Preserving Personhood: Quaker Individualism and Liberal Culture in Dialogue

Introduction: The Problem of Individualism

Is there a qualitative difference between describing someone as a ‘person’ or as an ‘individual’? And if there is a difference, what is the relationship between these two descriptions? A useful theological sketch of this issue is provided by Alistair McFadyen’s A Call to Personhood (1990). In it, the author draws out the communicative and interdependent assumptions embedded in the language of the ‘person’ which he suggests is fundamentally hospitable to Christian claims concerning the essentially relational character of the Triune God. In contrast to such theological convergence, McFadyen sees the notion of individualism as signifying an anti-social language which severs human beings from genuine and stable relationships. While Christian anthropology understands the person as gaining its stability from others, ¹ individualism starts with the assumption of ‘the person as a closed circle of communication engaged in a cyclic orientation on oneself through oneself for oneself’. ² Thus, to live as an ‘individual’, suggests McFadyen, means to be radically unrelated to others. Yet, does such a description exhaust all that ‘individualism’ is or could be?

Even a cursory glance at the grand theorists of individualism might suggest an altogether richer account. When J. S. Mill speaks of the sovereignty of the self in his essay On Liberty, he does not seek to suggest that ‘freedom’ means a lessening of relations in general—only that the community should offer citizens the means to innovate in the kind of lives they live. ³ Similarly, for a rugged individualist such as Henry David Thoreau, dissidence towards public authorities did not decrease his ardent desire for comradeship. ⁴ And even the radical libertarian Ayn Rand did not treat solidarity as anathema to individualism. Indeed, in her dystopian novelette Anthem, it is the love been two individuals which assists them in rekindling their lost sense of autonomy. Thus, any balanced treatment of the individualist subject cannot simply conflate the idea with solipsism without doing a genuine disservice to those who hold individualism as philosophically primary. It should be acknowledged that individualism as a concept possesses an elasticity which renders purely anti-social readings highly problematic. In this vein, the economist Frederick Hayek claims that:

[True] individualism affirms the value of the family and all the common effort of the small community and group, that it believes in local autonomy and voluntary associations, and that indeed its case rests largely on the contention that much for which the coercive action of the state is usually invoked can be done better by voluntary collaboration … There can be no greater contrast to this than the false individualism which wants to dissolve all these smaller groups into atoms with no cohesion other than the coercive rules imposed by the state, and which tries to make all social ties prescriptive, instead of using the state mainly as a protection against the arrogation of coercive powers by smaller groups. ⁵

Thus, for Hayek ‘true’ individualism represents the affirmation of sociality rather than its denial. The challenge posed by such a formulation is clear; individualism as a description possesses a complexity which cannot be confined to purely anti-social meanings. Any theological investigation of individualism which does not seriously engage with the kind of philosophical distinctions raised by Hayek is in danger of being polemical rather than constructive. We may not agree with such distinctions, of course, but that does not mean that their existence should be ignored. If McFadyen’s reading does not adequately address such complexities, what theological resources might provide greater clarity?

This article argues that a more nuanced response to individualism can be constructed through a careful engagement with the Quaker theological tradition. Pointing to the distinctive nature of early Quaker claims regarding subjectivity, conversion and ecclesiology, it illustrates ways in which first-generation Friends developed an account of identity which eschewed a simplistic dichotomy between an atomistic ‘individual’ and a relational ‘person’. In place of such a dualism, early Quakerism articulated a religious mode of individualism which was both intensely private and yet deeply social. Its goal was not to isolate people from one another but rather to remove the person from damaging kinds of sociality which inhibited their relationship to God. Tracking the contours of this rich concept in the biographies of early Friends, this discussion treats individualism as a polymorphous concept which can serve to sustain dynamic forms of Christian discipleship. By placing Quaker individualism in dialogue with contemporary culture, this article suggests ways in which the Church can find resources for its own enrichment in the midst of modern liberal culture. It opens with a discussion of early Quaker formations of the self in relation to Friends’ resistance to the political theology of the Stuart dynasty.

