Q. What is Celtic Christianity?
A. Celtic Christianity is the Christian faith that was taken to the Celtic People. It is built upon the four pillars of love, forgiveness, humility and mercy, which are all things our Lord taught. Celtic Christianity is marked by the belief that in the deepest part of us can be found the image of God, who created us and breathed life into us. Celtic Christians refuse to define themselves by the ugliness of their failings, but choose rather to define themselves by the beauty of their origins. We believe that deeper than any wrong in us is the light of God, the light that no darkness has ever been able to overcome. We believe Christ came into the world to redeem us and to make our light shine bright again, not to condemn us. Celtic Christianity is something that can’t be learned, it must be lived. It is lived through constant communication with God during each day.
Q. How is this different from other mainline denominations?
A. The church began to change after the Council of Nicea when it began absorbing non Christian tenets and practices. Our church is an expression of the pre-Nicean faith that was given to the Apostles by our Savior. Because we come from the Johannine Branch of Christianity, as opposed to the Pauline Branch that Rome and the Protestant Churches came from, we have kept the traditions of the early church including some Jewish practices such as keeping the Sabbath and the Shabbat meal. Like the Pre Nicene Church we celebrate Easter at Passover, as reported in all four Gospels. Our separate lineage has also kept us from absorbing paganism like the Pauline churches have.
Our clergy do not take salaries, nor have they ever been permitted to. Jesus sent the Seventy out in Luke 9 and told them to take no bag or bread or money with them script as they would be provided for. In Matthew 10:8 when He sent the apostles out He told them "you have received without paying, therefore give without payment". Money and the quest for power have been the single most corrupting influences in our churches. Our clergy serve because they are in service to the Lord and so we would ask why should we be paid for serving our Savior? The apostles weren't paid, so why should we?
Q. What kinds of groups or entertainment does your church have to offer to my family?
The short answer is none. The church the apostles founded did not have gymnasiums or coffee shops in them nor did they put on plays or other forms of entertainment. The description of that first church is given to us in the Second Chapter of Acts where we see the apostles and early Christians ministering to the poor and to those in need as Jesus commanded us to do in Matthew 25. In that chapter Jesus clearly tells us what He wants us to do; He wants us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and shut in and those in prison. He says nothing about putting on plays or concerts to entertain church goers. But what He does say is "the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few".
Like the Early Church described in Justin Martyr's First Apology, all the money that is taken in goes out in outreach. Our clergy do not take salaries for we believe that we should not be paid to serve our Lord. Jesus warned us about this in Matthew 10:8 He told the apostles "you have received without paying, therefore give without payment". Our call is to do the work He has called us to do, not to build monuments to ourselves here on earth.
Q. Do you accept Rome as the “mother” church catholic and the Pope as the Vicar of Christ?
A. No. There is only one true “mother” church and that is the church founded by Christ through His apostles. There is not a sliver of evidence in the scriptures that Christ intended for the Roman Church to be the mother church or for the Bishop of Rome to be the primary bishop. There is no evidence that any of the early churches believed this either. All of the major early ecumenical councils were called and presided over by the Eastern Church bishops and one, the Council of Nicea, was called and presided over by a Roman Emperor. The Councils of Ephesus in 432 AD and Chalcedon in 451 AD spoke specifically to this issue and decreed churches were to be equal in authority and no one church was to lord over any other. The office of the papacy is a later invention by the Church in Rome.
Q. Does your church believe baptism is necessary to wash off inherited sin?
A. No and neither did the Early Church. The Celtic Church has always rejected the idea that one has to be baptized to “wash off” sin that was genetically inherited. This was a pagan practice brought into the church by a heretical group known as the Manacheans who mixed pagan sacrificial rites with Christianity. Augustine of Hippo, who was associated with the Manacheans, brought the practice of infant baptism into the church in the 5th century.
