I also want to point to two possible components of a critical reconstruction of the trend towards personalized individuality in institutional arrangements:
the prophetic critique of self-referential narcissism and the constructive nar-rative of the serving nature of freedom-ensuring institutions.
Responsibly reducing and redirecting the coercive power of institutions has been amongst the key components of the concept of freedom-ensuring insti-tutions. In this view, institutions are not conceived to dominate arbitrarily, but to serve by ensuring the freedom of its constituency through basic civil or universal human rights. The vital significance of individual freedom guided by the concept of human dignity must be protected, if liberal democracies want to retain their fundamental characteristics. But in order to secure indi-vidual freedoms, there is a need for institutions underwriting these freedoms.
Disposing of freedom-ensuring institutions in the name of individual free-dom, therefore, is self-defeating.
An example for the self-defeating cause of dismantling institutions in the name of agency is the sphere of religion, which in the Western world has dis-played increasing individualization and personalized syncretisms since the nineteenth century, and particularly since the 1960s. Jürgen Habermas spe-aks of a new “awareness of what is missing”284 and Robert Wuthnow observes that “the breakdown of institutional support also means that spirituality at the personal level becomes precarious. Once carried by the rituals, activities, and conversations [in] the institution, it now has to be carried alone.” He quo-tes one of his interviewees: “My personal faith journey has always been pretty passive in the sense that it has been fed by the institution. And now that I no longer have the institution feeding it, it’s kind of splat on the ground, sitting there without any help.”285
284 Michael Reder and Josef Schmidt, eds., Ein Bewußtsein von dem, was fehlt. Eine Diskussi-on mit Jürgen Habermas (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008).
285 Wuthnow, After Heaven, 47.
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The lack of institutional support is amplified by the dark side of selfie tech-nology: The constant encounter of images of oneself through digital techno-logy does not just allow for creative expression, it also puts humans at risk of drifting into selfreferential narcissism and constant insecurity about the appropriately polished brand management of the self in social spaces. With reference to Eli Pariser’s The Filter Bubble Nicco Mele calls this filter-bub-ble-reinforced dynamic a “perverse kind of digital narcissism.”286 Roger Willemsen even sees a direct link between digital narcissim and forgery. He speaks of an “effort to become image-suitable and enter the world of for-gery, seizing the opportunity to refine the self into a doppelganger of one’s own person.”287Willemsen asks: “The selfie, the auto-erotic multiplication, the existence as a branch of one’s self — is this the future of the self?”288 For most of human history, individuals were dependent on others to determine their identity. Post-modern individualism and new means of personal expression now allow humans to live into the illusion that identity can be created th-rough self-referential deliberation. The pressure to find sources of identity and purpose is increasingly placed in the individual, and less in the collective.
This allows for diverse creativity, but also lonely despair.
One of the thinkers who has worked on the relevance of institutions in re-ligion is the progressive evangelical author Brian McLaren. Situated between a brand of religious liberalism that argues for individual rights and against organized religion, and a religious conservatism that honors the traditions of the longstanding institutional churches and advocates a strongly organized form of religion with strict communal discipline, Brian McLaren seeks to find new ways of reconciling the two by describing a form of dynamic stabilizati-on and a visistabilizati-on of cstabilizati-onstantly reforming institutistabilizati-ons: “in times of instability,
286 Mele, The End of Big, 131.
287 Roger Willemsen, Wer Wir Waren. Zukunftsrede (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2016), 23f. The German original: “In der Anstrengung, selbst bilderfähig zu werden und Eintritt in die Welt der Fälschungen zu erlangen, wählt [der Betrachter] die Möglichkeit, sich zum Double der eigenen Person zu veredeln.”
288 Ibid., 24. The German original: “Das Selfie, die autoerotische Vervielfältigung, die Filia-lexistenz - ist das die Zukunft des Ich?”
135 growing numbers of people are afraid that the institutions will fail. And here‘s
where a lot of people are surprised. I am a pro institution guy. I think institu-tions are tremendously important.”289
But the institutions McLaren has in mind are not self-sufficient. Institu-tions per sé are incomplete structures that can rarely renew themselves from within. Arguably, McLaren puts activist words to the idea behind the Böcken-förde-Diktum: “I just think institutions constantly need movements knocking at the door to challenge them to take the next step forward.” Applying this to the progressive Christian movement of the Emerging Church that McLaren helped build, he says: The Emerging Church movement “is not an anti insti-tutional movement, but a movement of people who want to try to articulate some next steps forward.” McLaren contends that “institutions really matter”
and pairs the definition of an institution with that of a movement. The inter-play of the two he calls a “yin and a yang.” McLaren’s definition of an institu-tion is: “an organizainstitu-tion that preserves the gains made by past movements.”
He pairs it with the definition of a movement: “an organization that arises to propose gains to current institutions.”290
As a form of dynamic stabilization, institutionalism can provide a perspec-tive beyond the individual without drifting into totalitarian control and po-wer play. By explicitly naming the institutional nature of social reality, it can sharpen our minds not just for the value of inclusive institutions, but also for abuse of power and ineffective workflows within institutions. The popular tech sector dictum of “putting user needs first” can renew our appreciation for the serving nature of institutions. Ecclesiologically, this can be described through both the Protestant paradigm of the priesthood of all believers and the Catholic paradigm of the universal Church as a servant of God and God’s people. Biblically, this can be grounded in the individual worth and dignity, theologically derived from the creation of all humans in God’s image. The-oretically, it can be explained as the constitution of institutions through the network of those it serves. And politically, it could be encouraged by renewed appreciation for participatory citizenship, and other institutionally guaran-teed forms of participation in public institutions.
289 Brian McLaren, “The Equation of Change,” On Being with Krista Tippett, March 13, 2014, accessed January 22, 2017, https://onbeing.org/programs/brian-mclaren-the-equati-on-of-change/.
290 Ibid.
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