nevertheless.
The case in favour of the properly religious status of the worldview I have been describing has recently been argued (contra Taylor et al.) with great academic seriousness and at considerable length by Paul Heelas in his study Spiritualities of Life. Heelas’ interest is primarily in the alternative spirituality movement and focuses on therapeutic practices. But its conclusions, as Heelas is plainly aware, extends far more widely. The book is concerned, first, to argue for the basis of today’s alternative spiritualities in expressivist individualism, second, to uphold their credentials as a fully-orbed religion. An introductory chapter traces the source of his thinking to a ‘eureka’ moment’ that came with the realization that ‘life’ rather than ‘self’ was ‘the term’ that would enable him to grasp what lay at the heart of contemporary spiritualities.
The ‘life’ of so-called ‘alternative spiritualities’ is what provides the crucial link with the greatest, the most fundamental of all our cultural values – life itself and the fulfilled experiential life.[24]
The shift is not simply terminological – and it deserves wider application, as I myself have argued elsewhere, to expressivist individualism more generally. ‘Fulfilled experiential life’ is more than just subjectivity. It also implies that attribution of ultimate value to the phenomena of human experience – of all that is capable of transvaluation through Taylor’s epiphanic art. Admittedly, such phenomena always come indexed to a subjectivity; but, as we have already argued, the phenomenal world experienced by the self is certainly not reducible to the self – anymore than the ethics of expressivist individualism are necessarily selfish.
The idea of life gives adequate expression – as the idea of self does not – to those specifically alternative aspirations in expressivist individualism that tend to characterize them in opposition to the aspirations of traditional Christianity. It also recognizes the genuinely religious nature of those aspirations, acknowledging in expressivist individualism a bona fide religious position with a viable ethic, and a metaphysic quite distinct from that of orthodox Christianity, being based not on theistic transcendentalism but on immanentist life.
Is expressivist individualism really idolatrous?
A second potential objection to the claim of expressivist individualism to be a form of contemporary immanentist religion arises from the perspective of Christianity. I anticipate many would object that Christianity itself privileges the unique particularity of individual experience, and differs from many other religions precisely in the claim that human souls are created for relationship with God, rather than being destined to ultimate absorption in the Absolute.
The fact that a theory and practice of epiphanic art originated in Christian Europe is probably no accident. That said, an obvious theological response would be that, for Christians, ultimate value (including our ultimate value as humans) rests on other foundations. The uniqueness that is our birth right is the uniqueness of every human creature before God, while our value is expressed in the Christ-event symbolically represented in the Eucharist, not in the transvaluation of epiphanic art.
Yet, in practice, epiphanic art remains a difficult issue. For all the intimacy of its association with expressivist individualism, it is not something modern Christianity can – or, no doubt, should – wish to un-invent. How epiphanic art relates to Christian faith, however, is a very real question – and one Christians have scarcely even begun to address. Does the practice itself – or maybe our understanding of that practice – need to be re-conceptualized in relation to the Christian worldview so as to allow its dissociation from the expressivist individualism with which it has become so intimately associated?
In view of the complexity of such questions, one can understand the resignation of Carl Trueman who comments:
We are all expressivist individualists now, and there is no way we can escape from the fact. It is the essence of world in which we have to live and of which we are part.[25]
However, this is not the only possible response.
A very different view of the relationship of expressivist individualism and Christian faith emerges – at least, by implication – in the pages of Rod Dreher’s volume, The Benedict Option.[26] The latter sees the future hope of Christian mission in the establishment of communities capable of maintaining their Christian distinctiveness in the face of growing political hostility of wider society. Dreher is consequently not disposed to underestimate the non- or anti-Christian character of wider (‘secular’) society, or the distinction between Christian values and the values underlying the fundamentally different ideational system to which Christianity finds itself opposed. So, it is interesting, from our point of view, that in seeking to characterize a distinctively Christian value system in opposition to that of wider ‘secular’ society, Dreher, following a suggestion of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre,[27] finds his model for a distinctively Christian lifestyle in the Rule of St Benedict.
This might initially seem a strange choice, given its origin in a celibate monastic order. However, Dreher is not alone in pointing out that Benedict saw his Rule as having a wider application. There is, after all, a kind of ‘poverty’ that all Christians should espouse, inside or outside the cloister, a ‘chastity’ for the non-celibate, and even a certain style of ‘obedience’ we are called to observe with regard to our own Christian leaders. ‘The wisdom of the Rule’, remarks Rowan Williams (The Way of St Benedict) ‘still sounds remarkably credible to Christians of both left and right, as well as to secular thinkers reflecting on aspects of community’.[28]
Whatever the merits of Dreher’s proposal, it offers a good strategy for imagining what may – or may not – be entailed in a Christian ‘lifestyle’. And it is difficult to imagine anything more at odds with the Christian lifestyle, when seen through this lens, than expressivist self-realization. Not because self-realization necessarily requires a life-style that is lavish. But because the practice of poverty inhibits precisely the expression of that differentiation which, for the expressivist, holds the meaning of our existence. Possibilities of self-realization are, to say the least, constrained by the necessity of inhabiting a social and physical environment which – if one could be said to have ‘chosen’ it at all – one has chosen once and for all. If what is most precious to us consists in the manifestation of our differentiation from our fellow-beings, then our ideal social and physical environment will need to be one that allows the maximum freedom for us to follow a path that is unique to us, and will probably not be predictable in advance even by ourselves. The Christian lifestyle of Benedict, on the other hand, requires a capacity to make a once-and-for-all commitment. On the one hand, we have the Parisian wanderings of the Surrealist on the look-out for the ‘chance encounter’ which will change their life (‘au rendez-vous du hazard’); on the other, St Benedict’s rejection of the lifestyle of the ‘gyrovague’.[29]
The latter option does not preclude all possibilities of artistic expression. The cultivation of beauty could be seen as pertaining to either path. But consider the case to which Dreher revealingly alludes of the Abbot who has ground for thinking his monk is priding himself too much in the quality of his work, and transfers that monk into another role. For Benedict and the Christian, the goal of work – which is the worship of God – takes precedence over the work itself. Can anything be imagined more contrary to the expressivist paradigm of the artwork, or its actualization in the everyday ideal of self-realization? Here it is precisely the work itself, or the authenticity of the individual self, that must take precedence over any ‘external’ social, religious or political consideration.
