Celtic Christianity

December 2025

The Celtic Christianity that the contemporary mind imagines is a whimsical one. The clovers, green shirts, riverdances, and quiet nature-focused spirituality of early Christians in the British Isles are attractive traits to western Christians and spiritualists tired of hyper-intellectual religion. However, according to Ian Bradley, British academic expert on the Celts, this is utterly incorrect. The aforementioned picture of Celtic Christianity is one projected onto the people of Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the “north” from over a century ago by Americans who have dreams and desires for the church in their own personal lives that are unfulfilled by their local congregations. Bradley asked a group of MA students what they were lacking from their churches at home, and their answers, like “wholeness and mystery” and “an intimate liaison between humanity and the totality of creation” most often matched the same students’ perception of the early Christian Celts. He asserts, “Ours is not the first generation to project back our dreams and desires for a purer, more primitive church and creed on to the Celts.” Bradley’s book Following the Celtic Way talks about what Celtic Christianity actually entails; his take gives us indispensable wisdom from the Celts about what it means to follow Jesus and dispels modern myths that would relabel the Christianity of this period as mere spirituality.

Were the Celts purely "spiritual"?

The geographical and linguistic classification of the “Celts” is disputed, with some scholars describing them as the iron age peoples of central and western Europe. In his turn, Bradley labels Celtic Christianity as “The Christianity of the Gaelic and Brythonic speaking population of the British Isles in the early mediaeval period.” The Celts themselves were not aware of this classification: it was a decision made in hindsight by global scholars. Within this overarching period of Celtic Christianity from 410-1066 AD, The “golden age” began with the arrival of Patrick around 432 and ended with the death of saint Aidan in 651. This mostly arbitrary golden age was primarily monastic. The sources that scholars use to get a sense of the core tenets of Christianity in Great Britain in this era are the ones created by the monks like St Columba including the Book of Kells, penitentials, and hagiographies. Folklore, which was compiled much later and might not be as reliable, also plays into scholars’ understanding of the era. Not many sources are strictly theological. One man named John Scotus Eriugena wrote commentaries on scripture (and the theology of Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite).

"The celts themselves were not aware of [their] classification."

Bradley finds many p-words (21, to be exact) to describe Celtic Theology. I’ve chosen to write about the ones that I found to be the most distinct features of the church in Ireland, England, and the north in that time period because of the ways that they might differ from the Roman and reformation traditions. Bradley’s art historical approach to this overall assessment of Celtic Christianity uses these surviving buildings, relics, writings, and the overall course of Celtic historical scholarship to make his arguments about what Christianity looked like in the 5th to 7th centuries.

One of the distinct “P”s in Bradley’s collection includes Poetry. Bradley writes, “The poetic quality of the prayers . . . suggests a faith conceived and expressed as much through the imagination as the intellect, in images rather than concepts” The Celts had a strong understanding of imagery, imagination, and symbolism that was evident in how they thought about their God. Bradley points out that one of the strongest examples of this comes from St Patrick’s alleged use of a three-leaf clover analogy to describe the trinity, rather than a technical extremely precise definition as given in the Roman church through the creeds. The reason for the focus on poetic language to describe the attributes of God might come from a distinct psalm-centeredness of the Celts that Bradley describes as “[Helping] to form and color the intense physicality of Celtic Christianity.” Some of the earliest and most prevalent documents surviving from the Golden Age include copies of the psalms.

" . . . a faith conceived as much in the imagination as in the intellect." -Ian Bradley

Perhaps this focus on poetry and natural symbolism, the move away from the cognitive and towards the imaginative, correlates strongly to a Celtic Christian’s understanding of Prophecy. Bradley emphasizes in another section of Following the Celtic Way that Columba, the Irish Abbot who founded the Iona monastery, spoke against kings and authorities in the northern regions of Europe in a manner similar to the Old Testament prophets. He also understood prophecy as a Spiritual gift to use for building up the body of Christ as described by Paul in Corinthians. Bradley quotes James Bruce’s words about Columba, “It is the Holy Spirit, the spirit of prophecy, that empowers and enables this prophetic activity.”

Another way that Bradley draws the theology of the Celts out of their architectural relics is by linking the scant exteriors of temporary church buildings and the nomadic nature of the Celtic monastic scene to the Provisionality of God and the impermanence of their earthly dwellings. The monks in this era often erected wooden buildings and crosses around monastic sites and gravestones rather than more permanent structures of stone. Some houses were made of Wattle and Daub (low longevity) and Bradley writes that the bread for the offerings was eaten relatively quickly, rather than left for a long time on the altar. He says, “Looking back, they felt much closer to the divine presence throughout this period of wandering than when they later settled in the promised land and built a massive stone temple to house the holy of holies.” In other words, maybe the way that monks wandered from place to place and monastery to monastery gave them a better sense of the gift and goodness of God than an earthly memorial of stone and gold could offer them. They had a sense that God would be with them even in the hardest of journeys that strengthened their faith and allowed them to evangelize far beyond the reaches of their “home” monastery.

