To jump in out of nowhere, I’ve been thinking lately about the whole idea of tradition. Part of it has to do with the fact that I just started reading Yves Congar’s The Meaning of Tradition. Yes, there is definitely an obvious connection there. But how did I ever get interested in the topic in the first place? I like to blame the Anglicans. (Something which I expect to do a lot of on this blog!)
I’ve always liked old stuff – history, museums, churches with stained glass windows, antique stores, the “olden days”. Granted, part of my fascination is likely a personality thing. But I think it’s related to my church upbringing too. Growing up in a Pentecostal church, we were more or less taught to view tradition in the church as a negative thing. Tradition is something that gets in the way of the Sprit’s freedom, something that competes with the Scriptures, something that leads to all sorts of extra-biblical excesses like buying people out of purgatory. And it can’t be backed up by the Bible, and if it’s not in the Bible, well then we want nothing to do with it. This sort of thinking is perfectly understandable to me now, as Pentecostals have Protestant values (the pope is the antichrist!) and were practically kicked out of mainline churches for speaking in tongues, definitely NOT part of most churches’ traditions at the time of the Azuza Street revival! Pope jokes aside, the reformation spirit is strong, along with a desire to return to the sources of the faith – the Bible – as the primary measure of doctrine and the life of faith. The desire to be like the early church of Pentecost is also strong. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be part of the action in Acts? And Pentecostals believe it’s truly possible for the Spirit to be just as much a part of our lives now as He was in Acts, and if that means tongues, well bring it on.
So much of the Pentecostal thinking about tradition has been shaped in a reactionary way. The discussion has remained largely polemical. It’s like we are still trying to defend ourselves against the RCC of Luther’s day, or those who freaked out on us a hundred years ago in Los Angeles and Toronto. Well I say, it’s time to move on people, and think about things in a new way. Because while we’ve been priding ourselves on the fact that we don’t let man-man traditions get in the way of the plain meaning of the Bible, something has been happening in our churches the last century. We’ve been developing our own … brace yourselves … traditions! (A comic strip gasp is perfectly appropriate here.)
Now, back to the Anglicans. I took my non-traditional self to an Anglican seminary in 2006, to gain a Master of Theological Studies degree and an ecumenical experience. (And many sleepless nights later, I got both!) One of the things I really enjoyed about being part of an Anglican community were the things like… stained glass windows, familiarity with the church fathers, memorizing the liturgical confession (why was the confession the easiest part to memorize? I’ll leave that to you to ponder), and just a general feeling that stuff we were doing went back a looooong way, and was somehow connected with saints and servants of the Christian past. I liked feeling like I was part of something bigger, something older, like I was engaged in actions that had been considered and contemplated for centuries. I liked being caught up in traditions that were bigger than myself. Ok, like I admitted earlier, perhaps some personalities are just more attracted to old stuff. Or perhaps these things were filling a void in my non-liturgical life. A very valid void that needed to be paid attention to. A void that had been experienced by others coming out of my (and similar) backgrounds, and had even driven some of them to jump ship and hoist the Anglican flag in surrender. And it all had something to do with tradition. Hmmnnn.
~lg
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