Idolatry or sin?
So, let us return, at last, to the question of how we present the faith to our non-believing friends. In the case of those lives which have gone disastrously wrong through disastrous life decisions, the destruction of important relationships, addictions, and so forth, what will attract the potential convert will be the possibility of the ‘clean slate’. This, as we all know, is what the sacrifice of Christ makes freely available to us both at the beginning of our Christian journey and throughout our lives. For others who see themselves as already usefully contributing to the collective life of society – those weighed down with Egyptian gold – the chief attraction of Christianity may be inadequately summed up in such terms. For these (the majority in my experience), it may also be a matter of finding a new destination for their gold. Of replacing the goal of self-realization with the goal of bringing honour to God in the eyes of the world, and of exchanging the paradigm of creative self-expression for the paradigm of Eucharistic sacrifice. And, for these, it is the idolatry of misdirected goals which may constitute their greatest need for forgiveness.
On the level of personal experience, I can testify a conversion of this kind means, not just forgiveness, but the exorcism of those gods that have hitherto held pride of place in our hearts and lives, and a liberation from the domination of those forces with which our former self-realization compelled us to collude. The biblical language of idolatry has always seemed to me far better adapted to expressing the latter idea than the traditional language of sin as selfishness. When I have found myself from time to time confronted with solicitations of our culture to seek certain alluring forms of self-fulfilment, this has always seemed to me to confer a fresh relevance on lines of the OT that were presumably addressed to those tempted by more ‘literal’ kinds of idol-worship:
Those who choose another god
Multiply their sorrows;
Their drink-offerings of blood
I will not pour out
Or take their names upon my lips. (Ps. 16)
For by comparison with the idolatrous goal of self-realization and personal happiness, the ‘burden’ that Christian faith places on us is a light one. We are not obliged to attain, or even seek, our happiness, or our success. Those things cease to be our responsibility. And, sought by us for their own sake, they can easily implicate us in serving the goals of social structures and systems that do not mean our good – ‘pouring drink offerings to another god’. Christians, however, are simply constrained to witness to our faith wherever we happen to be – to be ‘salt’ and ‘light’ as the Gospel puts it. Of course, we will prayerfully seek out those areas of life where we are best suited by our natural and supernatural gifts to serve. Yet, at the end of the day, we can serve God as well in an entirely commonplace everyday capacity as we can in a specialized role. Think of the Benedictine abbot re-assigning that monk who is too attached to his vocation. The important thing, of course, is to get right Who it is we are serving. The rest will follow.
We are certainly not obliged to follow the counsel of innumerable school speech-day orations that exhort us to ‘make the most of ourselves’. This, I believe, is the pillar and foundation of our sanity.
[1] Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God (Nottingham: IVP, 2006); Here are Your Gods! (London: IVP, 2020); G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2008)
[2] Wright, The Mission of God, 136
[3] G.K. Beale, 159
[4] Kelly James Clark, “Reformed Epistomology Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. William Lane Craig (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 274-5
[5] J. A. Walter, A Long Way from Home (Exeter: Paternoster, 1979), 14
[6] Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986)
[7] Wright, Mission, 166-171
[8] Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1992)
[9] See, for example, Francoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt (New York: Cornell U.P., 2004)
[10] Bob Goudzwaard, Idols of Our Time (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1981), 18
[11] Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992)
[12] Craig Bartholomew and Thorsten Moritz, ed., Christ and Consumerism (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000)
[13] Paul Heelas, Spiritualities of Life (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008)
[14] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 2007)
[15] Walter, 50
[16] Bartholomew, 7
[17] Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020)
[18] Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1989) 375
[19] Ibid., 375
[20] Andrew Bennett, The Author (London: Routledge, 2005), 69-70
[21] Ibid., 481
[22] David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1961); Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (London: Abacus, 1980); Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man [1977] (London: Penguin Books, 2002); Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: U. of California P., 1985)
[23] For example, Trueman, 78
[24] Heelas, 25-26
[25] Trueman, 386
[26] Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option (New York: Random House, Sentinel, 2017)
[27] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue [1981], (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 304-5
[28] Rowan Williams, The Way of St Benedict (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2020), 8-9
[29] Timothy Fry, ed., The Rule of St. Benedict in English (Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982), 21