Ure Geleafe
Principals of Anglo Saxon Folk
Christianity
Anglo Saxon Christianity grew out of the conversion of our
Heathen ancestors to the new Christian faith. This was a top down conversion, from the
Kings and the ruling elite. It was
often a conversion of convenience or political expediency rather than of
religious conviction. Furthermore,
in the early days at least it was a fairly shallow conversion at least for most
people. Many of the old Heathen
customs and beliefs survived and were incorporated into the new faith either
officially or unofficially. Despite
persecution, many have survived.
For most people, Anglo Saxon Christianity was a simple belief in a good
God and life after death. They were
not overly concerned with theological disputes and differences.
Anglo Saxon Anglicans is intended to
foster a return to many of our folk beliefs and practices. It does not seek a return to the cult of
warfare or the dark superstitions that gripped many of our ancestor’s
lives. Christianity brought great
benefits to our people. But there
was also great beauty and spiritual insight in many of their ancient folk beliefs
and in their mythology. This site is
not about restoring the old pagan beliefs themselves. It does not seek to change or challenge
any of the orthodox Christianity that is the foundation of the historic
Most of our ancestors of the early
conversion period would have seen God in terms of God the Father, the
All-Ruler. In essence, He was seen
in much the same way as the ancient Aryan Sky Father our ancestors called
All-Father. To a large degree this
is how ordinary people still perceive God.
Jesus was his Son, God in human form and the Holy Spirit was God’s
spirit. But most people did not
think too deeply about the details of doctrine or understand the controversies
that had raged through the early Church over this.
Early Anglo Saxon Christians saw Jesus
in terms of their Heathen warrior culture of loyalty, bravery and steadfastness. They understood Him in the context of
the old gods such as Ingeld, Seaxnot or Thor. He certainly wasn’t the
passive, sacrificial victim of modern Christianity. This is very important if one is to
understand the early Anglo Saxon Christian mindset and the powerful influences on
Christianity that produced a unique strand of the faith we call Germanic or
Saxon Christianity. It is almost
certain that if Christ had been portrayed in this manner, Christianity would
have failed to make any in roads at all into the Saxon world.
The links between Jesus and the old
gods went deeper than this though.
Heathen religion was based on the recurring cycles of the agricultural
year. The joining
of sky father and earth mother to create the new life, seen particularly in the
stories of Ingeld and Nerthus and her wagon. This resonated with the Christian
doctrine of God’s spirit impregnating the earthly/human Mary to bring
about the new life in Jesus the son.
Our ancestors already understood elements of Christianity long before
the birth of Jesus!
In common with early Celtic converts
to Christianity, the Anglo Saxons originally had no concept of sin in the
Christian sense and thus had no sense of the need for salvation through
faith. They simply accepted Jesus
as a good man, the son of God. It
took the Church many generations to inculcate its ideas of original sin and the
need for salvation. The effort was
so great, it went overboard and later medieval Christianity became obsessed
with it.
Neither were our ancestors overly
concerned with the afterlife.
Following from their Heathen roots, they placed greater emphasis on the
here and now and saw the world as generally good. This world accepting perspective was
fundamentally opposed to the world rejecting position of the official Church.
Ancient Heathen
codes of loyalty and honour were incorporated into the new religion, giving
rise to the medieval Chivalric orders and to the concept of holy war. Christ was seen as a heroic warrior
king, who battled for righteousness, not as a passive victim.
Anglo Saxon Churches
tended to be based around small, usually family or clan units. They were folk or ethno-centred and not
universalistic in the sense of modern Christianity which emphasises a family of
believers rather than a blood family or kin. It was in this sense quite insular and
identified itself with the Saxon folk rather than with the cosmopolitan
universalism of many churches today.
Honouring, as opposed to worshipping, ancestors remained an important
part of people’s lives, even though the Church initially tried to
suppress this until it was absorbed into All Soul’s Day.
Our early Christian ancestors
maintained their magical and superstitious world view. With a play on words, the Gospel itself
was seen as God’s spell – more powerful than the old Runes –
as well as the Good News. Old charms, such as the Ercebot, were incorporated into the new
religion. Priests were seen
as magicians and shamans.
The Heathen concept of
Wyrd (similar to karma or fate) was very important to the early Anglo Saxon
Christians. The word literally
means primal law and is often used interchangeably with Orlog. All our individual and collective
actions influence our present and future – that which should come to pass
as a result of past actions. In
Heathen lore, even the gods are subject to Wyrd and this became an area of
tension with the new religion. This
is clearly expressed in the continental Saxon poem, Heliand, which equates
Christ and Wyrd and where Wyrd becomes the will of God. This is one of the most syncretic
aspects of Germanic Christianity and has important parallels with the writings
of the Hellenised Jewish philosopher, Philo of
Resulting from their
Heathen past, Anglo Saxon Christians had a very strong, if somewhat confused,
sense of the unseen world of spirits, especially of Wights and Elfs. This is something that can be difficult
for modern people to understand, but it was a part of the real world for
them. The Heathen world view is
animistic and sees spirit within everything, even inanimate objects such as
stones and rocks. The Anglo
Saxon’s love of nature and suspicion of urban centres, reflected
beautifully in the poem, The Ruin,
grew out of this world view.
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