(Editor's Note: Many people assume that the Latin Church (Roman Catholicism) is the root of all Christianity and that all other streams of Christian thought and life emerged from it. Indeed, one of the great objections to the ordination of women in the 1970's was that it would create an impediment to a hoped for reunification with Rome; the argument being that such a "departure" from normative Christian practice could only be decided by a General Council of all the churches and that until such time − and such consensus − such unilateral action would wound the Body of Christ, the Catholic (universal) Church.

As we celebrate the changes coming out of this last General Convention and wonder about their impact on the other faith communities, some historical perspective may be helpful as we recall the journey to the full inclusion of women in ordained leadership and anticipate the inclusion of openly gay and lesbian persons in leadership for our day.

In the ancient Byzantine world, there were in fact five equal centers of Christian thought and life. They were Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome. Four of these broadly defined the Eastern − or Orthodox − traditions and the Latin (or Roman) Church was known broadly as the "Western Church." Over time, all but Rome would fall to the expansion of Islam and although the Orthodox traditions survive in the modern world, they are but remnants of their former glory in the East. This left Roman Catholicism as the dominant Church in the Mediterranean world.

As early as the 5th century, the Bishop of Rome began to claim for himself the title of "supreme pontiff," a title formerly held by the Roman Emperors. The theological justification for this was grounded in the claims of the pope (from the Greek papas or Father) as being the inheritor of the "primacy of Peter." (This claim was that Jesus had given the "keys of the Kingdom" to St. Peter and therefore, the inheritors of the office of the Bishop of Rome held a "primacy" over other Bishops and Patriarchs.) By the middle ages, the title "Vicar of Christ" was added to emphasize that the Bishop of Rome saw himself as the "vicarious" presence of Christ on earth (although formal doctrine of papal infallibility was not adopted until the First Vatican Council of July 18, 1870.) The European Protestant (protesting) Churches will break away from Rome in reaction to abuses of papal authority − both political and theological − starting in 1517 and ending around 1648. But while this history was unfolding in the Mediterranean world, another history was unfolding on the very edge of the Empire: the planting of Christianity among the indigenous peoples of the British Isles − a separate and unique strand of Christian thought and practice which we now call "Celtic Christianity" and which claimed its foundation not in the "primacy of Peter" but in "the disciple whom Jesus loved", John.

To the extent that Celtic Christianity had a unique and distinctive history apart from the Eastern and Roman churches, at least for several centuries of its life, those who stand as inheritors of her traditions can claim a distinctive authority based on an ancient and coequal practice. For example, in Celtic tradition, men and women shared an equal authority as presbyters and even as Bishops (e.g. Bridget of Kildare and Patrick of Armagh) and celibacy for the ordained was widely resisted in the Celtic West over against the mandates of Rome.

But how did Christianity come to the British Isles and when? Can the case be made for an early missionary expansion among the Celts? The following two excerpts argue for just that.)

Some say that Jesus himself visited Britain during the hidden years before his public ministry…If he did come to Britain it was probably as a youth, in the company of Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man who, after the crucifixion, obtained his body from Pilate and laid it in the tomb. Glastonbury Abbey had nothing to say of any visit by Jesus, but its account of its beginnings makes much of Joseph. In 63 AD, the story goes; he was in Gaul on a mission with the apostle Philip. Philip sent him over to Britain at the head of a party of twelve. They sailed up the Bristol Channel and proceeded by boat along inland waterways to the Glastonbury hill-cluster, known in those days as Ynys-witrin, the Glass Island. Disembarking at the foot of one of the hills, they were weary all, so it is called Wearyall to this day. Joseph drove his staff into the ground and it grew into a tree, the Holy Thorn, blossoming at Christmas. There they built Britain's first church, in obedience to a command from the angel Gabriel. They lived on the spot and died there, and it reverted, for a moment, to wilderness. Joseph is reputed (thought not in the monks' account) to have brought the vessel of the Last Supper, the Grail as it was called. It had supernatural properties, passed into the care of an elusive custodian, and became the goal of a mystical quest several centuries later.

