Personal, collective responsibility equally important

There is a stark contrast between Conservative and Progressive Christians when it comes to emphasis on individual versus collective responsibility.

Conservative Christians have numerous books that espouse personal transformation, honing individual leadership skills, personal responsibility and personal stories of salvation.

They hold up champions of personal transformation as models for Christians everywhere. These include Chuck Colson, President Nixon’s former chief counsel who came to Christ in prison, and Casey Treat, who was a drug dealer, then came to Christ and turned his life around.

Progressive Christians come from the other side. On the whole, their books emphasize public morality as it pertains to communities, churches, corporations and nations. Their focus tends to be the transformation of communities.

They hold up Nelson Mandela’s South Africa, the abolitionist movement in the United States, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, the eradication of child labor laws, the women’s suffrage movement, and Habitat for Humanity as examples of the social gospel. They rejoice most over the transformation of institutions and the spread of human rights.

I have grappled with books that come from both the personal transformation and the collective transformation side of things. And I have come to the conclusion that the two ride on the heels of one another. To separate them is ridiculous.

Mandela’s personal transformation is intricately tied to the changes in South Africa. Millard Fuller’s personal transformation is key to the phenomenal success of Habitat for Humanity.

Yes, nothing substitutes for personal accountability and responsibility. Yet it takes a determined collective effort on the part of countless people to pull off a triumph for human rights on a grand scale.

And most would agree that when the Berlin Wall comes down, it is a cause for greater joy than the turnaround of an individual life on the brink of disaster.

Of course, it is always easier to focus on individuals as opposed to human organizations. Individuals are less complicated than multifaceted and unwieldy collectives.

Humanity faces problems on a grand scale that require coordinated, complex thinking and balance to solve. Transforming individuals one by one is a start, yet we have to look squarely at institutions and hold them accountable. The most severe social ills take on nationalistic, religious and corporate tones.

The rampant individualism that has taken Christianity by storm in recent decades is a break from history. The early church did not believe that Jesus came to save a select group from the fires of hell; it believed that Jesus came to redeem all of humanity.

Here is a passage from St. Athanasius: “Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death in place of all …”

The early church understood that Jesus would transform not just individuals, but whole institutions, breaking down the barriers that separate people from one another. He would break down the systems of domination that have plagued society from earliest times and usher in the domination-free realm of God.

It is amazing that from 1989 on, 13 countries comprising 1.7 billion people experienced nonviolent revolution. This is almost one-third of humanity. They succeeded in every case but China. And they were peaceful in every case but Romania and parts of Southern Russia.

Jesus’ way of loving all our neighbors, even those who perpetrate violence against us, is indeed the hope for humanity. And when Jesus said from the cross, “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” (Luke 23:34) he was providing the central truth for personal and collective transformation: that there is no future without forgiveness.

So, morality is personal. It is also collective. If we neglect either, we miss the mark. They are two sides of the same coin.