When Alexis de Toqueville wrote his groundbreaking work Democracy in America more than a hundred and seventy years ago, he saw voluntary associations as one of the most striking hallmarks of this country. There are thousands of associations across this great land, he declared, filled with people eager to make a difference in their respective communities.

Sadly, the same is no longer true today. According to sociologist Robert Bellah, the percentage of Americans willing to sacrifice their time and energy for the good of the whole is rapidly declining. Bellah points out that the trend started shortly after World War II, when a country that had pulled together and made countless sacrifices for the war began to relax. As people started to build better lives for themselves, their priorities became more individualistic. This “Me too” frame of mind eventually gave way to the hedonistic “Me ahead of everybody else,” which characterized the 1980s and 1990s, and some have argued that we are now exhibiting a “Me only” attitude, which does not wish to share anything with anybody. In other words, “What’s in it for me?” has become the dominant question for many Americans.

Organizations such as the local PTA and the Lions Club have seen their memberships erode over the past several decades. The Red Cross and United Way are currently struggling to maintain sufficient numbers of volunteers. Even Labor Unions have dropped by almost half since their peak in the 1950s. The only groups that seem to be growing are support groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs, which make minimal demands upon their members, and which are basically oriented to the needs of the individual. In fact, one reason given for the staggering success of mega-churches these days is that their very size protects members with a curtain of anonymity. People can belong to these congregations without ever being recruited for service.

I believe that the Church ought to be sounding a warning alarm about the inherent dangers of this trend. After all, Christianity is founded upon the life of One who is the very model of self-giving service and sacrificial love. Granted, we have not always lived up to our own message. We have catered to the individual, along with the rest of the culture. But the ideal is still there, shining as brightly as ever.

We must counter the almost universal greed and self-aggrandizement that now characterize modern existence, and remind people that it isn’t how many toys we collect in life that counts, or how high up the corporate ladder we climb, or how much celebrity we garner for our names. What truly counts is how many of Christ’s little ones we comfort and help … how devotedly we care for the lonely, the desperate, and the ill … and how faithfully we give ourselves to the task of establishing a better, fairer world for all of God’s children.