"Motivations for positing 'Celtic Christianity'"

Source

 "[2] A vision of 'Celtic Christianity' which was not so [1] determined by denominational politics was promulgated by the Breton scholar Ernest Renan, . . . in an essay published in 1854.  Renan, estranged from his Roman Catholic roots, held that 'to the Celts . . . Christianity did not come from Rome; they had their native clergy, their own particular usages, their faith at first hand.'  Furthermore,

The Church did not feel herself bound to be hard on the caprices of religious imagination, but gave fair scope to the instincts of the people, and from this liberty there resulted a cult perhaps the most mythological and the most analogous to the mysteries of antiquity to be found in the annals of Christianity.

Allowing for the nuances of of individual expression, Renan's conception has survived virtually unmodified down to the present day, and doubtless has a long future still before it:  the progress of scholarship has, however, rendered it increasingly unacceptable to most specialists.  For others, such a conception of 'Celtic Christianity' offers an alternative to aspects of actual Christian practice and belief with which they have become disenchanted, and draws added strength from deeply entrenched romantic ideas concerning the 'Celtic character' more generally."

     John Carey, with Thomas O'Loughlin, "Christianity, Celtic. §4. Motivations for positing 'Celtic Christianity," in Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia, ed. John T. Koch, 5 vols. (Santa Barbara:  ABC-CLIO, 2006), vol. 2, pp. 434-435.