Scant buildings  = Provisionality of God?

In fact, this assurance of presence that these Christians had is evident in so many of their written prayers, petitions, and hymns. The man who wrote the most explicitly theological language of the Celtic Christian era, John Scotus Eurigena, wrote, “God is all things everywhere, and wholly in the whole, the maker and the made, and the Seer and the seen . . . he is everything that truly is.” This immanent nearness of God through creation was felt intimately by Eriugena and Christians in his lifetime. Patrick’s famous breastplate prayer talks about God’s presence in these words: “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ Behind me, Christ within me . . .” The Irish hymn Be Thou My Vision has lines like “I ever with thee and Thou with me, Lord.” These poems are also an example of the aforementioned emphasis on poetic emotional connection with the divine.

This representation of Celtic Christianity that Bradley gives us through the poetry of the Celts, their architecture, their limited theological writings, and their emphasis on perfection through monastic penitentials is NOT indisputable. There are several sources that he is trying to combat that have a different picture of Celtic Christianity: namely, that the spirituality of the pagan religions in Ireland before the arrival of Christianity melded into the Christianity present in these findings (writings, buildings, tales) and that their art reflects that. The combination of Christian and pagan symbolism is true to some extent, but some scholars and modern neo-paganist thinkers do not give a totally honest assessment to the art historical record and intend to portray the Celts in this era as simply “spiritual” (hence the common modern phrase “Celtic Spirituality” to replace “Celtic Christianity”). Kubilay Geçikli holds that there are pantheist themes in Celtic Christianity that stem from an effort to find God in nature. He asserts, “Celtic spiritualism invites people to feel united with the creator by making them think about those created.” Additionally, portions of John Scotus Eriugena’s commentary on the Gospel of St John indicate a potential pantheism that is tempting to emulate. The Pope actually banned several of Eriugena’s books in 1225 based on an alleged Emanationist theology that describes creation as emerging from God, rather than nothing, thus allowing God the Father to be visibly seen in the world. An excerpt reads, “God and the creature are not two things distinct from one another, but one and the same.”

One reason why the pantheism argument is compelling is because the Celtic Christians were very focused on the elements of nature as necessitating God’s divine protection and reflecting his power. However, Bradley (and myself) do not think of Eriugena’s Christianity as representative of the whole body of Christ in that region. It is quite possible that his overstatement of the real, indwelling presence of Christ in Periphyseon is also an application of the aforementioned focus on poetry that the Celts held so dearly. Maybe Eriugena’s statements are not supposed to be a precisely-worded creed discussing the literal location of Christ in the World, but an emotional outpouring of the truth of Jesus’ nearness. What is in fact indisputably widespread is the emphasis on the reality of a spiritual world and the nonduality of its relationship with the physical. The emphasis on perfection is also redeemed, in a way, by the absolute humility of the monks who practiced this highly physical devotional form of following Christ, and did not necessarily impose the same standards on new believers.

Perhaps Eriugena's statements are not pantheist, but "an emotional outpouring of the truth of Jesus' nearness."

My understanding of this era of Christianity in the British Isles parallels Bradley’s to a large extent. I believe that the Celts’ emphasis on spiritual giftings like prophecy and psalmlike reflection is a healthy reflection of the way that the spirit works in the church. Additionally, issues in the contemporary church created by the conflicting values of institutional Christianity and anti-institutional Christian skeptics could be solved by a Celtic pilgrimage-centered view of life. In a 1935 letter from prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “The renewal of the church will come from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.” Personal friends of mine have left the church due to a skepticism about the legitimacy of imperfect pastors and a longing to follow the “real” Jesus apart from the ties of any man-made religious practices. Could this new monasticism be the future of the church in a society that values real, emotional devotion towards their creator? Similarly, I believe that the Celt’s secure knowledge of provisionality offers a solution to the issue of church architecture and style in a modern age that focuses on creating a pragmatic, multipurpose space in a church building.

Could Bonhoeffer's "New Monasticism" meet the need for emotional devotion to God?

Why should Bradley’s assessment of Celtic Christianity matter to us? The projections of a whimsical Celtic Spirituality onto the Celts in the golden age can seem harmless and inconsequential to strong-willed protestants in the 21st century who believe their denominational stance is infallible. However, the existence of an early monastic Christianity that emerged separately from the Roman church has big implications. If the papacy that dominated the development of the Christian tradition in an era parallel to the Celtic age did not have the chance to intellectualize the gospel in the British Isles, the core of the gospel had the chance to flourish in another, more poetic and purely Christocentric way. For many American Christians, the Christianity of this geographical region brings a sort of ancestral heritage with it as well. The creeds of the early Roman church are essential; what if we supplemented their intellectual wisdom with physiological and emotional responses to God’s truth in the world? I believe that the complete devotion to God that the Celtic Christians displayed through their poetry, selfless lifestyle, and focus on the goodness of creation is an undeniably beautiful way to follow Jesus. We would be fools to ignore it.