Expressive Individualism

Carl Trueman’s writing “How Expressive Individualism Threatens Civil Society,” and his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution have caught the attention of some on the internet. Here are some related thoughts/posts.

9marks.org

• An Ecclesiological Take on “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” -- “Pragmatism is a results-driven orientation, especially results that can be measured, like dollars in the plate or bodies in the pew.”
• Do 9Marks Churches Foster Expressive Individualism? -- “Beware of whatever draws people to your church that’s not biblically essential. What’s trendy now will change.”
• Why Pastors Need to Understand an Abstract Topic Like “Expressive Individualism” -- “First, through the influence of Rousseau and other post-Enlightenment thinkers and poets, the self became ‘psychologized.’”
• You’re a Pastor, Not a Therapist -- “Pastor, you’re not a therapist. You hold a longer-term position in the lives of your people.”

StandardSacredText.com

• Expressive Individualism and Multiple Version Only-ism (Part 1) -- “The Bible is the rule of all faith and practice...If you get to choose the rule book you get to choose how the game is played.”
• Expressive Individualism, A SCOTUS Nominee, and the Textual Issue (Part 2) -- “Judge Jackson, being a woman, cannot give a definition for the word “woman” because she has chosen a Rule, a Standard which allows her to be ambiguous about that which is ruled, because of the Expressive Individualism that pervades her worldview.”
• Does the American Church at Large Foster Expressive Individualism? (Part 3) -- “We’re offering the version(s) of the Bible you are looking for.”
• The Unintended Consequences of Multiple Version Only-ism’s Expressive Individualism (Part 4) -- “here are unintended consequences to our churches’ expressions both of our members’ individual preferences of the version they read and our pastoral preferences regarding the version he reads.”