It is a truism that Orthodox are traditional. But what do we mean by “tradition”? More specifically, how do we differentiate between “Holy Tradition” and tradition as mere habit or formalized custom? Orthodox believers frequently use the terms interchangeably, confusing the capital “t” variety with the lowercase “t” one, and all too often, this confusion is used to serve ideological ends. Just as, in a missionary context, an overzealous imposition of Christian “behaviors” and customs can often conceal a colonialist agenda, so an excessively narrow and reductionist view of tradition can serve reactionary, clericalist, or fundamentalist purposes.