Further stories of early Christians are centered on St. Paul. He is said to have made a brief journey among Britons in person, and that is why London's cathedral is dedicated to him. In Romans 16:10, he sent good wishes to ‘Aristobulus's household' but not to its head, and the reason is that Aristobulus was away on a British mission. Attention focuses more minutely on a married couple living in Rome, Pudens and Claudia. Paul passes on greetings from them, together with Linus, in II Timothy 4:21. Claudia is a Briton, the child of blue painted parents, yet in Rome she has acquired every civilized grace. Claudia, therefore, is the only Briton in the Bible.

It does not appear that she ever went back to her native land. Linus, who succeeded St. Peter as head of the Christian body in Rome, was reputedly a relation of hers, perhaps a brother. She had a daughter, St. Pudentiana, to whom a church in the city was dedicated. A few Welch authors, echoed by fewer English ones, state that Claudia's father was none other than Caratacus and that she was taken to Rome in 51 with the rest of the family. Some state further that Caratacus's own father went too, was converted by St. Paul, and returned to Britain in his old age to spread the word. His name was Bran. This is the only real Bran, all else is heathen fable.

None of these initiatives can have had much impact. It is written, however, that at some date between 174 and 189 a Roman mission was dispatched by Pope Eleutherius, at the request of the British King Lucius. He received baptism together with many of his subjects, and set up bishoprics in the major cities. Britain's Christianity is properly dated from this event…

Christians may have reached Britain in apostolic times, and Gildas and the legends suggest a vague belief that a few did. But they fail to supply trustworthy names or details. Two Fathers of the Church, Tertullian and Origen, imply Christian penetration of the British Isles by the year 200. In the last major persecutions Britain had three known martyrs, Alban, Julius and Aaron. British bishops attended the Council of Arles in 314, and Britain became nominally Christian with the rest of the Empire in the fourth century…" (From Mythology of the British Isles by Geoffrey Ashe, Trafalgar Square Publ., 1990.)

And…

The question of Christianity in England is…unsettled. Gildas wrote in the sixth century: "These islands received the beams of light … in the latter part of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, in whose time this religion was propagated without impediment or death." The point about this is that Tiberius died in AD 37. Nor does Eusebius contradict this date; though scholars of course have difficulty explaining it. Nevertheless, by AD 199 Tertullian, listing the many peoples to whom the religion of Christ has come, can include, "the places of the Britons, which are inaccessible to the Romans." That is, if Christianity was in England by then it was not necessarily the Romans who brought it. The Gauls already had a bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons, of the line of St. John, and one may assume much interchange between Gaul and Britain. There is, further, some evidence of a King Lucius at this time "bestowing the freedom of country and nation with privilege of judgment and surety on all those who might be of the faith of Christ." … The fundamental story here returns us to the pre AD 37 date given by Gildas, or close to it: in other words to the murky waters of St. Joseph of Arimathea and Glastonbury….His only stopping place, the term of his journey, according to legend, is Glastonbury. Here, on the Isle of Avalon, St. Joseph with twelve companions and bearing the Holy Grail, the sacred vessel containing the blood and the sweat of Christ, settled and built a round church of mud and wattles. Now, the route he seems to have taken, up from Marseilles, along the Rhone to Limoges, and on to Brittany and Cornwall, is precisely that of the tin trade. And legend, indeed, has made of Joseph of Arimathea a tin merchant, even going so far as to say that, during the "lost" years of Christ, Jesus came as a boy with Joseph to Cornwall and that Jesus taught Joseph how to extract the tin and to purge it of its wolfram. This is the story invoked by Blake in his famous lines, "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green." (From: Celtic Christianity: Ecology and Holiness by Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh, Floris Classics 1982.)

(Editor: Again, what these quotes point to, is to an early expansion of Christianity among the Celts of the British Isles, wherein was planted and whereupon grew a distinctive Christian spirituality separate and distinct from Latin (Roman) tradition, grounded in a people and in a place, and which therefore can justifiably lay claim to its own authority apart from the commitments of those who are inheritors of Roman Catholic tradition.)