Dominion

Tom Holland has written a very big and bold book on the entire history of Christianity to show how it relates to every facet of our modern culture, both good and bad. I have to wonder how cherry picked his events are, but even so it is a great read from a reputable historian who knows his stuff. Turns out I didn't know a lot, like what came before the Old Testament, or how much the Greeks influenced Christianity, or how Christian England is.

The core ideas of his thesis, that Christianity is genuinely unique for its focus on the weak and the downtrodden being worthy of praise, symbolised perfectly by the idea of venerating Christ for dying on the cross, and that Christianity is a movement/religion that has revolution built into it, are very convincing.

And I just love the boldness. The way Tom writes it, if you can think of a concept, Christianity created it. Atheism? Christian. Religion? Christian. The Enlightenment? So Christian. Homosexuality? Literally invented by Saint Paul.

A fun part of reading a sweeping tome like this is when it starts self-referencing, you get these satisfying little callbacks to councils/events/places from centuries or millennia before and how they are reinterpreted or referenced at later dates.

Can't wait to explain to everyone for the rest of my life how Christianity shaped everything in the modern world. And since it turns out Christianity is way more Greek than I ever realised, Greeks really did invent everything.

This book has made me at least 12% more annoying.