I don't know about "the west", but I can give my own (Swedish) perspective on authenticity and age: The church in my village is quite new, about 150 years old. But it's built on the site of a much older church. The new church has a large bowl of carved limestone that where preserved from the old church. It's about 900 years old and is used for babtisms. Touching that old bowl gives me a tremendous sense of perspective, a feeling of belonging to a continium of people that has loved this place. The item itself is the important thing. I don't care that they have performed babtisms here for 900 years. The ritual is not important to me and I don't belive in that stuff anyway. I suppose it comes down to a cultural sense of whats real. To me, rituals and traditions are flimsy constructs. The new church is just like any other new building. But the material thing, the limestone bowl, thats real.