Tradition Matters (As Long as It’s the Right Tradition)

Tuesday, November 3, 2026, Robin G. Jordan

On the internet you’ll find dozens of social media websites and social media pages claiming to represent the Anglican tradition and to promote the traditional Anglican church and its way of being church. Upon close examination the claims are typically one individual or group’s interpretation of a particularly congenial period in Anglican Church history from that individual or group’s perspective, based upon a selective reading of the literature or even AI slop, reflecting the individual or group’s biases and leanings, rather than painstaking research. Rather than being an accurate presentation of Anglican beliefs and practices it has the earmarks of being propaganda intended to sway the unsuspecting reader or viewer’s opinion, particularly that of the reader or viewer who is not going to go to the trouble of checking the facts, and to reinforce the opinion of those who are already influenced by the individual or group’s interpretation of all things Anglican or who otherwise share their view.  Just as those exploring Christianity are bombarded by a mass of contradictory information about the Christian faith so do those inquiring into what the late Peter Toon dubbed the Anglican Way have a tremendous amount of conflicting information about Anglicanism directed at them.

As defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner Dictionary & Thesaurus, tradition is “a belief, principle, or way of acting that people in a particular society or group have continued to follow for a long time, or all of these beliefs, etc. in a particular society or group.”  According to the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, tradition is “a way of behaving or a belief that has been established for a long time, or the practice of following behavior and beliefs that have been so established.”

Here’s the rub. The fact that a tradition has been established for a long time and people have followed it for a long time does not make the tradition right, proper or good. Nor does the fact that a particular tradition may be widely followed. Like bad habits, bad traditions form quickly but are extremely difficult to eradicate.

Once a tradition is established people will treat it as sacrosanct, too important or too special to be changed, and therefore untouchable even though the tradition was formed under circumstances which raise serious questions about the appropriateness of the tradition in a current situation.  

An example is the split or divided chancel in which the choir stalls face each other across a central aisle in the chancel. This arrangement can be traced to the monastic church of the early medieval period. In the monastic church of that period the congregation was the monks of the monastery in which the church was located. The church was a single room with an altar at its eastern end at which a priest celebrated Mass. and stalls on the north and south sides of the room which the monks occupied to sing the Daily Offices. 

The nave began its life as barn built against the west wall of the church. In inclement weather the pious who came to hear the monks sing the Daily Offices were allowed to shelter in this barn. Later on, this combination of a barn and a church evolved into the two room church with a rood screen separating the nave from the chancel. 

In this period the people were merely spectators at the Mass. The nave of the two room church was used for a variety of purposes on Sundays and weekdays such as mystery, miracle, and moral plays, ales, markets, and other community activities as well as served as the room in which the people could await what was for them the highpoint of the Mass, the elevation and showing of the consecrated host for their adoration. While they were awaiting this highpoint, they quietly chatted or dozed. The more pious recited the rosary. The Mass was not a public service of worship in which the people were participants. It was closer to a magic ritual which the priest performed on the behalf of the people. 

Only in cathedrals and churches attached to monasteries was singing heard and it was not congregational.  Psalms, canticles, and other sacred music were sung by professional choristers and monks. Elaborate polyphonic settings were used.

Congregational singing was not restored until the English Reformation during the reign of Elizabeth I. In parish churches it took the form of the singing of metrical versions of the Psalms, other texts from the Bible, and texts from The Book of Common Prayer. In the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth century wooden galleries were constructed at the west end of parish churches and from these galleries the village quire, a small ensemble of local musicians and singers, would lead and support the congregational singing and perform special music like anthems.

In the nineteenth century, Victorian clergy influenced by the Oxford Movement and obsessed with the worship practices, clergy and church ornaments and church architecture of the late Middle Ages removed the west galleries and disbanded the village quires. They replaced the west gallery with the split chancel, erected rood screens between the nave and chancel, and replaced the village quires with vested boys’ choirs and reed organs. They also reintroduced the non-communicating Mass. In their zeal to remake English parish churches fit their idealized image of a late Medieval church, they severely damaged and even destroyed genuine Medieval architecture.

Organs had not been common in English parish churches before this time. They were typically found in cathedrals and collegiate chapels. In a chancel, behind a rood screen, facing each across a central aisle is not the best location for a choir to lead and support congregational singing. In 1920 in The Art of Public Worship Percy Dearmer lamented the decline of congregational singing in English parish churches and the poor quality of organ playing and organ music. He called for a moratorium on the use of organs in the worship of English parish churches and their replacement by the piano.

