Lehane proves a good, entertaining guide to the Celtic Church in its creative centuries of independence. His account highlights a fresh, innovative movement of self-motivated evangelists, which at first owed little or nothing to the state church of the Roman empire. In Ireland, the first native Christians assumed it natural to have female priests and bishops. They set up "double monasteries" of both men and women, and the head of the whole monastery was often a woman. So in 664, the council of Whitby took place in a Celtic double monastery, with both sexes under direction of Abbess Hilda.
Lehane explores the social world and accomplishments of this great religious movement. Then he shows how its open spirit came to clash with the imperial church's requirements for control over women and other subordinates. In Lehane's account the dreams of the old Celtic Church seem to come alive and challenge our imagination.
-author of Correcting Jesus