Perhaps the twentieth-century's most persuasive defender of consciously and deliberately connecting with the past is G. K. Chesterton. In his 1908 classic work, Orthodoxy , Chesterton reflects a bit on what it means to grapple with tradition. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth.
But our culture has little respect or time for tradition, history or theology. Tradition and history are irrelevant, and theology is just another way to usher in judgment and intolerance. Dogmas and doctrines are boring at best, but more likely they reflect a cast of mind which does not advance a pluralistic, civil society. Creeds and definitions frighten us. Once again, Chesterton, in his 1905 work Heretics, offers a very different perspective.