How did Christianity first come to the British Isles?

Question

What years in history were they establishing their first churches and converting the population?
How did they go about this?

Answer 1

I agree the boring answers are probably right. I don't think we can place a great deal of historical reliance on Gildas or Eusebius. There is no evidence whatsoever that 'the apostles' came to 'Britannia' I have not doubt that there would have been some Christians in the island throughout the Roman occupation, as there would have been throughout the Empire. Don't forget, either, that Constantine, the Emperor who made Christianity the official religion, was pronounced Emperor in York. There is little evidence, however, in the archeology of anywhere that can be positively identified as Christian places of worship. There appears to have been Christian house-worship - see the chi-rho symbols and praying figures found at Lullingstone villa. There were, however, British bishops at 4th century Church councils. After the occupation Christianity was kept alive in the islands by Irish monks and the Celtic church and later the Northumbrian church. These two branches lasted effectively until the Synod of Whitby in the 7th century. Interestingly enough, that shows how much more important was the status of women within the British churches as the Synod was held at Abbess (later Saint) Hilda's Abbey of Whitby, rather than somewhere controlled by a male Abbott and monks.

Answer 2

This is very much a question of how you define your terms.

Yes There were Romans in Britain who espoused Christianity, especially after the Edict of Milan (312). Yet the levels of belief would have been very superficial and there is no evidence of real survivalism beyond the Romans leaving.

Second point of query is questioning what you mean by British Isles. If you include Ireland then there is St Columba who came 4th/5th Century. There is then evidence of this Irish Christianity infiltrating into England.

Yet the first official mission to England was Augustine's mission in 597. Sent by Pope Gregory I (590-604).

Thus all a question of what you mean. All the above are valid answers. The theories that apostles or other biblical figures came to England, are just that theories. They are supported by absolutely no contemporary evidence and can only be supported by faith...

Answer 3

Anybody who believes Blake's iconoclastic 'And did those feet in ancient Times...' also known as 'Jerusalem' and the song which the Women's Institute seems to have taken to heart must, frankly, have a screw loose. Just how many 'Satanic mills' were around in England 700 years before the power of steam was discovered? It is theologically and historically an unsustainable idea.
Christianity may well have been introduced to England during the latter days of the Roman occupation, but the spread of Christianity and conversion of the population is normally attributed to St. Cuthbert and St. Augustine.

Answer 4

Yahoo Answers must be losing it.
No loonies have answered yet!
Well I'll have to step in.
Joseph of Arimathea came first. He had been to Britain earlier with the young Jesus (remember "And did those feet..."?) and after the Cricifixion he came to Britain with the Holy Grail and built a church at Glastonbury.
Bede tells a story of a King Lucius who accepted Christianity in about 180 AD, but most people think this is mistakenly transposed from Armenia or somewhere.
Sadly, the boring answers are probably correct..

Answer 5

Christianity started in Britain in about the 1st century AD but was made official during the govenorship of Constantine the Great. Constantine decided to make Christianity the State Religion of the Roman Empire but first established it here in Britain under the Orthodox Church of Greece.

Constantine in the 3rd century AD, departed Britain, taking with him two British Legions of the Roman Army and marched on Rome [ROMA SPQR]. At Rome he tried to persuade the Romans to take Christianity as their official religion, but they refused.

Constantine took his Legions and marched to Turkey and began the establishment of his new city-state, Constantinople. The Christian Greek Orthodox religion was established as the official State Religion in the Eastern Roman Empire and remained in place until it's destruction during the Cruisades.

Meanwhile back in Britain, Christianity thrived. The old Roman, Greek and Egyptian temples of Britain were slowly converted to Christian use. However, no one was ever forced into Christianity, people simply carried on going to the 'pagan' temples in the morning and might visit a church in the afternoon. It was rather 'multi-faith' and multi-cultural in some respects.

There was still a very large and thriving Egyptian temple at Bath during the late 4th century AD. A recent archeological dig there discovered the remains of an Egyptian priest who had come all the way from Egypt. This priest would have been of very high rank, a VIP and probably had an entorage [like a Hollywood Movie Star] of something like 300 more people. So, even in the 4th century, the British were still going to the 'temples'.

The earliest British Bishop I know of was St. Alban, the patron Saint of Saint Albans [St. Albans] in Hertfordshire. He was put to death during the terror reign of Emperor Nero. His martyrdom is described, but is too horrible to express here.

Those who believe that Christianity came to Britain with Saint Augustin of Kent, are quite wrong. British history does not start with the Anglo Saxons; it starts from the very moment Julius Caesar stepped ashore at Deal near Dover in Kent in c55BC.

