Kindle Notes & Highlights
In the last decade, evangelical Christianity has lost some public credibility, and atheism has now become almost as chic in Great Britain and the United States as in continental Europe.
The idea that ancient Celtic Christianity could reveal our way forward is not one of their conscious options for at least two reasons. First, they assume that no early medieval expression of Christianity could possibly be relevant to the challenges we now face. Second, they assume that the only useful stream of insight is, by definition, confined to Roman Christianity and its Reformation offshoots.
Beaver reports that "even in countries with a high culture, such as India and China, European missionaries stressed the 'civilizing' objective as much as their brethren in primitive regions because they regarded the local culture as degenerate and superstitious—a barrier to christianization."
From the second century on, however, historians report no organized missions to the "barbarian" peoples, such as the Celts, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Vandals, the Franks, the Frisians, the Huns, and the Vikings, who lived at the fringes of the Roman Empire.
Why did the Roman Church regard the Irish Celts as barbarians? What could have given them that idea? The Romans did not know the Irish people. Ireland was geographically isolated from the Roman Empire; Rome had never conquered or controlled Ireland, or even placed a Roman colony there.
A zoologist once informed me that a tiger will defeat a lion in battle, but five lions will defeat five tigers because the lions fight as a team and the tigers do not.
Very interesting thought about team work!
Each Celtic tribe was a formidable tiger in battle, greatly respected and feared. The Romans, with legendary strength in organization and coordination, were the lions in a lengthy series of battles against specific tribes to incrementally expand their empire.
Second, Irish Christianity was geographically beyond the reach of Rome's ability to shape and control, so a distinctively Celtic approach to doing church and living out the Christian life and witness emerged.
What was the difference between Eastern monasteries and Celtic monastic communities? Briefly, the Eastern monasteries organized to protest, and escape from, the materialism of the Roman world and the corruption of the Church; the Celtic monasteries organized to penetrate the pagan world and to extend the Church.
While the Roman branch of the Church had long stopped growing, the mission of the Celtic branch had rescued Western civilization and restored movemental Christianity in Europe.
The two wings of the Church came into focused conflict at the Synod of Whitby in 664, called by the regional King Oswiu.13 They clashed over two apparently superficial issues: (1) By their contrasting method of calculating the date for Easter, the Celtic churches were often celebrating Easter on a different date than Rome prescribed; and (2) the hairstyle of the Celtic priests and monks contrasted with the "tonsure" of Roman priests and monks.
They visited shrines in Rome, they observed how churches in Rome were doing church, and they sent their bishop to be consecrated in Rome. They stocked their libraries with books from Rome. They brought paintings and sacred relics from Rome. They built a "stone church in the Roman style."20 At one point, Benedict brought from Rome a choirmaster named John who "taught the monks at first hand how things were done in the churches in Rome."21
The rule had changed from "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" to "When you are anywhere, do as the Romans do!"
In other words, the Protestant Reformation left the control-from-Rome paradigm essentially unchallenged.
A third theme, weaving through the second, focuses on the role of frequent imaginative prayer in all the settings (in solitude, with the soul friend, in the small group, in the corporate life, and in ministry with believers and seekers) of life within the monastic community.
The fourth theme is the role of the monastic community's hospitality in ministry with seekers, visitors, refugees, and other guests.
The western culture could take some notes from this!
Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian, also believed that identification is the means through which advocates influence people.
Aristotle observed that people are much more likely to respond to a message if, in addition to understanding it, they experience the emotion that energizes an appropriate response.
