Is Anglo-Saxon Christianity Real?

I was recently challenged in a comments section that Anglo-Saxon Christianity never existed. I have a policy of not engaging where I’d need to give an in-depth explanation. Replying in a comments section to antagonistic posts rarely results in good outcomes.

After some thought, I decided to write an article detailing the evidence that we have which shows that Anglo-Saxon Christianity was as distinct as Christianity in any Orthodox country or Roman Catholic Christianity.

We have well-documented records of Anglo-Saxon Christianity from the 6th-8th Century. These included the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This was completed AD731 by Bede, and details the conversion of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. It begins with the mission of St Augustine of Canterbury and the conversion of King Æthelberht of Kent in the 6th Century. Bede describes the spread of Christianity through missions, baptisms, and the establishment of churches.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was written in the 9th Century AD and recorded many Christian events, like the baptism of kings and the founding of monasteries, corroborating Bede’s accounts.

In terms of archaeological, excavations at sites like Jarrow, Wearmouth, and Lindisfarne have revealed early Christian structures, including stone churches and monastic complexes, which dated to the 7th-8th centuries. Lindisfarne’s monastery, linked to St. Cuthbert, produced Christian artifacts like the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Christian burials in cemeteries, such as at St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, show Christian burial practices replaced pagan traditions. There was an increase in East-West orientation burials, and the lack of grave goods.

There are numerous other pieces of evidence which proves Christianity existed in the Anglo-Saxon period. But does this constitute a particular flavour which could be defined as Anglo-Saxon?

The Anglo-Saxons were orthodox in their faith. They made regular pilgrimages to Rome and even paid for the renovation of the Borgo in the early medieval period. However, they did keep elements of their pagan culture.

Pagans get a bad reputation in church circles. But after researching paganism and its interaction with Christianity, I’ve come to understand that Christ redeems pagan cultures, but they still maintain their pagan roots. Christ includes all cultures within the Church, and does this by shining His light through the pagan culture, removing all the sinful parts.

In this framework, Christ provides the highest form of ‘pagan’ religion. He draws out the righteous parts and denies elements which are immoral.

So with this in mind, when the Anglo-Saxons became Christians, they gave up on pagan sacrifices, replacing it with the Eucharist. They gave up on blood feuds and embraced ‘Love thy neighbour’. But they did not give up on their culture. Instead, it was transformed.

One key element of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, and the one part which makes me most animate, is their bardic tradition. I consider Anglo-Saxon poetry as one of the greatest poetic forms from the ancient world.

The use of alliteration and kennings are stunning, but also is the audacity of their bards to reforge the Old Testament stories into Anglo-Saxon poetry. This meant the Biblical stories could be shared with the common-folk, in a way they understood. It’s similar tobhow the Message, a paraphrase version of the Bible, attempts to use modern language to make the Greek and Hebrew text more relatable for modern audiences.

These Anglo-Saxon Christian poems draw upon a wider Biblical canon than just the Catholic or Protestant ones. They include influences from 1 Enoch and the Gospel of Nicodemus. This showed the Anglo-Saxons were well acquainted with the wilder parts of Christianity.

Anglo-Saxon Christianity did exist, and it was a distinct form of the Faith. It wasn’t just Roman Catholicism, but a unique expression of worship to Christ from a collection of tribes with Germanic roots.