From Volume 7, Number 4, Spring 2001

What The Celts Have to Offer Christianity Today

Copyright 2001 by David Haggith

The story of Celtic Christianity springs largely from Patrick, one of Ireland's three patron saints, and the times of Ireland's patron saints bear surprising relevance to our own. North America and  Europe have, for the past decade, experienced an exuberant interest in all things Celtic as well as a return to the kind of earth-based religions that challenged Patrick and his disciples. Spiritual thirst is  drawing increasing numbers of people to the mystical practices of the Incas, the Mayans, the various Native American beliefs . . . and especially the Druids of Great Britain and Ireland. Celtic history is flowing  quickly from the past into our present. As New Age thinking draws people back to the Old-Age pagan well, Christians might do well to resurrect Patrick's answer to that thirst.

Within Patrick's lifetime almost all of Ireland converted from Druidism to Christianity. His life stands at the confluence of two great religious streams, the old and the new. Reminders of this  amazing encounter still exist today in the holy days that overlaid the new concepts of Christianity onto ancient Druid festivals. Easter, Halloween, and Christmas are all artifacts from the time when Christian  beliefs infused the ancient Druid rites of Spring, Autumn Equinox, and Winter Solstice. Perhaps a great part of the success of Celtic Christianity was due to Patrick's hardy embrace of the local culture to the  fullest extent that Christianity could accommodate. (One recent book on this topic is The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West... Again by George G. Hunter.)

Christianity entered Ireland in a distinctly Irish way and then flowed into Scotland. What was there in the mysterious Druidic religion that made Ireland so quick to convert? Were the Celts escaping a  darkness in their Druidic beliefs that is forgotten in today's romantic reinterpretation of Druidism, or had they simply found the full Light to which Druidism an early glimmer? Or maybe St. Patrick's success came  primarily from his methodology--converting the chieftains first so the rest of the people would follow their leader. When the earthy waters of the old pagan stream flowed into the new clear waters of Christianity,  the outflow remained Christian, but if you put your face to the stream and smell and drink, those tannic earthy flavors are still there.

For Americans, Celtic Christianity can also help move the Bible belt into the green belt. Environmental concerns have looming importance in today's society; yet, a sizeable portion of American  Protestants remain apathetic to such "worldly" concerns. Because Celtic Christianity grew on a pristine emerald isle in the ferment of a nature religion, it retained a soul-deep non-utilitarian  appreciation of the earth, whereas the long-civilized Roman Christianity around it rejected the natural world under the influence of Augustine. For Augustine, the material world was entirely fallen and more or less  represented sinful nature. Augustine wasn't the first to separate from the world. He followed the tradition of the dessert fathers in that respect, but he's the one who brought such thinking into the mainstream of  Christianity.

Though Patrick and his followers did not consider themselves in any way separate from the Roman Catholic Church, Ireland remained "beyond the pale" of Roman cultural influence throughout  Patrick's life (an expression that literally came from a wall of impaling poles called "the pale" that separated most of Ireland from Dublin, Rome's most remote outpost). The Celts continued to understand  nature as self-expression of the Divine, not as "carnal" in the pejorative sense. Thus, the Celtic saints provide a path back to a world view that is more appreciative of nature as God's gift, artistry,  and self-expression--a place where we have the assigned role of caretakers, not owners.

The Celtic saints expressed a vibrant appreciation of nature, a love of beauty and were unabashedly mystical. Their creative expression of Christianity may offer a spiritual path suitable to young  Americans and Europeans who yearn for something rooted in the earth--something that respects the earth and is aesthetic, yet intimately and boldly Christian. St. Patrick, himself, had a number of supernatural or  mystical encounters with God, according to his own hand-written Confession. These visions guided his life. Many of his monastic converts were also mystics. The Christianity that evolved around the Celts found a  mysticism that remained wholly true to creedal Christianity but was enrapt by the ecstasy of the mystery of God as he reveals himself through his creation and through direct communion with his creatures.

The arts are another area where Celtic Christianity can inform and enlighten segments of today's Church, bringing relief to those who express they've experienced no beauty within Evangelical churches.  Many Protestant denominations have trickled down from a time and place that viewed the arts as another worldly concern. Only half a century ago, some Protestant denominations did not even allow musical instruments  in their churches. A few still do not.

The Celts would have thought that the pit of silliness. Under Celtic Christianity, the arts flourished. An article in The Smithsonian (May 1993) gave the following quote: "'Early Christian  Ireland had a very impressive culture and played a leading role in the spread of Christianity and literacy in England and northern Europe,' according to John T. Koch, associate professor of Celtic languages and  literatures at Harvard." After Koch, another writer, Thomas Cahill, told in his hugely popular book how Celtic monks helped save Western works of art from the Barbarians. Although I think he overreached in his  thesis and wandered down a number of rabbit trails, in general he's right in exuberantly expressing the love of art that was a daily part of the lives of Celtic monks.

These monks valued all human knowledge, not just their own. In their concern to save pagan art, they swept through Europe just ahead of the Vandals and Barbarians, hoarding as many manuscripts as they  could scavenge. Because Ireland remained isolated from the Vandals, its monastic libraries survived. In later times, the deep-thinking monks of Ireland seeped back into Europe and disseminated their knowledge and  artifacts. A closer connection to these prolific literary, artistic, and musical monks may encourage segments of today's Evangelical Church to rediscover and embrace artistic expression as a form of worship of the  First Creator.

Finally, the times of Patrick and his disciples are relevant to our own millennial change. Patrick lived during the fall of the Roman Empire. Rome had just split into the Eastern and Western empires,  and now the Western empire was suffering the onslaughts of Attila the Hun. As the indivisible Rome broke apart and its pieces sifted down into the long night of the Dark Ages, the times surely had an  end-of-the-world feel. Undoubtedly, many saw Attila as being the Antichrist. If not Attila, then Alaric the Goth.

Patrick, himself, claims the end was surely near because he had taken the Gospel "to those parts [of the earth] beyond which nobody lives." He saw his own mystical experiences as a  fulfillment of end-time prophecies, which he quotes in his Confession: "And it shall come to pass, in the last days, saith the Lord, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughter  shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." Patrick's world was falling into madness and darkness and chaos that would last a millennium, yet Ireland entered its  golden age.

The appeal of Celtic Christianity is that it echoes from our past with a resonance that is sympathetic to modern yearnings and fears.

(This article provided by SOUL FOOD: The Online Bookstore for Thinking Christians at hungrysouls.seekbooks.com)