A thoroughly admirable confession: Ian Bradley on some of the ways in which he misappropriated "Celtic Christianity"

". . . research by myself and others has made me realise that the original book was coloured too much by the naive zeal of the new convert and was overly romantic and simplistic in some of what it said both about particular themes and also about the uniqueness and particularity of Celtic Christianity.  I have also become more cautious about the use of this phrase and the concept that it denotes. . . .
". . . I am, for example, no longer inclined to view Celtic Christianity as either feminine—or eco-friendly, light on sin and judgement or particularly affirmative of the natural world and the intrinsic goodness of humanity.  I am much more conscious of the orthodoxy of the faith of the early Irish monks, their sense of human sinfulness and the importance of penitence and their belief in the awesome power as well as the presence of God.  I realize that, like others who wrote in those early heady days of the modern Celtic Christian revival, I was somewhat careless in conflating ancient and relatively modern sources and seeing them all as representing a single continuing entity.  I was also too ready to project my own dreams and prejudices into the mists of the far-distant past. . . .
". . . I have found my own very liberal Christian faith seriously challenged rather than reinforced and I have been made much more conscious of my own sin and frailty and of the themes of judgement and accountability.  This has been a much harder and more disturbing journey than the one which originally took me on to the Celtic way.  Maybe that is because I am older than when I first embarked on it but I think it is also because I have let the voices of the Celtic saints, their followers and chroniclers, speak to me more clearly and listened to them with less of a preconceived agenda about what I was hoping to hear from them.  If they have not quite turned this unrepentant old liberal into a conservative evangelical, they have certainly forced me [to] think much more seriously about subjects which are not naturally congenial to me. . . .
     "25 years on from The Celtic Way, this new book offers a more sober and measured appreciation of a significant tradition, perhaps one less exceptional and unique than I once thought, but nonetheless distinctive and important."

     Ian Bradley, Following the Celtic way:  a new assessment of Celtic Christianity (London:  Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2018), vii, ix-x, xi.  Cf. this.  Of the books he has published since The Celtic way first came out in 1993, Bradley cites especially Celtic Christianity:  making myths and dreaming dreams (1999) ("my most academic and deconstructionist work in this area") and Colonies of heaven =Celtic Christian communities:  live the tradition (2000).