A good point. I keep forgetting that the Anglo-Saxons didn't just sit and receive Christianity from outside, they themselves came into a place already familiar with it, so that they were kind of surrounded by it.

Christopher Dawson makes a similar point about the conversion of Scandinavia. He says that while medieval Christendom found itself fighting for dear life against the non-Christian Danes everywhere from Germany to the Frankreich (not sure I'd call it France quite yet) to Wessex and East Anglia, they themselves were finally "conquered" in the religious sense, since they ended up adopting the religion of the English they had conquered. (I think he specifically says it was their contact with the English Christians that had the actual effect of converting them: cf. Cnut.)

(Btw, Merlin, thank you for your warm welcome of yestermonth!)