Mini-book review: Dominion

I recently read Dominion by Tom Holland (not the Spider-Man actor but the historian). It's a history of Christianity by an agnostic/atheist. He makes a really interesting argument. He says all contemporary debates in the West are actually versions of Christianity battling each other for supremacy. Each side of any cultural fight (gay rights, women’s liberation, etc) is premised on the Christian values of universal human dignity and lifting up the weak, which would have been utterly unintelligible in the pre-Christian world. It's a really interesting argument. Holland basically says that even though Christianity seems like it's in decline in the West, it's actually so ascendant and victorious, that people can only think within Christian paradigms now. It made me strangely happy to read this book.

Postscript: Tom Holland has been attending Saint Bartholomew the Great, one of the oldest churches in London. He recently spoke about a spiritual experience with a cancer diagnosis and a desperate prayer for healing.