Steven Cox has a convincing take on Christianity and Individualism

in his Mises.org article, The Individualist Code (and read the comments on the blog):

Jesus' disciple Paul is one of the greatest examples of New Testament individualism. No sociologist or political scientist could have predicted that a leading persecutor of Christianity would become its leading proponent — but that is what happened to Paul. In his letters, he constantly emphasizes the idea that God calls individuals for the work that is special to them. His letters to the Christian churches are never the memos of a bureaucrat, insisting that everyone should conform to the policy and procedures manual. They are the advice of an individual speaking to fellow-members of a voluntary community, fully acknowledging their individuality and addressing both their virtues and their vices in an inexhaustibly individual way (1 Corinthians 9:20-22).

Paul's model for church organization wasn't the one that anyone would expect to have "emerged" from his "social context." It wasn't the vast and intricate Roman bureaucracy, which dominated the political world of his time. No, it was the cooperative relationships that exist among the various parts of the human body (1 Corinthians 12). According to Paul, individuals have different roles and different challenges, and the principles of their association are those of a libertarian society: division of labor, voluntary exchange of values, spontaneous but intelligent order.

We may recall that on one occasion, and one occasion only, Jesus advised a wealthy would-be follower to give up all his possessions (Mark 10:17-22). That was a challenge for that particular individual. So far as we know, it was never posed to anyone else.

The drama of individual decisions is important throughout the New Testament. Christianity is presented, not as a set of social customs or a subject of legislation, but as a question for individuals to decide: Do you believe, or not? When Jesus' disciples ask him whether they should call fire down from heaven to punish a group of unbelievers, he reproves them sharply (Luke 9:52-56). When Paul encounters similar opposition, he says, in effect, "All right; I'll go preach somewhere else," and he proceeds to do so (Acts 19:8-10). Conversion, the central event in a Christian's life, is always an individual phenomenon.
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I'm not suggesting that the New Testament is a handbook of capitalist economics, or a guide to libertarian politics. Jesus said — contrary to the assumptions of all those religious people who have tried to use the government to put themselves in power — "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). Jesus was concerned with individual souls, not individual bank accounts.

Neither does the New Testament endorse the kind of modern "individualism" which assures us that people are just fine, no matter what they do, so long as they succeed in being "true to themselves." The great religions always challenge people to be better than they are. That challenge is essential to New Testament teaching. Yet the emphasis remains on individual choice, individual effort, individual freedom.

This is the not-so-hidden code of the New Testament. It's the code that Isabel Paterson, the great twentieth-century libertarian, had in mind when she said that modern ideas of freedom are dependent on "the axiom of liberty" embedded in Christian teaching. Paterson was not a Christian, but she had read the New Testament. She had decoded its meaning. Try it yourself.

Even Ayn Rand had to acknowledge her friend's (Paterson's) argument to that effect. Rand, of course, wasn't given to according any respect to any sort of "mysticism," including any established religion.