Rather than give offense to another member of the Christian community and thus bring deplorable dissension into the church, Paul suspended his right to eat that meat. The right of the individual was here subordinated to the welfare of the community, but it was a freely chosen abstinence in which his right was weighed against a more important responsibility.
The polities of protestant churches both reflect and influence the distinction between the priority of the individual and of the community with respect to right. Protestant communions are organized, administered, and maintained by quite diverse canons or polities, but all rest upon one of two general concepts of the church’s nature. The first gives priority to the whole organically structured communion or denomination because it believes the church to be the given social entity – the Body of Christ or Household of god- into which persons are brought. By baptism, usually as an infant, and subsequent confirmation one is made a church member. The identity of individual member is neither dissolved nor lost in the organic community, however. Like “living stones” they become part of the church’s fabric. As in all serious versions of ecclesiology, the member’s personal standing is presumed to be enhanced by belonging to this earthly historical from of Christ’s existence, the body. Communions so characterized usually have an episcopal or Presbyterian order.
The second concept of the church is that of the free, voluntary association of believers. Here, Christian individual come together and are gathered in the fellowship of faith, worship communal life, and mission. As with the organic concept, personal individuality is enhanced by this life in community, but the main difference lies in the sense of priority. “Do not the believers precede the organization of the church?” they ask. The church is not simple there, awaiting the individual (at least in theological thought) precedes, and the polity is usually congregational. During four centuries it has been the type of ecclesiological of human right. Such churches are often, but unclearly, called “free churches.” This is unclear because in the united states they are not “free” as opposed to “established,” but “free” in their congregational voluntarism. Where such Protestant communities have thrived in Western Europe, Great Britain, and individual person over against the right of society.
It may be reasonably argued, and should be note, that other influences apart from religion in general or Protestantism in particular have also accounted for the primacy of the individual’s right in these countries. Philosophical ideas about individual liberty have emanated from the Renaissance in Europe, the Enlightenment in Britain and America, the nineteenth century. While these philosophies have been in some serious ways inimical to Christian faith and the churches, they have, nevertheless, been congenial to the protestant theology which up hold the right and autonomy od each person prior to society’s right. Thus it is easy to see why secular movements for civil right and justice have found more willing cooperation by certain Protestant than by others. Or by the Orthodox and Roman Catholics.