Early Quakerism: Being Called from the Organic Polity

What account did early Quakers give of the human subject and how might such an account assist in a theological analysis of individualism? Let us begin this discussion by examining the origins of the Quaker movement. George Fox (1624–1691) was raised in the intense milieu of English Puritanism, yet in the early 1640s this young man’s internal world was thrown into disarray by the shattering realisation that popular Protestantism was full of simulated piety and spiritual fakery. While preachers spoke of a ‘God of the living’ (Luke 20:38), Fox discerned a hollowness to their speech which led him to question their ability to secure his salvation. Consequently, he embarked upon long periods of isolation from his family and community—walking ‘abroad in solitary places many days’, sitting alone with his Bible in ‘hollow trees’, ⁶ despairing of the condition of his soul. As Fox recounts this inner-drama:

I wondered, why things had come upon me and I looked upon myself and said, ‘Was I ever so before?’ Then, I thought because I had forsaken my relations, I had done amiss against them. So I was brought to call to mind all my time, that I had spent, and to consider whether I had wronged any. But temptations grew more and more, and I was tempted almost to despair. And when Satan could not effect his design upon me that way, then he laid snares for me, and baits, to draw me to commit some sin, whereby he might take advantage to bring me to despair. I was about twenty years of age when these exercises came upon me; and some years I continued in that condition, in great troubles; and fain. And I went to many priests to look for comfort, but found no comfort from them. ⁷

As he delved more deeply into this inward darkness, Fox saw the swift dissolution of all his cherished beliefs and assumptions. The Church (which had once seemed the source of spiritual comfort) became a vessel of duplicity and irreligion, headed by priests who were all ‘miserable comforters’. ⁸ Here we see the first stirrings of personal otherness in the young Puritan. In this state of heightened anxiety, Fox became aware of his manifest estrangement from those relationships and institutions which had previously defined his sense of being a Christian. A generation before Fox, the Stuart dynasty had insisted upon an organic conception of both the English nation and the Church as the prerequisite of political order. As the Royalist layman Edward Forset had argued in his 1606 tract, A Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique, the human body was to be read as a microcosm of the religious and political order. According to this analogy, the monarchy was deemed to be the active soul of a passive body which stood for the people. ⁹ In this scheme the Church served as an extension of kingly rule, so that the monarch was transformed into God’s fleshly representative. ¹⁰ As Graham Ward summarises this functionalist theology: ‘As icon the king had two bodies; he was both himself (physically) and his nation (metaphorically). As the body of the nation he was also “mixed”, “betwixt the Ecclesticall and the civill estate.” He incarnated a divine office; like Christ in John’s Gospel he is the sent one.’ ¹¹ While it would be disingenuous to suggest that Fox was intimately familiar with the nuances of Royalist theology, the intensity of his religious searches certainly led him to reject the central plank of court politics, namely the unity of state and Gospel. How did Quakers of the 1640s and 50s regard those who still held to this organic conception of political and ecclesial life? One of the most vivid images deployed by Friends in this period was that of a ‘long night’. While early Quakerism revered the Apostolic Church as a fountain of spiritual gifts [1 Cor. 12:1–11], Friends argued that latter-day churches had allowed both the exercise of righteousness and spiritual gifts to fall into disuse. Instead of treating the Spirit of Christ as an active force in the world, Friends observed latter-day believers treating the actions of Jesus and the Apostles as a series of hermetically sealed events with little impact upon their daily lives. As the charismatic Quaker preacher James Nayler observed in 1653:

[Now] that the history of Christ being come, and hath suffered, and is risen again, is generally believed, now thy design is to persuade people that it is a thing past long since, and sets them on to cry out against the Jews for killing of him, and Judas for betraying him; and thus sets one of thy children to cry out against another, making these believe that they are in a better condition than their fathers, when they are all found in one and the same work, killing some, imprisoning others, mocking, stoning, beating and shamefully entreating others; and to keep them on in this work persuades them that it is not Christ they persecute now; for Christ is in heaven and sits at the right hand of God; and how can he be in his people now? He doth not appear in any now, or speak in any now, neither is there any revelations. It was so in the apostles’ time, and the saints of old witnessed such things, but it is blasphemy for any now to confess him in these days. ¹²

Such was their abject alienation from the life of the primitive Christians, contended Nayler, that one had to speak of these ‘drowsy’ ¹³ people as a collection of pseudo-personalities, mechanically driven to act out the religious enthusiasms of their communities without thought or conviction. Of such a person Nayler laments: ‘[If] men, on whom he depends, command him to go to steeplehouse, he goes; if they command him to pray, he prays; if they command him to sing, he sings; if they bid him hear, kneel, sit, stand, fast, or feast, he doth it.’ ¹⁴ For Nayler, such unthinking collectivism exposed the flaw at the heart of post-apostolic Christianity: the priority given to social conformity (through the practice of man-made ‘worships’ ¹⁵ ) rather than the dogged pursuit of God’s commands. Given the inter-denominational violence of the period it would be easy to narrow this radical ecclesiology by conflating such ‘apostasy’ purely with Catholicism. While it is true that early Quakerism reflected much of the anti-Catholic prejudice of the period, Quaker theology did more than tell a familiar Protestant story about ‘renewal’. As Fox tells us early on in his Journal:

About the beginning of the year 1646, as I was going to Coventry, and entering towards the gate a consideration arose in me, how it was said that all Christians are believers, both Protestants and Papists. And the Lord opened to me that if all were believers, then they were all born of God, and passed from death to life; and that none were true believers but such; and though others said they were believers, yet they were not. ¹⁶

Here we see that the object of the early Quaker movement was not institutional purification in the mould of earlier Protestant sects but the dissolution of the very idea of Christendom. Luther had been content with the relatively conservative object of removing those grievous errors which made the faithful stumble, among them indulgences and the culture of works. In these moves, the Reformers made the implicit assumption that underneath institutional corruptions there was a vessel called the true church, which was capable of being salvaged. Such confidence was not, however, shared by early Quakers. Even such a reformed community was still in danger of remaining in spiritual captivity unless it sought a transformative encounter with the Spirit of Christ. In this vein, Christian community (even a church of Sola scriptura Lutherans) could not guarantee salvation; only persons first called by Christ could be said to constitute the Church. ¹⁷ Indeed, it was Fox’s observation that while many Protestant congregations had freed themselves from the yoke of man-made traditions, their minds were still occupied with building up systems of religion. Friends expressed their animosity towards such theological ventures through the doctrine of the Inward Light. According to this principle, God (beyond the censure of human institutions) revealed Himself to every earnest believer. Such a communion offered transformation in relation to personal salvation, but it also required a response from the believer. Indeed, as Douglas Gwyn remarks, to be called by the Light meant ‘oneness of experience and obedience which gathers people out of many conditions—male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free (Gal. 3:28)’. ¹⁸ Once God had called the believer from within, it was impossible for the outward world to remain the same. According to this stern ecclesiological logic, it is not possible for someone else to take responsibility for one’s salvation. It is the contention of early Friends that we cannot hide our commitment (or lack of it) behind the anonymity of a crowd, nor allow ourselves to be passively represented by an institutional arrangement called a ‘church’. Such a radical separation from both Catholic and Protestant alike leads us to consider two significant questions. Once called, what does this estranged creature become? And how does such estrangement lead beyond a ‘drowsy’ pseudo-personality towards genuine personhood? These questions are now tackled through a careful interrogation of the significant differences between Quaker notions of personal separateness and our contemporary notions of social isolation. Instead of counterpoising an anti-social individual with a social person, it can be shown that early Quakerism regards separation as a necessary stage on the journey towards a fuller mode of sociality.

Teleological Individualism in Early Quakerism

It is undoubtedly hard for liberal moderns to read Quaker accounts of religious isolation in ways which exclude contemporary anxieties concerning social atomism. Philosophers of our modern condition repeatedly claim that our cultural enchantment with the idea of the ‘individual’ is causing the diminishment of our deepest needs for community and connection. As John Milbank laments, ‘Under liberalism we no longer really meet each other; establish connections, yes, truly make friends, almost never.’ ¹⁹ Such a negative reception to social separation is understandable, especially if we accept the general thrust of Alasdair MacIntyre’s thesis in After Virtue. According to MacIntyre, traditional ethical systems assume the existence of a purposeful moral agent which is directed towards the good by a concrete set of social beliefs and practices. Life is understood, not as a series of meaningless accidents, but as a consistent narrative, which is expressed as a commitment to a shared communal life with and for others. Yet, if we are to believe this account, our present stress on personal autonomy (in both society and the market-place) renders the moral agent a disjointed nexus of desires and conflicting principles. For MacIntyre, such moral disorder masks the fundamental truth that:

I am never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtues only qua individual … I am someone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or uncle; I am a citizen of this city or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be good for one who inhabits these roles. As such, I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting-point. This is in part what gives my life its own moral particularity. ²⁰

