I am sick of being placed in the category of “traditionalist”. Here are some examples, all from the same news article: “persecuting clergy who wanted to stick to a traditionalist line”; “distorting traditional Anglican beliefs”; “how much influence a powerful traditionalist lobby could have inside the Communion”. Tradition has nothing to do with it; the word has become the latest euphemism for “Christian”.
Here is a “traditionalist” Anglican church at worship.
As you can see, replete with Anglican tradition.
Why is it that when you are focusing on beliefs and the dangerous usage of ‘traditionalist’, you feel the urge to use such a picture? Surely you would understand that the fact that some of the people in that service feel the urge to raise their hands reflects very little on their theology or other services for that matter. I attend a VERY “traditionalist” church in Sydney and while the church retains the typical doctrines of the diocese, there are a few members to do raise their hands. You might like to challenge that term with other means.
1 James,
One of definitions of ‘traditionalist’ is ‘stubbornly conservative and narrow-minded’ and I think that is usually the intended meaning in most of the news articles; it a condescending term and I think it tends to imply Anglicans who cling to a particular form or style of worship – regardless of what they actually believe. You have heard the story of the vicar who wanted to move the piano from one side of the church to the other? In order to avoid complaints, he moved it 2 inches each week until it arrived at it’s final resting place; I think that is the caricature that ‘traditionalist’ conjures up.
The point I was attempting to make was that those of us who are unhappy with the liberal drift of the Anglican church are only ‘traditional’ in the sense that we still hold to orthodox Christianity as it has been understood for the last couple of millennia.
The point of the photo was to try and show that a church with orthodox believers won’t necessarily appear ‘traditionalist’ in the first sense above. I do realise that raised hands isn’t evidence of a genuine believer, but since this is a photo of my church and I know the people, I can affirm with reasonable certainty that they are Christians.
Also, of course, I wasn’t implying that true Christians have to worship in a particular style.