Heathen Christianity or Celtic?

Heathen has been used to demonize us for who we’ve loved, the hierarchies we challenged, the abusers we’ve named, and the sources of inspiration we’ve found. We reclaim it in defiant celebration, blunting its sting when weaponized.

Celtic Christian traditions shape us. The triquetra is part of our logo. Brigid is our patron. Modern Celtic Christian writers helped us find healing within Christianity. The songs, prayers, and stories we have been taught echo in our hearts. We are grateful.

There has been too much rupture in our inheritance for us to claim an unbroken Celtic Christian lineage. Those of us with Irish and Scottish ancestry identify with Celtic diasporas and wrestle with how our ancestors assimilated into dominant white culture in the United States. We feel the loss of languages, stories, and traditions; the distance from ancestral lands; and the absence of relationships with living communities. We lack the relationships through which to explore our questions about the tradition responsibly.

Within this rupture, we have found our way to the wild places—to the heath.

Here, we cherish the wisdom, inspiration, and succor we encounter. These wilds are not empty; they are alive with peoples, histories, resistance, and survival. Here we hear a resounding call to resist oppression.

As Christian Heathens, we do not claim to be reconstructing an ancestral tradition. We tend a living faith grounded in the Way of Jesus that dances with Celtic traditions, myth, dream, the divinities we encounter, and the places we inhabit. We ask where that faith calls us today, discerning it by its fruits of love, mercy, compassion, accountability, solidarity, and liberation.

We owe so much to Celtic traditions, and the faith we are practicing is Heathen Christianity.