What about those moderns who insist upon their own ‘individuality’ like Sartre ²¹ ? MacIntyre insists that such a radical turning inward is deeply problematic for it assumes as its starting-point a severing of traditions, practices and relationships. As MacIntyre complains, ‘I am born with a past; to try and cut myself off from that past, in the individualistic mode, is to deform my present relationships.’ ²² In this way, early Quaker ecclesiology appears indicative of a modernist turn against tradition. Could such a MacIntyrian critique possess much traction when analysing Quaker theology? While at first glance MacIntyre’s account seems to possess a degree of traction, a closer inspection reveals its stark limitations on account of its polarising structure. Principally, MacIntyre does not acknowledge a possibility which Quaker anthropology regards as central: the existence of a form of individual which is both social and teleological. In what ways then is early Quaker thought individualistic and yet social? A cursory exploration of Quaker reflection in this area suggests that once the self was called out of a false community, it was understood that the seeker would become an individual in two notable senses. Firstly, social separation would lead to a deepening sense of meditative inwardness which was frequently exacerbated for would-be converts by their habitual use of confessional narrative. As early Quaker deployment of the journal form illustrates, the conversion process was seen to involve a practice of spiritual sifting, in which the forces of sin were identified and the power of grace acknowledged in the working out of a single human life. This necessitated the articulation of a vivid sense of self which is capable of witnessing its own salvation. Such an awakened ego permeates George Fox’s accounts of his early mystical experiences:

Now the Lord hath opened to me by his invisible power, how that every man was enlightened by the divine light of Christ; and I saw it shine through all; and that they, that believed in it, came out of condemnation and to the light of life, and became the children of it; but they that hated it, and did not believe in it were condemned by it; though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the Light; without the help of any man; neither did I then know, where to find it in the Scriptures (though afterwards searching the Scriptures I found it). For I saw in that Light and Spirit, which was given forth and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all must come to that Spirit if they would know God or Christ, or the Scriptures aright, which they that gave them forth, were led and taught by. ²³

Fox’s continual use of personal pronouns in this passage (‘the Lord hath opened to me’, ‘I saw’, ‘I found’) underscores a finely tuned subjectivity in Fox, which anticipates significant turns in modern thought. In particular, the Quaker sense of a person as their story possesses powerful resonances with the existentialist notion of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) at the level of both epistemology and ethics. Martin Heidegger defines the authentic person as the one who acts resolutely ²⁴ in the face of lazy conceits and reflexive conformities. What matters is not what others say or believe, but rather what one is capable of saying and believing, after one has searched the depths of experience. The kind of knowledge that matters for Heidegger cannot be realised through second-hand mediations. We must instead seek out truth through our direct experience. ²⁵ Such a mode of epistemological inquiry leads Heidegger to embrace a firmly voluntarist conception of right action. The authentic self (which stands firmly by its reading of reality) is equally self-facing with regard to ethics. Echoing the Kantian notion of self-legislation, ²⁶ Heidegger argues that authenticity demands a degree of conscious commitment when undertaking decisions. We cannot expect ethics to be undertaken on autopilot since moral systems and ideals depend for their survival upon personal commitment. ²⁷ Such a Heideggerian understanding of the self possesses strong analogies within early Quaker theology—in particular, Quakers’ sense of religious interiority. In this regard, Friends were concerned not with the outward forms and religious routines which occupied the ‘churches’ but rather the quality of one’s inner religious experience. Such a priority finds vivid expression in Margaret Fell’s account of her convincement by Fox in 1652. In an impromptu sermon preached in front of a shocked assembly at Ulverston Parish Church, Fell recalls the following words:

The Scriptures were the prophets’ words and Christ’s and the apostles’ words, and what as they spoke they enjoyed and possessed and had it from the Lord … Then what had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God? ²⁸

Fox’s point here is that we cannot merely mimic what we have heard in the Scriptures; we must live out what we have heard with genuine conviction, just as the prophets and apostles did. In doing so, we are moved from a passive reception of religious experience to a state of active spiritual agency, asking ourselves what God requires of us. In this way Quakerism is existentialist in orientation, insofar as it takes as axiomatic the dictum ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling’ (NIV Phil. 2:12). For Friends (as for the Puritans) our choices with regard to Christianity cannot be delayed or side-stepped; they need to be faced for the sake of the person’s soul. Yet unlike the existentialist individualism of someone like Heidegger (or indeed Sartre), Quaker individualism involves a rejection of the language of self-sufficiency and egotism which suffuses the secular existentialist turn. Instead of prioritising their sense of self-worth, early Friends stressed their sense of lack, brought on by their utter dependence upon God for the remission of sin. ²⁹

