Book review: Dominion
Dominion
On April 3 of this year, The Telegraph published an article about the New Atheism’s star spokesman, Richard Dawkins’s, admission that he’s now a “cultural Christian.” He acknowledged that the decline of Christianity in Western Civilization has “unleashed terrible new gods.” He distinguished between a cultural Christian and a believing Christian. Still, he acknowledged, if indirectly, the debt he and his fellow atheists have to Christianity when it comes to the freedoms, beauties, and tolerance they experience in Western Civilization.
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland, New York: Basic Books, 2019, 612 pages
Tom Holland’s monumental history of Christianity, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, is in complete sympathy with Dawkins’s acknowledgement. He showed how everyone in the West, even those who loudly proclaim their disdain for Christianity, have been influenced by the impact of the man from Galilee. Even though not a practicing Christian at the time he wrote the book, compared to pre-Christian, pagan influences, Holland noted the effect of the Christian religion on society results in compassion for the poor and helpless; in respect that people, regardless of station or status, are of infinite worth; and in openness to scientific discovery.
Perhaps more than anything, I found Holland’s opus to be a history of ideas from pre-Christian days to the present, from the reign of Darius of Persia to the days of Woke political correctness, ideas of particular social power.
Holland’s style of writing is intensely interesting and readable, if dense. His knowledge of this vast period of history is impressively both broad and deep. And his insight into the significance and weight of historic events and ideas momentous. Each chapter is sprinkled with historical anecdotes.
Jesus stated that the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven in bread (Matthew 13:33). Only a little goes a long way, he said. Although his true followers in that day—and perhaps even in this—are few in number, their influence is monumental. Holland’s book proves the point.
Note: My friend, historian Phil Mitchell, published a twelve-part video synopsis of this important work and how the author “changed [his] mind about Christianity.”
See Book Review: Person of Interest for more information about Jesus’s influence on the world.
