A good example is the church concept of welfare. We are taught and practice individual self reliance, but then both contribute and take advantage of the combined efforts of the whole as the need requires.

Our current rituals seem to celebrate both our individuality and our place in a larger community.

Recall also that the restoration of the priesthood, though an institution based on authority and ritual, is described in terms that evoke self-reliance. According to Section 1, the priesthood was restored so that “that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh— But that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world.”

Also I think the developing of institutions isn’t there to remove self-reliance (which one must acknowledge is still pretty heavily stressed even to this day). Rather it is the idea that as we develop religiously we have to expand the circle of ’self.’ One can argue that ritual - especially the expanded theology of marriage - is part and parcel of this development.

As to tying this to Romanticism. Perhaps it’s Romanticism with an injection of John Donne? (grin)

Apart from _very_ conservative scholars the consensus on the Torah is that 1) Moses didn’t write it (the Torah also makes no claim that he did write it), 2) That it is an amalgam of at least two different sources which was later redacted together, and 3) That the source material and even the final redaction evolved over time and so the organization is most likely the product of an evolutionary process. Scholars argue over the details of all of this.