This theme of dependence leads us on to consider a second individualistic trait in the life of the called: their frequent distance (either physically or psychologically) from the community. For those taking their first steps in the truth of Christ, early Friends praised a willingness on the part of seekers to reject the hullabaloo of market-squares and taverns, in favour of a religiously inspired isolation. ³⁰ Such periods of seclusion played a vital role in the conversion narrative of the fledging Quaker movement, including Francis Howgill, ³¹ Nayler ³² and Edward Burrough. ³³ In Nayler’s case, such separation was an explicit condition of his conversion experience. As Nayler recounts it:

I was in the fields, meditating on the things of God, and suddenly I heard a voice, saying unto me, ‘Get thee out from thy kindred and from thy father’s house’ ³⁴ —and I had a promise given in with it. Whereupon I did exceedingly rejoice that I had heard the voice of that God which I had professed from a child, but had never known him … [Shortly] afterward, going agateward with a friend from own house, having an old suit without any money, having neither taken leave of wife or children, nor thinking then of any journey, I was commanded to go into the west, not knowing whither I should go, nor what I was to do there; but when I had been there a little while, it was given me what I was to declare, and ever since I have remained not knowing today what I am to do tomorrow. ³⁵

Nayler’s abandonment of wife and children makes concrete for us the high demands the Quaker call placed on those who first heard it. Yet, the pangs and sacrifices of conversion were not confined to those who left their homes or who retreated into solitude. Seekers reading the Bible in their own homes experienced all the agony and heartbreak akin to physical separation as they felt themselves slowly being extracted from the fashions, vices and the opinions of the world (much as Abraham gave up the idols of Ur ³⁶ ). The young William Dewsbury suffered from bouts of illness as he confronted internally his personal sinfulness, ³⁷ while Howgill suffered with a sense of unrelenting guilt—a condition which caused him, at home or in ‘desert places’, to wallow in his misery, ‘solitary in weeping’ ³⁸ . Yet, even at its darkest moments, such isolation was understood in retrospect to be directed towards a redemptive purpose.

While Quaker conversion narratives are full of scenes of solitude or ‘being lost’, this did not imply a retreat into atomism. The one who is called is still a social being, with a desire to aid others. Indeed, a longing for fellowship is the motor which, in many cases, drives the conversion process forward. Disconnection from organised churches does not obliterate the desire for community per se, only the rejection of those social forms which stand between the believer and God. Such an ethic of religious voluntarism is vividly demonstrated by Fox early on in the Journal:

And when the time called Christmas, came, while others were feasting and sporting themselves, I would have gone, and looked out poor widows, from house to house, have given them some money. And when I was invited to marriages (as I sometimes was) I would go to none at all; but the next day or soon after I would go and visit them; and if they were poor I gave them some money; for I had wherewith both to keep myself from being chargeable to others, and to administer something to the necessities of others. ³⁹

Here we see Hayek’s distinction between ‘true’ and ‘pseudo-individualism’ in action. Despite the intensity of his spiritual crisis, Fox continues to relate and care for others, something he does while keeping his commitment to heightened introspection intact. His individuality does not negate the social world. Indeed, despite MacIntyre’s claim to the contrary, we find a mode of individualism which is deeply social and profoundly teleological. Towards what is this purposeful individualism directed? In short, early Friends sought membership in the body of Christ. This meant the formation of a conscientious people, who were awake to God’s work in themselves and in the world. They were not satisfied with an automatic religiosity of habit and ritual, but rather attempted to rediscover that original apostolic life guided by the Spirit. This did not mean a negation of what they had learnt as embryonic personalities. Rather, the true Church was the ground on which the fruits of individuality could be tested and measured. This dual logic became explicit in early Quakerism, after the arrest of James Nayler for blasphemy in 1656. Nayler, with his messianic entry into Bristol, had forced Friends to carefully balance the individualistic and teleological elements of their emerging anthropology through the formation of internal religious discipline. ⁴⁰ While still inspired by an inward and personal encounter with Christ, by the 1670s, Friends were on the whole more circumspect in matters of personal enthusiasm. Now in counterbalance to the Inward Light, Quaker theologians draw upon the authority of Scripture and reason as a means of navigating the intensity of their inward experience. As Robert Barclay expresses this sentiment in his Apology of 1676:

