Editing Celtic Christianity (section)

== Developing image of Celtic Christianity ==
Corning writes that scholars have identified three major strands of thought that have influenced the popular conceptions of Celtic Christianity:

* The first arose in the [[English Reformation]], when the [[Church of England]] declared itself separate from papal authority. [[Protestant]] writers of this time popularised the idea of an indigenous British Christianity that opposed the foreign "Roman" church and was purer (and [[proto-Protestant]]) in thought. The English church, they claimed, was not forming a new institution, but casting off the shackles of Rome and returning to its true roots as the indigenous national church of Britain.<ref>{{harvnb|Corning|2006|p= 2}}</ref>
*  The [[Romanticism|Romantic movement]] of the 18th century, in particular Romantic notions of the [[noble savage]] and the intrinsic qualities of the "Celtic race", further influenced ideas about Celtic Christianity. Romantics idealised the Celts as a primitive, bucolic people who were far more poetic, spiritual, and freer of [[rationalism]] than their neighbours. The Celts were seen as having an inner spiritual nature that shone through even after their form of Christianity had been destroyed by the authoritarian and rational Rome.<ref>{{harvnb|Corning|2006|pp= 2–3}}</ref>
* In the 20th and 21st centuries, ideas about "Celtic Christians" combined with appeals by certain modern churches, [[Modern Paganism|modern pagan]] groups, and [[New Age]] groups seeking to recover something of ancient spirituality that they believe is missing from the modern world. For these groups, Celtic Christianity becomes a cipher for whatever is lost in the modern religious experience. Corning notes that these notions say more about modern desires than about the reality of Christianity in the Early Middle Ages.<ref>{{harvnb|Corning|2006|p= 3}}</ref>

Some associate the early Christians of Celtic-speaking [[Galatia]] (purportedly recipients of [[Paul the Apostle|Paul]]'s [[Epistle to the Galatians]]) with later Christians of north-western Europe's [[Celtic fringe]].<ref>
{{cite book
| last1 = Boyle
| first1 = Elizabeth
| chapter = Writing Medieval Irish History in the Nineteenth Century 
| editor1-last = Hill
| editor1-first = Jacqueline
| editor2-last = Lyons
| editor2-first = Mary Ann
| title = Representing Irish Religious Histories: Historiography, Ideology and Practice
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=a5XlDQAAQBAJ
| series = Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000
| location = Cham, Switzerland
| publisher = Springer
| date = 2017
| page = 72
| isbn = 9783319415314
| access-date = 4 February 2018
| quote = '[...] a Celtic Christianity, with its peculiar national faults and characteristics, finds place even in the New Testament. The Galatians, whose apostasy from pure Christianity has endowed the Church with St Paul's masterly defence of Christian freedom, were Celts [...]' There was a Celtic-speaking population in Galatia in the late centuries BC and perhaps into the early centuries AD, of which only fragmentary traces of the language survive in attested personal and place name evidence. However, the idea that the early Christian communities in Galatia shared certain 'national faults and characteristics' with the population of early medieval Ireland is entirely without foundation.
}}
</ref>