In the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century a number of churches were constructed based on the Victorian idealization of the form of a church. Churches considering following in their footsteps have discovered that building such an edifice costs far more than building a more modest, more functional building.

Congregations that inherited one of these edifices have found the building expensive to maintain, expensive to cool in summer, and expensive to heat in the winter.

Investing in a building that will stand empty except for Sundays is not a wise stewardship of a congregation’s resources. One congregation to my knowledge bought a Gothic revival church believing that the building would help it grow only to go bankrupt and to lose the building.

When someone speaks glowingly about the traditional Anglican church and its way of being church, my initial reaction is to ask them to be more specific. The boundaries of Anglican comprehensiveness set by the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571 do not make room for every school of churchmanship that identifies itself as “Anglican.” Arguing that something is traditional does not make it permissible if it falls outside these boundaries. The Anglican Church is not as Bishop J. C. Ryle so aptly put it “a kind of Noah's Ark, within which every kind of opinion and creed shall dwell safely and undisturbed, and the only terms of communion shall be willingness to come inside and let your neighbour alone.”

Tradition has a place in the Anglican Church, but it does not outweigh everything else. Traditions are not God-given laws engraved on stone tablets. While the Articles of Religion makes a distinction between ceremonies and traditions, ceremonies are essentially traditions. Traditions, on the other hand, encompasses beliefs and principles as well as ways of acting. Article XXXIV does not require that ceremonies and traditions must be found in the Holy Scripture, only that they must not be ordained against the Word of God or repugnant to the Word of God. This does not mean that they must be expressly forbidden in Bible, but it does mean that they cannot be at odds with what is practiced or taught in the Bible.

What Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote in his essay, “Of Ceremonies, Why some be abolished, and some retained,” may be applied to traditions. Let’s take a look at how it does.

In his essay Cranmer briefly explains two different ways ceremonies originated in the Church. Traditions originated in the same way as did ceremonies. Cranmer goes on to summarize criteria for omitting some ceremonies and keeping others. Ceremonies that are unprofitable, blind the people, and obscure the glory of God should be “cut away and clear rejected” while those which were first devised for good order and which edify the people and strengthen their faith should be preserved. In determine which traditions to abandon and which traditions to retain the same criteria may be applied. 

Acknowledging the divisions over ceremonies in his time, which are not unlike those over traditions in our time, Cranmer further explains his rationale for abolishing some ceremonies and for retaining others. He sets out a number of principles which merit our attention as they are applicable to traditions as well as to ceremonies.

Whatever the traditions we follow should not be allowed to become too many in number so that they become burdensome to us. We should not let our traditions weigh us down  as the traditions of the Jews weighed them down in the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry and become a heavy burden like the one the Pharisees and the teachers of the religious law laid on the shoulders of the Jewish people and refused to lighten. 

We should be intolerant not only of too many traditions but also of those that are obscure and unedifying, even fanciful or invented. Rather we should content with such traditions as do serve decent order and godly discipline and are edifying, traditions that do not encourage blind superstition or which can be exploited for gain or some other advantage. 

The meaning and use of the traditions that we follow should be easily understandable to everyone and should not require a lengthy and complicated explanation. 

The old should not be discarded simply for its antiquity but may be retained where it may be well used.

 Traditions may be changed or altered when circumstances require their change or alteration just as they may be set aside. They are “not to be esteemed equal with God's Law.” 

Traditions may vary from country to country and consequently we are not under any obligations to follow the traditions of another country. The implication is that an Anglican church in one province or ecclesial jurisdiction has no obligation to follow the traditions of another province or ecclesial jurisdiction, much less those of another denomination. 

While Cranmer does not address this issue in his essay, it does bring to mind an ongoing problem in US and other Anglican churches and jurisdictions, that of indiscriminately borrowing traditions from the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Churches, and other religions.  In evaluating a tradition, I would add a third criterion to Cranmer’s two for the retention of a ceremony, a criterion which likes his is taken from Scripture. Does this tradition advance the cause of the gospel and serve the mission of the Church? Our Lord entrusted to his disciples, to future generations of his disciples, and to ourselves the task of spreading the good news about him to the far corners of the earth. and making disciples of all people groups, baptizing them in the name of the Triune God, and teaching them what he commanded. Do the traditions we are following help us accomplish this task?  Or are they encouraging us to do something else in its place? Have they and their perpetuation become a replacement for the task our Lord has entrusted to us?

In future articles I plan to delve more deeply into the place of tradition in the Anglican Church, into specific traditions, and into what may be described as the “traditional” Anglican church, and the challenges it faces in the twenty-first century.