[These] divine inward revelations, which we make absolutely necessary for the building up of true faith, neither do nor can ever contradict the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or right and sound reason. Yet from hence it will not follow, that these divine revelations are to be subjected to the examination, either of the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or of the natural reason of man, as to a more noble or certain rule or touchstone: for this divine revelation, and inward illumination, is that which is evident and clear of itself, forcing, by its own evidence and clearness, the well-disposed understanding to assent, irresistibly moving the same thereunto; even as the common principles of natural truths move and incline the mind to a natural assent: as, that the whole is greater than its part; that two contradictory sayings cannot be both true, or false: which is also manifest, according to our adversaries’ principle who (supposing the possibility of inward divine revelations) will nevertheless confess with us, that neither Scripture nor sound reason will contradict it: and yet it will not follow, according to them that the Scripture, or sound reason, should be subjected to the examination of the divine revelations in the heart. ⁴¹

Through this equilibrium of divine revelation, Scripture and reason, Friends discovered the means of rendering themselves parts of a single body (Rom. 12:5). Yet unlike Stuart apologists, Quakers did not regard such unification as merely automatic or assumed. Rather, as we saw with Fox and Nayler, the Church must be actively and imaginatively summoned into existence through searching, struggle and conversion.

Why is this account of the individual found among early Quakers theologically significant for us today? Its value lies in its capability to make alternative readings of liberal modernity possible. By collapsing McFadyen’s dualism between an ‘individual’ and a ‘person’, Quaker anthropology draws out redemptive possibilities in both solitude and separation. Not all forms of self-involvement are egotistical. Indeed, if we are to believe early Friends, a sense of inwardness is essential for our spiritual health. Early Quakerism, in its protest against a de-humanising community, sought to preserve the person against the pretence of a culture, which cared for neither truth nor conscience. If we desire genuine community, Quaker theology insists, the formation of a social individual is essential. Yet, an observer might rightly ask what Quaker theology has to do with the rest of the Christian world? Is not this re-reading of individualism a purely Quaker affair with little resonance elsewhere? With the argument set here, we should answer no. While it is true that Quakerism has its own peculiar theological language, its theological anthropology raises urgent questions for the whole Church. In a period when notions of individuality are highly prized by secular culture, Quakerism asks the wider Church to wrestle with two pressing questions: first, how does one go about forming disciples and not merely passive congregants? and second, how can the Church engage with individualistic cultures in ways which respect, rather than demonise them? The final part of this article explores these interrelated questions through close dialogue with the anti-individualism of the Anglican theologian John Milbank. While acknowledging the contemporary traction of his anti-individualistic arguments, this latter discussion suggests that his theological project tends towards an over-emphasis upon community. As a consequence, Milbank is in danger of embracing an uncritical form of organicism which leaves little space for experiment, inward commitment or dissent. In an effort to formulate an alternative, it is proposed that the Church needs to be attentive to the affirmative possibilities of liberal political orders. In particular, contemporary political theology needs to be more sensitive to the ways in which modernist forms of self-understanding can guarantee the kind of ethical and dispositional goods (inward commitment, agency and discernment) upon which proclamation of the Gospel depends.

Milbank and Quaker Theology in Conversation

As we have seen from our analysis of early Quaker theology, individualism is a highly multifaceted concept. In the conversion experiences of early Friends one comes to realise that the notion of individuality is no more exhausted by charges of misanthropy and atomism than the meaning of a painting is exhausted by a single theory of aesthetics. Individualism can be both social and purposeful, despite accusations to the contrary. Yet such vivid plurality is often obscured in societies where acquisitive conceptions of the individual are undoubtedly the most visible in economics and politics. This is particularly apparent in the older liberal democracies, where the blending of capitalism with civic institutions has tended to reduce citizens to a disparate network of self-interested consumers. Such a manifest obscuration of alternative individualisms has in recent decades produced a rising communitarian sentiment within political theology which rejects the language of individuality entirely.

