Church History Equations & American Denominationalism

I've begun reading Mark Noll's The Old Religion in the New World, and he gives four factors that have contributed to the American phenomenon of denominationalism.

1. Space across the Atlantic allowed for drift from the Old World and the massive space of the continent allowed for drift among religious bodies in the New World. Ecclesiastical territories were much harder to govern in the New World, and this led to greater diversity.
2. Race and ethnicity created diversity within Christian bodies as different European nations and African Americans mixed together in society. English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh intermingled in ways that they did not in Britain. English, French, Irish, German, Polish, Italian, Hispanic, and African Catholics have all intersected in the American Catholic Church. German and Scandinavian Lutherans the same way. Though they were victims of enslavement, African peoples have been a permanent part of the American experience from the beginning.
3. Pluralism in the cities and the nation as a whole, not necessarily in the rural parts, has led to schism, denominations, and ecclesiastical competition that is not known in Europe. This pluralism is primarily an extension of number two, and I think they could be considered as one factor for the sake of simplicity.
4. The Lack of Confessional Conservatism or ancient traditions of doctrine and practice made churches vulnerable to influences of democratic liberalism and innovation. George Parkin Grant noted that America is the only nation who has no traditions prior to the Age of Enlightenment and progress. Noll says that in America the only way for a church to be confessional is to be sectarian --

   "that is to actively oppose market-place reasoning; to refuse to abide by the democratic will of majorities; to insist upon higher authorities than the vox populi [voice of the people]; and to privilege ancestral, traditional, or hierarchical will over individual choice" (24).

   This has been difficult to maintain in the face of the American meta-narrative of personal choice, which proudly proclaims with an air of superiority: "I define myself by what I choose." We are Consumers, this is true.

But, when you think of it, personal choice doesn't play a very big role in the things that define us. We don't choose to be born or our parents, language, home, geography, government, country, and, baring suicide, how we die. In our early formative years we also don't choose our school and teachers, wallpaper, cuisine, church, clothes, and an infinite number of other influences. Thus, most of us live in de-nile, which, as we know, is not just a river in Egypt. We think we are individuals, but for all that, we are all individualistic Americans who Europeans think are all the same.

Fredrick Jackson Turner has also argued that since the frontier wasn't closed until the early twentieth century, rugged individualism has constantly been invoked by Americans as our defining characteristic. Thus I would add to Noll's equation:

space + pluralism - confessional conservatism + radical individualism = American denominationalism.

Now to apply. Doug Wilson has said that we need to repent of democracy. Have our democratic institutions led us to believe that we are masters of our destiny, the architects of our own lives? If so, we need to repent, don't we? Alexis DeToqueville, author of the classic Democracy in America, warned of the "tyranny of the Majority" and coined the term "individualism" after studying the American experiment firsthand. We need to repent, don't we? We need to bow the knee to Him as individual Christians, church members, and citizens who submit to him and the authorities he has put over us. Do I hear an Amen?