Yes, I am a Christian. I'm Roman Catholic. I know some Christians believe that Christianity necessarily entails individualism, but this is incorrect. As I've demonstrated, individualism is false, and none of the views I presented necessitated that I reject any of Christian doctrine.
You've demonstrated no such thing. Your argumentation is in ignorance of basic Christian doctrine at very basic levels:
1) The individual cannot exist without society.
This is a "well, duh" objection on the face of it, but it's surprising how many individualists do not consider it. People are born weak and dependent on their parents for survival. From then on, they are dependent on other people in the society to flourish as human beings. Even if they decide to leave this society and live by themselves in the jungle, Robinson Crusoe-style, they will still be forever colored by the society that left them.
Okay, the individualist says, but human beings are more than just their social classes though. Sure, but to what extent? Human beings are thrown into this world colored by various social orders (ethnicity, sex, class, culture, family, etc.) that they do not consent to. Their identities are only made intelligible by participating in these social orders. The individual devoid of these social orders is a mere abstraction. In the words of reactionary philosopher Julius Evola, to place value on the individual over their social orders "is the same as regarding as paramount the bronze found in many statues, rather than seeing each one as the expression of distinct ideas, to which bronze (in our case, the generic human quality) has supplied the working matter (Men Among the Ruins, p. 135). So not only can people not exist without previous societies, not only are people forever colored by the societies they inhabit, their very identities are unintelligible without the societies in question.
This is wrong. The identity of a person is, first and foremost, defined by
their relationship with God.
My identity is
affected by my relationship with my family. It is
affected by my relationship with friends, church, government, and other human institutions.
It is
defined by my relationship with God. I am a Beloved Child of God, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. Man is not an island, but I am not an island because of my relationship with
God not my relationship with other men.
Given this is your very first point, and it fails to cohere with Christian theology at the most basic level, the entirety of your argumentation thereafter collapses.
I still read the rest of your post anyways. The entire thing absolutely reeks of arguing against a strawman, and is like many other ideologies that decide they will define for themselves what their opposition believes, then 'prove' their own validity by cutting the legs out from under the strawman of the opposition they have created.
Don't get me wrong. Individualism can be taken too far, and there are some AnCaps and extreme libertarians out there who actually believe things not unlike the sort of Individualism that you have tried to argue against here.
This does not change the fact that your argumentation is just as shoddy and flawed as theirs is.
The healthy take on 'Rugged Individualism' which is upheld as a particularly (though not uniquely) American virtue, teaches something more like the following:
1. Every man's conscience is ultimately between him and God. Others can advise and council, but Jesus is the only intermediary between God and Man, and none can replace another's relationship with God or conscience.
2. It is the responsibility of every man to see to his own needs rather than be dependent upon others. When you are capable of (with God's help) standing on your own two feet, you are then able to help others to their feet.
3. It is right for every man to bear the consequences for his own actions, both good and ill. This does not mean charity is evil, but it does mean that a materilaly unsuccessful man has no ownership of the material success of another man's which he did not contribute to, and a successful man does not *owe* an unsuccessful man an equal share of his bounty.
4. Be generous and gracious to others as God is generous and gracious to us.
It is moral and right for the successful man to help the unsuccessful man learn to be successful. It is moral and right for the wealthy to give charity to those who are genuinely unfortunate. It is not moral to try to compel that of them through force.