We can indeed sympathize with those who are exhausted by the irreverent and shallow approach to worship in evangelicalism, often untethered from any historical ties to the ancient church. Yet deeply embedded in the worship of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism (amid the allure of crossings, chanting, kneelings, the veneration of icons and relics, and incense burning) is a problem that the Apostles directly condemned in the worship of God: idolatry. Some evangelicals may have lights and fog, but exchanging them for medieval smells and bells is no solution. It is here that Reformed worship offers a great solution to the temptation toward these things, not as something that originated at the time of the Reformation but as something recovered from the Apostolic tradition handed to us.

Christopher Gordon | “Rome, the East, and the Ancient Tradition of the Church” | Tabletalk | December 2025, 21 (HT: Inwoo Lee)

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Post authored by:

• Chris Gordon

  

  Chris Gordon was ordained to the Ministry of the Word in October 2004. He is a native of Central California, and prior to answering God’s call into the ministry, he was a high school Bible teacher in the central Californian valley. He earned his Master of Divinity degree from Westminster Seminary California. He previously served the Lynden United Reformed Church from 2004 to July 2012, and is presently Preaching Pastor at the Escondido United Reformed Church and is the radio host and teacher on Abounding Grace Radio.

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