Undoubtedly one of the most articulate of these latter-day critics is the Radical Orthodox theologian John Milbank. At the heart of Milbank’s thought is a rejection of a hyper-acquisitive capitalism which clandestinely constructs damaging social hierarchies based upon oligopoly and unaccountable power. Contrasting these latter-day power structures with Christian notions of the hierarchic, Milbank concludes:

The hierarchies of liberalism are absolute special hierarchies of fixed power; one can climb up the ladder of power but only to displace someone else. The purpose of control here is simply utility and not the sharing of excellence. By contrast the genuine spiritual hierarchy … is a hierarchy that for human spiritual beings is endemic in time; in which pupil may overtake master but there should no jealousy by the hierarch of the temporarily subordinate, because excellence is intrinsically sharable. ⁴²

While Christian politics exercises power for the teleological purpose of the education of the soul, the secular hierarchy of utility is merely interested in an aggressive race for life and liberty. Such a culture is inherently defective, argues Milbank, because it lacks any notion of common public space where citizens can act together, free of suspicion and cynicism.

What is our best route of escape from this hierarchy of utility? For Milbank, the answer lies in rehabilitating a holistic medieval conception of Christendom. In place of the liquid and acquisitive identities of postmodern capitalism, Milbank has proposed a return to a deeply holistic conception of the social order—one in which guilds, churches, universities and other community groups nurture a radical form of Christian politics, and where the capitalist rules of accumulation and exchange are superseded by the generous logic of Christian worship. In this way, Radical Orthodoxy asks us to imagine a world in which ‘the citizens of New York chose to run their city according to … liturgical order’ with ‘a third of the days off a year for worship and feasting’ ⁴³ and where public life is shaped by the notion that power is exercised for the purpose of promoting a Christ-like practice of service, wiping out damaging concentrations of social and economic power. ⁴⁴

On the surface, at least, Milbank is surely right. Only if citizens can escape from the structures and habits of a market-orientated society can they discover something other than patterns of acquisitive self-interest. By sketching an alternative Christian politics, one can better stand apart from them, realising their inherent inadequacy and harmfulness. Yet, in another respect Milbank’s solution is deeply problematic precisely because it places too much emphasis upon the community and insufficient emphasis upon personal agency. Only the return of Christendom for Milbank can provide the antidote to acquisitiveness. Yet, such an argument runs up against a disappointing historical reality: that Christendom (whether as concrete reality or hallowed ideal) did not banish acquisitiveness from outwardly Christian societies. Indeed, as Jacques Ellul reminds us in his lucid theological study, The Power of Money, the Middle Ages saw the Church fail in its battle with acquisitiveness, despite its practices of philanthropy and the organised ‘prohibition of interest’. ⁴⁵ If the first Christendom did not dispel greed, why should the second? Milbank attempts to circumvent such failure by calling the Church to increased internal effort to embody ‘consensus, agreement in desire and harmony amongst its members’. ⁴⁶ Yet, such exhortation disguises the fact that one cannot Christianise society without first Christianising people. To use Milbank’s imagery, we cannot govern New York according to the cycles of the Church unless and until we have persons capable and willing to participate in such an order, and this ultimately requires their acquiescence. In this way, early Quakerism is offering us an intriguing modification of a complaint that the theologian Stanley Hauerwas frequently levels against liberalism: the act of trying to ‘create just societies without just people’. ⁴⁷ As Nayler and Fox concur, conformity is no assurance of genuine engagement. Only internal conviction can guarantee the unity and integrity of the Church. If the Radical Orthodox project has a tendency to overlook the centrality of personal commitment in Christian life, it also has a corresponding tendency to downplay the oppressive potential of an organic and totalising conception of Church. Falling into the Stuart trap of identifying the Body of Christ with concrete institutions and temporal reach, Milbank suggests that only ‘a global liturgical polity can save us now from literal violence’. ⁴⁸ Yet such a universalising claim ignores the degree to which notions of the all-encompassing Church have been complicit in both unreasoned fundamentalism and sectarian viciousness—something early Friends learned to their great cost. The temptation of the idea of Christendom as conceived by Radical Orthodoxy is that institutional conformity becomes more vital than living out the Gospel. Lurking within such an over-identification is the possibility of a subtle idolatry, which subordinates communal stability to matters of truth as worked out through dialogue and difference.