There is much evidence of trade between Britain and the Greek world from the 4th century onwards. This is because both locations shared the State Religion of the Greek Orthodox Church [Orthodoxus].

The British today are very similar in their approach to religion as were their ancestors of the 4th century AD. A toleration of religious belief systems is very much the order of the day. A person today might visit the Great Central Mosque at Regent's Park and then go on later that same day to visit St. Paul's cathedral, and so on.

Answer 6

The Britians were once part the Roman Empire and when the Roman's declared Christianity as the official Religion of Rome, that helped the religion gain a mass movement. I'm not sure of the exact year, but I think it was a few hundred years after Jesus' death. The Christians had be prosecuted before the legalization of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine.

Answer 7

By tradition, Joseph of Aramathaea (the uncle of Jesus Christ) visited Cornwall to trade goods for tin, which was certainly mined in ancient times, and brought his nephew with him as a teenager on at least one such trading visit. This could have been as early as 10 A.D., a generation before the first Roman occupation. See the tradition of the Glastonbury Thorn - a tree which allegedly sprouted from Joseph's staff when it was thrust into the ground.
The earliest actual evidence of Christianity in Britain is from the late second century, and was excavated in Manchester in the 1970's. A piece of pottery bearing part of the Latin word-square "ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR", which means "Arepo the sower holds the wheels with care". If you write the words ion a square you will see that they can be read forwards, backwards, up or down. If you use up the letters to form "PATER NOSTER" (Our Father in Latin), the best-known Christian prayer, taught to His followers by Jesus Himself, you have an A and an O left over. These represent the Greek letters Alpha and Omega - the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet - commonly used in Christian symbolism to show that Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of all things. This kind of thing was necessary when the Christian religion had to be practised in secret, and any Christian visitors had to be advised of any co-religionists through commonly-known signs and symbols.
This, and the oldest surviving piece of Scripture - a fragment of St.John's Gospel which has been dated to 190 A.D., can be seen in Manchester's John Rylands Library. Thus we know that there were Christians in Britain well before the end of the second century.
Britain's first known martyr for the Faith, St. Alban, is usually believed to have died about 304 during the last, and worst, persecution of Christians under Diocletian, but some experts claim that his martyrdom took place up to a century earlier.
It is important to realise that the Roman Empire provided conditions of peace and security for long periods, thus the better-off people of all provinces had the opportunity to travel all over it as merchants, Government officials, soldiers or simply as tourists, in a way that would be unknown for a millennium and a half after its demise. Travellers took their beliefs and practices with them - and so religions that originated in the East, such as Mithraism, Judaism and Christianity, spead to Britain in the wake of the advanceing Pax Romana.

Answer 8

The idea held by some that Christianity was first brought to Britain by the Roman Catholic Missionary, St. Augustine in A.D. 597 is altogether erroneous as is proved by the following evidence.

The famous ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, who lived three hundred years before Augustine came to Britain, and who is well known as the Father of Church History, says “The Apostles passed beyond the ocean to the Isles called the Brittanic Isles”. This is confirmed by the early British Historian Gildas (A.D. 516-570) who states, “Meanwhile, these islands ... received the beams of light that is, the Holy precepts of Christ, the true Sun at the latter part, as we know, of the reign of Tiberius Caesar”. This Tiberius Caesar was the reigning Roman Emperor when Christ was crucified. Notice Gildas’ words “as we know”, of the reign of Tiberius Caesar which indicates that what he records regarding the introduction of Christianity into Britain was in his day a matter of common knowledge. Tiberius Caesar reigned from A.D. 14-37, therefore Gildas’ words, “in the latter part of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” show that Christianity was introduced into Britain before A.D. 37.

It is certain that the primitive British, Irish, Scottish, and Gallic Churches formed one Church, one communion, and that on the assumption of the Papacy A.D. 606-610 by Rome, this great Celtic Church, which had previously been in full communion with primitive Rome, refused in the most peremptory terms to acknowledge her pretensions.

As regards church buildings, the earliest known dates from 654 and is St. Peter's Chapel at Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex.

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Wow - I'm impressed that your respondent below can glibly dismiss Eusebius and Gildas. These are primary sources, my friend, on what basis do you dismiss them ?

Answer 9

Bless the Romans

Answer 10

"All right ... all right ... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order ... what HAVE the Romans done for US?"

"Brought peace!"

"What!? Oh ... Peace, yes ... shut up!"