You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The progressive Christian message that it was unacceptable to discriminate on the basis of colour raises the question of gay and homosexual relations. Rather than unpack complex theological debates, the book gives us a series of vivid portraits of some key figures in Christian history: St Paul, St Augustine, Peter Abelard, Catherine of Siena, a former playboy known as Francis of Assisi and a host of more modern luminaries. I kept thinking about the book, kept mulling the idea over and then started to see WHY this idea was so important to how I should ultimately view "Western values" and it's so unique and WHY it is so worth preserving them.

Among the women were not just educated and relatively wealthy protestors but black women, indigenous women, poor women, immigrant women, disabled women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer and trans women. Most interesting to the modern reader is how, towards the end of the book, Holland ties together historic precedents peppered through the book and how seemingly novel and original ideas, such as Communism, are familiar to the reader by the end of the book. Samuel Moyn, writing for the Financial Times, similarly stated that "Holland shines in his panoramic survey of how disruptive Christianity was for the ethical and political assumptions that preceded it", though also criticizing how "the illustration of the conquest of the west by Christianity risks becoming so total that it explains everything and nothing. And he does so in an extremely interesting and readable manner, picking his historical periods and personages very judiciously to illustrate his thesis.Spartan warriors such as Leonidas whose people practiced eugenics and trained their children to kill undermenchen. Yet what distinguishes the Judeo-Christian idea of love from the romantic, erotic, touchy-feely sense it has acquired in modern times is that it has nothing to do with feeling. They were branded as rootless vagrants who delighted in being alien, and thus made a boast out of what should have been a source of shame.

The canon law argued that a matching principle that the poor had an entitlement to the necessities of life. The aim is twofold: to make the reader appreciate just how novel and uncanny were Christian teachings when they first appeared in the world; and to make ourselves, and all that we take for granted, appear similarly strange in consequence. There were downsides too, as the Crusades amply demonstrated, with Crusader Knights putting to sword those they conquered, often with Papal approval. His biography of Æthelstan, the first King of England, was published in 2016 under the Penguin Monarchs series, and his biography of Æthelflæd, England’s Forgotten Founder, was a Ladybird Expert Book published in 2019. What results is a controversial and persuasive historic narrative of Christianity and Christian theology brought home to Holland’s key themes that are generally not associated with Christianity.Holland makes the point that concern for the victims of earthquakes, famines and floods was disproportionately in Christendom, which also had the overwhelming concentration of international aid agencies.

He is the author of Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Persian Fire his history of the Graeco-Persian wars, won the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award in 2006; Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom, a panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000; In the Shadow of the Sword, which covers the collapse of Roman and Persian power in the Near East, and the emergence of Islam; and Dynasty, a portrait of Rome's first imperial dynasty. this argument — that everything Nice in our contemporary world derives from Christian values, and everything Nasty in the actual history of Christendom was just a regrettable diversion from the true Christian path — seems to me to run dangerously close to apologetic".Humanism, instead of springing from ancient Greek philosophy or Enlightenment thinking, "derives ultimately from claims made in the Bible: that humans are made in God's image; that his Son died equally for everyone; that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Yet critics of Holland's argument could also point non-Christian cultures and identify many more similarities in culture and thought that they enjoy with the West. It is an argument that doesn't seem too controversial once it is pointed out, but it does indeed need to be pointed out and some of the implications, as discussed in the book, are fascinating if for no other reason than that they make evident that what we might take for granted are not as axiomatic as we might assume. Indeed, his characterisation of St Paul does seem to be questionable in some areas and it is surprising that we hear more of Paul rather than of Christ himself even if Paul was a key transmitter of the Christian message.

Christianity is the most enduring and influential legacy of the ancient world, and its emergence the single most transformative development in Western history. average hourly wage with the cost of a suite at the Peninsula costing over two thousand dollars a night. Tom Holland’s Dominion recounts the history and impact of Christianity from the crucifixion of Jesus to the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”. His translation of Herodotus was published in 2013 by Penguin Classics and followed in 2016 by a history of Æthelstan published under the Penguin Monarchs series, and in 2019 Æthelflæd England's Forgotten Founder as a Ladybird Expert Book. For example, he mentions Hinduism and the practice of sati in the context of how secularism was introduced to India.Tom Holland succeeds in demonstrating how as Christianity spread, the principles and tenets were adopted by those converted, thus shaping their religious viewpoint. It was released to positive reviews, although some historians and philosophers objected to some of Holland's conclusions. Holland argues that all “western” moral and social norms are the product of the Christian revolution. Dominion clearly shows how significantly the western mind is in debt to the great well-springs of Jesus’s teachings and the subsequent actions of the many Christians who put their faith into practice to create the age of what Holland terms" modernitas".