For more than a decade, I’ve been writing about expressive individualism—the outlook that says the purpose of life is to look inside yourself, discover who you really are, and then express that identity to the world.
Several years ago, Tim Keller told me that in New York City he was seeing the loneliness and loss of meaning produced by this way of life pushing people in a new direction. Many, he said, were beginning to look for identity, belonging, and purpose inside a group or tribe. He wondered whether the next phase of our culture would be a strange hybrid: expressive individualism blended with group-based identity politics.
I think Keller was right, and others are now noticing the shift.
Luke Burgis has suggested that while the 20th century was the century of the self, the 21st may be shaping up to be the century of the crowd. That’s a bit of an overstatement. The last century gave us mass movements that swallowed individuals into mass graves. Still, if you compare the last few decades of the 20th century in the West with the first quarter of the 21st, Burgis is pointing to something real. The emphasis has moved from finding yourself on your own to locating yourself within a group.
Alan Noble describes this shift not as “crowd culture” but as “mob identity.” He writes,
Whether it be Swifties, MAGA, anti-Woke Christian Twitter warriors, social justice warriors, LGBTQ+ identity groups, intellectual groups, geographic groups, theological groups, No Kings protesters, Christian Nationalists, Anti-Christian Nationalists—the list goes on. I’m not criticizing belonging to groups. Belonging provides a number of social benefits, and when your cause is just and good and beautiful, it is good to join with others in that cause. I’m merely pointing out the desperation to belong, to find your identity in some group.
More and more people are shaping their sense of self through powerful group affiliations rather than as independent individuals. This isn’t a rejection of expressive individualism so much as its evolution. The self is still in the driver’s seat in determining where identity will be based, but now it seeks authenticity and affirmation through belonging, conformity, and visible alignment with ideological, political, ethnic, or cultural tribes.
Social media accelerates this process by flattening complexity into “us versus them” and punishing disagreement within the group. The result is often mob-like behavior: swarming, scapegoating, and groupthink.
Why the Turn to Identity Politics?
Why has identity politics risen so quickly and with such intensity?
Mary Eberstadt offers a compelling explanation. In Primal Screams, she argues that questions of identity (“Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?”) press on younger generations because so many have grown up without stable sources of formation. For Eberstadt, the collapse of the family plays a central role in this shift, leaving many searching elsewhere for connection, stability, and meaning.
In that vacuum, ideological tribes step in to offer belonging, purpose, and solidarity. The result often looks less like ordinary political disagreement and more like religious fervor, complete with confessions, heresy-hunting, sacred texts, and forms of indoctrination.
I’m inclined to see the rise of identity politics less as a cause than as a symptom—an attempt to fill a deeper loss of meaning in our culture. When there’s no shared sense of purpose beyond the self, no larger story to give life direction, people naturally gravitate toward finding significance in group belonging. The crowd offers moral clarity, emotional fulfillment, and the reassurance that one’s life is tied to something important.
Freddie deBoer, a writer and media critic, traces some of the harsh energy of cancel culture to this same hunger for meaning:
I am convinced that the recent spasm of enraged but directionless moralism within our aspirational classes is connected to some greater lack of meaning. They live lives that are not the ones they imagined and they grind for goals they can’t define and don’t particularly want to achieve. They have grown up into a chaos of meaning and are compelled by communal decree to ironize all values and ridicule all sincerity. All they can cling to now is their desperate sense that everything is wrong and that someone, somewhere, must pay. What they never seem to grasp is that they are the ones they are most angry with, their own social culture the poisoned tree that bears the fruit that burns them inside.
Ironically, this intense moralism often shows up not among the poor and marginalized but among the educated and economically comfortable. As Musa al-Gharbi has argued, many of today’s fiercest identity-based conflicts function less as movements for justice and more as status competitions among elites who already hold cultural power. When material needs are largely met but deeper questions of meaning, purpose, and belonging go unanswered, moral fervor rushes in to fill the gap. What looks like compassion for the oppressed often masks a deeper struggle among the well-off to justify themselves, distinguish themselves, and be part of a cause that feels morally serious.
What This Means for the Church
So what does all this mean for the church?
In a culture desperate for belonging, churches will feel pressure to become religious expressions of whatever identity their members most strongly cling to. Visit multiple churches in different regions (or even in the same town) and you’ll notice that congregations often reflect differences of history, language, class, and culture. The danger today is that these ordinary distinctions might harden into defining markers, intensifying divisions rather than showcasing how the gospel transcends them. Just as individuals can elevate certain identity markers above their identity in Christ, so can churches.
For Christians, the church must be part of the answer both to expressive individualism and to its mob-identity remix. The church can push back against expressive individualism by re-forming us around a different center—not the self but God.
In a culture that tells us to “look in” and go it alone, the church insists faith is communal. We’re shaped by shared worship, shared confession, and shared hope. And as the family of God, the church strengthens households by giving parents, singles, children, and the elderly a shared identity rooted in grace. When families flourish, the church supports them. And when families fracture or fail, the church steps in, not as a substitute for God’s design but as a place of healing and stability for those left unmoored.
At the same time, the church can resist mob mentality by reminding us that belonging to Christ relativizes every other identity. Many of those identities don’t disappear, but they’re no longer ultimate. We’re defined not by tribal loyalties or ideological badges or ethnic origin but by the blood of Jesus.
Week after week, gathering together teaches us to look up before we look around or look within. Christ is our champion. And the primary enemies we face are not our neighbors but our own sin, the schemes of the Evil One, and the last enemy to be defeated—death. Through preaching, prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, we’re drawn into a family that both celebrates God’s work in us and redirects us when we wander.
This vision of the church also confronts the temptation toward performative justice: the urge to prove our righteousness through outrage, signaling, or alignment with the “right” causes. Freed from the need to justify ourselves, we’re finally able to love our neighbors not for the way they increase our status but as people made in God’s image. This kind of belonging resists shallow affirmation and unthinking conformity. It requires humility, patience, and love across real differences.
With a God-centered outlook, we come to realize we’re formed neither by turning inward nor by dissolving into the mob but by belonging together to Christ, for the glory of God and the good of the world.
If it’s true that this might become the century of the crowd, the world will need a church that’s more than a mirror of a mob.
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