This piece was written about art, not religion, but I think there are many things that apply to the church.

"Indeed, I think that our own tendency in England to reverence, our constant appeal to classical standards, is an obstacle to our intellectual and artistic progress. We are like elderly writers who tend to repeat their own beloved mannerisms, and who contemn and decry the work of younger men, despairing of the future. A nation may reach a point, like an ancient and noble dynasty of princes, where it is over-shadowed and over-weighted, by its own past glories, and where it learns to depend upon prestige rather than upon vigor, to wrap itself in its own dignity. What I would rather see is an elasticity, a recklessness, a prodigal trying of experiments, a discontented underrating of past traditions, more than a meek acquiescence in their supremacy." 

Arthur Benson.