It’s very easy to find stuff on Celtic spirituality and Celtic Christianity that is ‘fluffy’. That is, it tells you more about the interests of the author or the collector of the materials than it does about the actual Celts. The truth of the matter is that we don’t really know a great deal of the kinds of details that would help us to work out just what was believed and done and why. Most writing on Celtic spirituality and Christianity relies a lot of inferences from pieces of evidence that could be interpreted in a number of ways. Often preconceived ideas or ideologies step in to fill gaps or to steer a judgement about likelihood. So it is that there are many ‘interpretations’ which are mutually contradictory and it becomes apparent that the use of ‘Celticity’ is often a way to give a sense of authority to various positions from the legitimacy of Anglican or Orthodox principles over and against Roman Catholic, to a defense of Pagan-Christian syncretism and all sorts of positions in between.
So here’s a kind of webliography for further reading.
This page, an article by Loren Wilkinson of Regent College, ‘Saving Celtic Spirituality‘, is helpful in giving a good historical background and a sense of what can and can’t be attributed to the Celts spiritually.
This article, entitled ‘Searching for a Western Early Church‘ is quite helpful in identifying how the idea of the ‘Celtic’ has been used in western culture for centuries and what are probably the big drivers in its usage now. While you should look at the website to get a feel for where the author is coming from, it’s useful. A particularly helpful summary statment from the article is this: “That so little (relatively) is known of Celtic Christianity, its traditions of prayer and spirituality, ensures that it is a fertile field within which all manner of interesting – if sometimes noxious – plants may be cultivated“.
For something that has more of a summary feel and a contemporary concern, the site Celtic Christianity is good in giving a more mainstream interpretation and a helpful feel for the kinds of things that contemporary Christians are finding or doing under the banner.
Quite interesting is the Celtic Prayer site which has some interesting ways in. It is from a reasonably orthodox catholic viewpoint and so the ‘take’ on the synod of Whitby is an important counterbalance to some of the more usual things said about Celtic Christianity.
The Community of Aidan and Hilda have a helpful brief set of slides of a timeline of principal Celtic saints, here.
And as for books, I’d recommend these.
Ian Bradley. Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams
Ian Bradley: Colonies of Heaven: Celtic Models for Today’s Church
DAvid Adam: The Edge of Glory: Prayers in the Celtic Tradition
Donald Meeks: The Quest for Celtic Christianity
Elizabeth Culling: What Is Celtic Christianity
Ray Simpson: Exploring Celtic Spirituality: Historic Roots for Our Future