I think the distinction between renewal and tradition is similar to the one I'm drawing. "Renewal" means, in effect, being closer to nature worship, as in animism. God as a top-down ruler is humanistic civilization way of domesticating the wilderness with the imagination, to complement technology's physical transformation of nature. So this "hardening" of tradition is a falling away from the naivety of animism and into the more skeptical, self-serving, Luciferian outlook. We supplant pristine nature with our handiwork, and we do so in the name of our mascots (gods). That's how I'd put it anyway.