Dominion
How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
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4.6 • 75 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
An extraordinary account of how the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination, from the author of Rubicon.
“A galloping tour of Christianity’s influence across the last 2,000 years.” —New York Times
Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion—an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus—was to be worshipped as a god.
Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization.
Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist, playwright, and historian Holland (Rubicon), whose scholarly pursuits include Greek, Islamic, and Roman history, brings all of that to bear in this cultural history of how "a cult inspired by the execution of an obscure criminal in a long-vanquished empire came to exercise such a transformative and enduring influence on the world." In the period stretching from pre-Christian Athens in 479 BCE, when the Persian Artayctes lost his battle with the Athenians, to Germany in 2015, when Angela Merkel had an emotional encounter with a teenage Palestinian girl, Holland traces Christendom's philosophical, ethical, political, and even linguistic legacies in the West. Sophocles and Aristotle appear, as do Solomon and Moses, who "brought something without parallel: legislation directly authored by a god." Luke writes, so does Muhammad, and Luther publishes his 95 theses; later Holland weaves in Voltaire, Darwin, and even de Sade. He does not lose sight of political events Charlemagne reigns, Columbus sails, the West fights WWI, and Hitler rises to power. He also wrestles with the theological disputes, inconsistencies, and recurring questions within Christianity, and the faith's intertwined but often hostile relationship with Judaism and Jews. Entertaining is too light a term and instructive is too heavy a term for a rich work that is enjoyably both.
Customer Reviews
How Christianity Came to Dominate the Foundations of Civilization Foundations
Holland’s argument, brilliantly summarized in the last chapter, is convincing and clearly laid out — that Christianity is the basis for most of humanity’s core assumptions about the values underlying “self-evident truths” of humanity existence. His writing of history is very crisp, rarely dry, and modern. Holland tries consistently to get the reader to connect to the emotional aspects of actions and events.
Wow.
Wow.
Tough to read
Holland is a real smart guy. But that smartness often results in a writing style as thick as molasses. I had nuns in second grade that would have struggled to diagram some of his sentences. The plot - likely to most important plot in human history - meanders and drifts. I’m halfway thru and determined to keep going but it is a slog.