Baptism is important for Christians because Christ told us to be baptized and felt it was important enough to asked to be baptized Himself. Through baptism we are welcomed into the family of God as St. Paul writes in 1 Cor 12:13, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free--and we were all given the one Spirit to drink”. This concept is reinforced again in Galatians 3:26-28 “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”.
Q. What are your church’s view on confession of sin?
A. Confession of sin has always been a public matter and a part of the liturgy in the Celtic Church. (The scriptures tell us to confess our sins one to another). The Roman practice of private confession is pagan in origin and derived from the Rite of Osiris, which had been brought into Rome by soldiers returning from Egypt. In the Celi Di order the congregation openly confess their actual sins by naming them aloud. Our church follows the practice of the early church with public confession of sins through the liturgy.
Q. Are Celtic priests and bishops allowed to marry?
A. We do not require priests or bishops to be celibate as the Roman Catholic Church does. There is no prohibition of marriage for clergy in the scriptures. We know for certain that Peter was married (Matt. 8:14), that Paul, though unmarried, taught all should be free to marry or remain single as the Lord led them (1 Cor. 7:28, 1 Tim. 4:1-5), and that the requirements of a bishop in the early church was that he was to have only one wife (1 Tim. 3:2). Celibacy of the priesthood is yet another invention of the Roman Church.
Q. Does your church offer the Eucharist each week and if so why?
In that first Eucharist instituted by Christ He said "do this often in remembrance of me". Following His commandment we offer the Eucharist in every service to those who wish to partake of it.
Our view of the Eucharist comes from Christ’s words in John 6:56 where He said “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him”. It is clear from scripture that whenever two or three are present Christ will be among us. And in the Eucharist we are told in John 6 that Christ will be in us and we in Him. When we eat the bread and drink the wine we are reminded of the crucified body and shed blood of the Lord whereby we are granted forgiveness off our sins We believe our Eucharist is not a meaningless exercise or some symbolic act that we do. Rather it is a reminder of the sacrifice Christ made for us. It is a reminder that our sins were bought and paid for by the blood of our Savior. When we come to the table we are reminded that we are cleansed by our confession and through His forgiveness we have been restored to God.
Therefore we would say that the Eucharist is a means by which we are brought into the presence of God and into communion with Him, but that it remains a mystery that we cannot fully understand. St. Paul reminds us of the communion we enjoy in the Eucharist in in 2 Cor 10:16 when he writes, “the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”
Q. Does your church use a prayer book and if so why?
A. Yes and it is because the early church was liturgical. The Apostles and the first Christians were Jews who and accepted Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah who fulfilled all the prophesies, and the worship that they practiced was liturgical because Jewish worship was liturgical. In the New Testament we’re told that the early Christians continued their Jewish worship practices. They would worship in synagogues on Saturday and then gather to break bread together on Sunday (Acts 20:7: “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread”). Luke 4:16-20 records that Jesus read in the synagogue and the scriptures mention Peter worshipping there.
Luke records in Acts 13:2 that the calling of Paul and Barnabas was the work of the Holy Spirit, and that it took place during the "liturgy". The text reads, "as they were (worshipping) but the Greek word used here actually says 'liturgizing' (leitourgounton) before the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul to the work to which I have called them'".
There are recorded forms of liturgy from the first century. The Didache between 60 and 70 AD records and early liturgy used for Holy Communion as does the Apostolic Constitutions written in the first century and there are references By Clement in 90 AD (1 Clement, Cpt 40 and 41) for liturgical prayers used in the Eucharist. And there are early written descriptions of liturgical worship. Justin Martyr describes a liturgical service in great detail around 125 AD in the First Apology. Pliny the Younger in a letter to Trajan, a Roman Emperor, also describes the early Christians worshipping liturgically (Trajan Letters, 111 AD).
When you worship liturgically you are worshipping and praising God in unison with one voice. The bible says God likes organized worship (In 1 Cor 14:40 St. Paul is giving instructions on worship to the young church in Corinth and says “But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way”).