Given these stark limitations, what could constitute the alternative? In resolving this question, the theological instincts of early Friends point the way. In place of the totalising ecclesiology of Milbank, contemporary Christians should, on the contrary, become more attentive to the many virtues encouraged by liberal orders. In particular, the possibilities for personal commitment and validation implied by individualism should be tentatively supported by contemporary Christians. In organic communities, the whole is always greater than the part, meaning that one’s life and identity are always heavily circumscribed by multiple canons of custom, culture and occupation. In such a setting Christianity is easy to domesticate. By identifying the life and practice of the Church with the priorities of the surrounding culture, the followers of Christ can effortlessly become captives of social convention. The Western Christian habit of valorising the nuclear family is an excellent case in point. While contemporary believers (both Catholic and Protestant) are encouraged to revere and protect this institution, Jesus calls us to ‘hate father and mother’ (Luke 14:26) and to let ‘the dead bury the dead’ (Luke 9:60). Such thorny injunctions should alert us to the fact that Christianity requires more than the sanctification of our personal or cultural affiliations. It is through such a realisation that we come to discern the theological value of certain kinds of liberal individualism. At the centre of liberal calls for personal autonomy is frequently the claim that we are more than our social role. Through the lens of both the market and democratic politics, we become constituted as separate conscious agents confronted with a stream of perpetual choices. Whatever else we may be in society (a teacher, a son, a daughter, a friend) no one identity can ever be entirely comprehensive, since the attendant plurality of liberal ideals and institutions always offers us alternative identities. As Charles Mathewes puts it:

Liberal democratic societies affirm that a person’s identity is not exhausted by the ascription “citizen”; the recognition of the individuals’ inviolable core, captured in the notion of “privacy” always allows the individual to be more than their civic role … And because this notion of privacy is detached from any form of communal - political, social, ethnic, religious, what have you - it also secures individuals against the latent totalising tendency of any association or identity they possess. ⁴⁹

In such a fluid context, it is difficult for any idolatrous identification of Christianity with community to be sustained. In the liberal market-place of ideas, Christian identity can only be driven by wakeful acts of will. True, such voluntarism makes Christian commitment more fragile and open to challenge. Yet, it renders those who do choose the Christian life all the more engaged and self-critical.

How, then, should contemporary Christians respond to such affirming possibilities? Chiefly, Christians need to acknowledge that some forms of individualism assist the Church in declaring its message. Like the pseudo-personalities of Quaker polemic, individualistic societies are not lost causes, but are potential sources for persons in the making. All that is needed is the possibility of hearing God’s call. While it is easy to dismiss a pluralistic culture of consumers as atomistic or anti-social, we should acknowledge that the fluid identity of the liberal individual (dispersed as it is among multiple projects and sympathies) is less prone to the allure of cultural conformity. While admitting the existence of such benefit represents a decisive challenge to a cluster of current theological prejudices, the furtherance of generous dialogue is essential if the Church is to avoid the limits of cultural isolationism. By treating the Church as the only beacon of light in a disordered culture, Milbank is in danger of succumbing to what Timothy Gorringe has termed the Zealot and Essene options: an ecclesial vision which relies upon the notion of a small group of the saved. ⁵⁰ In place of a Church which is able to speak of the Spirit of Christ at work in culture (including individualistic culture), the communitarian ecclesia turns radically inward, anxious that the peace of Christ may be disturbed by the unruly influence of liberal norms. Yet in this act of retreat, the Church becomes as it were its own prisoner: unable to concede the existence of hidden dimensions of grace which might be found beyond its influence. Thus, a core task in retrieving an affirmative reading of individualism is to recover a more generous, more open-handed understanding of the Church.

Concluding Remarks: Rediscovering Teleological Individualism

This article has undertaken a close dialogue with early Quaker theology with the aim of analysing the terms ‘individual’ and ‘person’ with greater theological clarity. While much of contemporary theological discourse is engaged in a highly anti-individualist turn, our discussion has pointed to the ways in which Quaker religious experience offers an alternative perspective on the thorny problem of individualism. While Milbank and McFadyen insist that there can be no coexistence between notions of individuality and the Christian life, early Friends exemplify the possibility of social persons who are also individuals. Placing this insight into dialogue with contemporary culture, we come to see that the Church must resist the temptation to romanticise community to the detriment of forming conscientious disciples. In an effort to move beyond such an uncritical distance, Quaker theology encourages the Church to discover an affirmative understanding of liberal modernity which is sensitive to the virtues of personal autonomy. Through such affirmation, new possibilities abound, especially in the field of proclamation. By longing for self-expression, liberal citizens have the opportunity to hear and practise the Gospel anew, free from a false communitarianism which insists that society is the ‘voice of God’. The separateness and independence of such citizens is their greatest defence against unthinking reflexivity or spiritual drowsiness. In the generous fluidity of a world after Christendom, believers can pursue a diligent faith which does not rest upon the authority of a single human community.