Following the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when King Henry VIII took over the English church and declared it separate from papal authority, thus leading to the formation of the Church of England and Church of Scotland, Protestant controversialists in Britain began to recognize how untenable their religious claims were and sought new ways to justify their separation from Rome. They sought to demonstrate not only the antiquity of their churches, but also that these purported ancient churches were proto-Protestant in doctrine and, more importantly, independent from the bishop of Rome.
Beginning in the 19th century, therefore, Protestant controversialists formulated the idea of an indigenous “Celtic Christianity” and postulated the existence of a supposed “Celtic Church” in Ireland and Britain which in ancient times had been independent and opposed to the “foreign Roman Church” prior to becoming “corrupted by Romish doctrines” in later centuries. The Anglicans and Presbyterians both employed this claim, not only in opposition to the Catholic Church but also against each other. The Scottish Presbyterians sought to depict the early Scottish church as proto-Presbyterian and independent of both Rome and England, so as to justify their independence from the Church of England. Meanwhile, in Ireland, the English rulers utilized this fantasy of an “ancient anti-Roman Celtic Church” in an attempt to uproot the Catholic religion of Ireland and coerce the population into becoming Anglican (an attempt which failed).
Needless to say, this whole idea is completely and demonstrably false; no one spoke of an “independent Celtic Church” prior to the Protestant controversialists; it is an invention of Protestant propaganda, to justify their anti-Romanism and separation from Rome after the 16th century. In reality, there never was a ‘Celtic Church’. The early medieval Christians in Britain and Ireland belonged to Christian communities that followed some distinct practices (meaning they practiced certain disciplines which differed from the typical Roman ones), owing to their relative isolation from mainland Europe at the time caused by the barbarian invasions, but they were indeed in union with the bishop of Rome, differing from the Roman rite only in matters of discipline while adhering to the same Catholic faith as other Western Europeans. This is proven by historical testimonies which I will not enter into now. The point is this: Greek Orthodox immigrants in the English-speaking world have encountered and now adopted these same Protestant claims, but with this caveat: they claim that the imaginary “Celtic Church” was Eastern Orthodox and in union with Constantinople. Protestant revisionists fabricated and popularized the “Independent Celtic Church” myth in order to prove Protestantism, and now Greek immigrants have totally copied their fables, but instead assert that the Irish and British were Eastern Orthodox.
Here is a nice summary by Thomas J. Faulkenbury, who wrote on the subject of ‘Celtic Christianity’:
“One view, which gained substantial scholarly traction in the 19th century, was that there was a “Celtic Church”, a significantly organized Christian body or denomination uniting the Celtic peoples and separating them from the ”Roman” of continental Europe. ... However, modern scholars have identified issues with all of these claims, and find the term “Celtic Christianity” problematic in and of itself. The idea of a “Celtic Church” is roundly rejected by modern scholars due to the lack of substantiating evidence. ... Additionally, the Christians of Ireland and Britain were not “anti-Roman”; the authority of Rome and the papacy were venerated as strongly in Celtic areas as they were in any other region of Europe.”
Similar to all this is a concept known as ‘Western Rite Orthodoxy’, an idea first peddled by ex-Protestants and Orthodox immigrants in the 20th century in order to win over Protestant American converts to Orthodoxy. This revisionist movement is mostly tied to the Russian Orthodox Church and Moscow (especially through the Russian immigrant writer John Meyendorff), but it also has close ecclesiastical ties to the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch (the same which strongly advocates the ‘Orthodox England’ myth). I will refrain from discussing these claims in too much detail. I will limit myself to merely pointing out that what now is called ‘Western Rite Orthodoxy’ never existed before the 20th century.
This comment posted by a user online sums it up well:
“The 'Western Rite' itself was created only in the 20th century specifically to foster a union of Western Christians into Eastern Orthodoxy using a fabricated liturgical form to do so.”
“They mimic traditional Roman Catholic liturgical practices and copy Roman Catholic and usually Anglican texts, sometimes byzantinizing them by adding things like the epiklesis to 'make them Orthodox', an unhistorical bastardization as wrong as Eastern Catholics' self-latinizations (tearing down icon screens and putting up statues to 'make it Catholic'). This dishonest, willy-nilly borrowing from all over history is also characteristic of the undisciplined ways of vagantes. Appropriating things not from one's own church's history and calling them 'Orthodox' is as stupid and arrogant — and perhaps just as born from some kind of inferiority complex? — as the dad in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' claiming every word in English comes from Greek, or Mr. Chekov on 'Star Trek' claiming Russians invented and discovered everything.”
In short, they appropriate Western Catholic history by calling it ‘Orthodox’ and pretend to be “restoring” liturgical forms which never existed and which never had any connection to the Eastern Orthodox churches.
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