‘Passing on the fire’

One generation thinks a tradition is fixed, but another comes along and thinks, well, maybe not. A Thought for the Day For BBC Radio 4. Listen here.

It was built in 1863 to accommodate a congregation of 930 Calvinist Methodists in the town of Pwlhelli in north Wales.

Capel Salem, was designed by Thomas Thomas, the national architect of Wales, but if you’re watching Channel Four’s absorbing makeover show — Our Welsh Chapel Dream — then you’ll know that the ministers vestry has now become a light-filled open-plan bedroom.

And the former Sunday School a huge living room. The kitchen is all red, the bathroom bible-black.

The Grade II listed Chapel is being redeveloped by TV potter Keith Brymer Jones and his actor partner Marj Hogarth and will include a studio and community hub.

Out with the dry rot and in with the underfloor heating. Out with the sunday service and in with the pottery workshop.

A small Welsh town no longer needs seating for 930 Calvinist Methodists. It doesn’t need any seats actually. It was closed a while ago.

It’s the end of a tradition. The chapel will house new rituals and practices. ‘You sometimes forget,’ says Marge, ‘As an adult you can do whatever you want.’

Not a sermon previously heard in this chapel.

Although religion may be the most enduring form of popular culture, no tradition has a free pass to the future. Every tradition must allow for its own succession.

Among the most striking images of the new Pope Leo is one, from earlier this year, where he is embraced by his predecessor, Pope Francis.

It was Francis who made him a Bishop in Peru and, two years ago, made him a cardinal. Of those electing the new Pope, eight in ten were chosen by Francis, carefully ensuring that whoever followed him… would also follow his path.

The story is about succession… or the story is over. And not only in religion.

In the recent Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown, the young folk singer regularly visits the bedside of a dying Woody Guthrie.

It is a folk music version of the laying on of hands, one generation passing the holy flame to another.

But sometimes the successor is seen to betray the tradition — as the film shows when Dylan goes electric and folk fans go apoplectic.

One generation thinks a tradition is fixed, but another comes along and thinks… well, maybe not.

Those who hold power, who regard themselves as keepers of the flame, may be insecure, even control freaks, but if they don’t make room for a new generation, their tradition is soon history.

We are said to ‘break with tradition’ or to ‘uphold tradition’ — but it’s not quite so binary.

Unless we refresh the tradition and give it new life, we let it die.

As a musical genius from an earlier age, Gustav Mahler, put it: ’Tradition is passing on the fire not worshipping the ashes.’