Druidry and Christianity

Thursday, 14 December 2023 Written by Nimue Brown

There are many overlaps between Christianity and Druidry, ancient and modern.

It’s an interesting aspect of our history and shows how traditions interplay. At this time of year there are always a lot of memes floating about suggesting Christmas is something the church stole from the Pagans. Of course it’s far more complicated than that! It’s just a human thing that we get to the darkest bit of the year and want to celebrate something that lifts our spirits.

In the UK, there was Celtic Christianity before Rome established Roman Christianity here. It was it’s own thing and distinct and drew on the Celtic roots of the people doing it. There are existing groups to this day who work with those traditions. I know many Pagans who find the work of the Iona community really inspiring.

In the Druidry revival period there were a fair few people who saw the Druids as a natural precursor to Christianity and who felt that the Druids had probably converted and become the Celtic Christians. Of course we don’t know, but probably some did. A few hundred years ago this made it easier for people wanting to revive Druid traditions to reconcile that with their own Christian heritage. Seeing the sun and The Son as connected can be part of this.

There are Christian Druids. The OBOD course lends itself to this – which I know because I know Christian Druids who have walked that path. It works for them.

Christians who see God as present in the natural world tend to get on well with Druids. We have more in common than not. One interesting manifestation of this is the Forest Church movement – and this is something I suspect I’ll be talking about more in the weeks to come. Paul Cudby, of Forest Church wrote a fantastic book for Christians about Pagans. It’s a great thing to put in the hands of anyone having trouble accommodating us, because Paul is a vicar.  You can find that over here.

I can also recommend checking out Mark Townsend’s work for books that straddle these two worlds. Mark is a powerful writer and his Gospel of Falling Down is a book that had a huge impact on me. See here. 

Druid groups are always diverse. We get animists and agnostics, and atheists. We get polytheists and monotheists. When it comes to the polytheists, we aren’t all committed to the same gods. You can’t go into a Druid circle and assume everyone is going to worship the same deities in the same ways. As a consequence, if you’re working in a way that includes all of your Pagan Druids you aren’t going to struggle to include Christian Druids as well.

My feeling has always been that if someone shows up with an open heart and good intent, I welcome them. What they believe is their own private concern, and so long as what we do together works for all of us, that’s the only measure that counts.

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