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Book Review: Dominion, by Tom Holland

Sunday, August 2nd, 2020

[ intro only by Charles Cameron — I’m delighted to welcome blog-friend Dr Omar Ali, who here reviews Tom Holland‘s book, Dominion — no, it’s not about Rushdoony-style Dominionism. This review was originally posted in our companion blog, Brownpundits !
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Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
Tom Holland
Basic Books
ISBN-13: 978-0465093502
$22.97 at Amazon
Brownpundits / Zenpundit Review by Dr Omar Ali

^^

Tom Holland started off writing vampire novels but moved on to non-fiction and has since written an excellent history of the Persian invasion of Greece, several books about the Romans, one about Islam and one about the slow rise of Christian Europe that started around 1000 AD; in retrospect at least, all his non-fiction books have had a hint of Christian Western European apologetics (some of it is probably well deserved reaction to the excesses of contemporary wokeness) but this book makes it explicit. Dominion is well written and well researched and he does make a lot of effort to include the nasty bits of Christian history, but in the end it IS a work of Christian apologetics, albeit from a modern liberal angle. Tom Holland’s basic thesis is that almost the entire set of “humanist” values modern liberals take for granted (universal human equality and dignity, separation of church and state, care for the weaker sections of society, suspicion of power, privilege and wealth, condemnation of slavery, cruelty and oppression, valorization of the weak and downtrodden, etc) is purely Christian in origin. No other civilization or culture had these values (or at least, foregrounded them in quite the same way as Christianity). For example, while some thinkers have always been unhappy with slavery, the abolition of slavery was a Christian effort through and through. True, the slave owners had their own Biblical justification for slavery, but those who opposed them did so on the basis of their Christian beliefs, and they won the argument.

Holland also insists that the most viciously anti-Christian progressive thinkers of the post-enlightenment era also turn out be using Christian values to attack Christianity. When Marx cries out against the oppression of the proletariat or Lennon sings “all you need is love”, they are really being more Christian than most Christians. Since Nietszche thought something similar (that liberalism is “Christianity without Christ”), he gets a lot of positive play in this book, which is a bit ironic, since he also regarded Christianity as something of a disease.

As expected, the book is well written and stylish, sometimes with too much style; I am not picky about such things but some readers may tire of all his little reveals (a new character is discussed without being named for a few lines, giving readers the opportunity to guess who he or she is, then revealed; this is done in practically every chapter). He has done his research and as far as I could tell, there were no glaring errors of fact. But while he is scrupulous about his facts, he is not shy of cherry picking and framing to fit his thesis. Nero is a pagan monster who killed his own wife and mother; Constantine, the first Christian emperor, also viciously killed his wife and son, but that does not reflect badly on Christianity. Terrible and cruel punishments in pagan Rome are a sign of paganism’s shorcomings, but terrible and cruel punishments inflicted by inquisitors and priests (and described in horrifying detail in this book) are not Christian shorcomings (the thought is that eventually Christian Europe gave them up; why they were given up in a time of anti-clerical and even anti-Christian upheaval and not when the Church was at its mightiest, is assigned to Christian values taking 1800 years to make their mark, and then doing so surreptitiously). By the time the book gets to the modern world the thesis really begins to look like one of those Hindutvvadi posts about how everything was invented in India; no matter what any activists themselves may say, Tom Holland knows their beliefs and motivations are entirely Christian. This is probably partly true, but leaves open the question of where Christianity itself comes from. Unless one believes the Son of God thing, the explanation is likely to be that some mix of human nature and human history created Christianity, just at it created every other ideology. So why stop at Paul (or Christ if you prefer)? Everythying in this world seems to be derived from some combination of earlier things, why not Christianity? And why believe that the same results would not have arisen (somewhere, at some point) even if there had never been a Christ or a Paul? Maybe those impulses are also human universals, and can and do arise repeatedly, not just as an episode in the history of Jewish superstition? And of course there is always the possibility that some of this progress is not really progress at all, but a mistake. Especially with the “woke”, it is by no means universally agreed that they are a good thing, so crediting all of their values to Christ may not be a winning move for Christianity.

Anyway, I don’t find his thesis completely wrong; the tension between certain Christian values and various vicious aspects of Christian society is real and those values did lead some Christians to take up the cause of diverse oppressed groups, most spectacularly and successfully, against slavery. Economic explanations of why the British empire not only abolished slavery but expended diplomatic capital, real money and military might to stop the trade of slaves by others, are not sufficient, and are an insult to the memory of countless Quakers and other good Christians who made it their life’s work to fight the good fight and succeeded to the point that no modern society regards slavery as an acceptable institution anymore. But Holland insists that Christianity is the ONLY source of most of our modern liberal notions, which seems a bit of a strech. It is also not a unique claim. In fact, there are books written about how the Jews created modern rights, or Islam did, or for that matter, the Native Americans did; and of course Sufis take TomHollandism to another level, with a secret brotherhood using everyone from Abraham and Moses to Ghazali and Rumi to insert progressive ideas into human culture. But the most glaring omission in this book is the “Eastern Religions”; the entire book start and ends in the Middle East and Western Europe (Eastern Christianity gets no love either) and the ideas of India and China are dismissed practically without examination. Mahavir, Buddha, the authors of the Upanishads, the philosophers and thinkers of China, none find any mention in this book or get any credit for any human advance. On the other hand, the Christian West did have a disproportionate role in creating the modern world (for better and for worse), so he does have a case, but maybe not as strong a case as advertised.

But irrespective of what you think of his basic thesis, the book is still a great read. Tom Holland writes well, reads widely and has an eye for fascinating anecdotes that every reader can enjoy even if he or she does not agree with the underlying thesis. In fact, if you do NOT agree with this thesis you should especially read the book to see how well your preferred theory stands up against a well written Christian version. If he is wrong, why is he wrong? Trying to answer that question should be a fruitful exercise for anyone. Well worth reading.

QUOTES

“It is the audacity of it—the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth. Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been. It is manifest in the great surge of conversions that has swept Africa and Asia over the past century; in the conviction of millions upon millions that the breath of the Spirit, like a living fire, still blows upon the world; and, in Europe and North America, in the assumptions of many more millions who would never think to describe themselves as Christian. All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution that has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross.”

“In a city famed for its wealth, Paul proclaimed that it was the ‘low and despised in the world, mere nothings, who ranked first. Among a people who had always celebrated the agon, the contest to be the best, he announced that God had chosen the foolish to shame the wise, and the weak to shame the strong. In a world that took for granted the hierarchy of human chattels and their owners, he insisted that the distinctions between slave and free, now that Christ himself had suffered the death of a slave, were of no more account than those between Greek and Jew.”

Predictable, enormously surprising

Friday, February 7th, 2020

[ by Charles Cameron — read these in sequence and tremble — with a brief note on impeachment ]
.

Here:

  • New Yorker, Citing climate change, BlackRock will start moving away from fossil fuels
  • New Yorker, Will Big Business Finally reckon with the Climate Crisis?
  • World Economic Forum, The Global Risks Report 2020
  • BlackRock, A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance
  • Guardian, European Investment Bank to phase out fossil fuel financing
  • IEEFA, The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for oil and gas
  • **

    Climate scientists caught on first, then the military, and now financial risk analysts. Meanwile, Mitt Romney spoke his conscience to the Senate on impeachment. Things are shifting: if BlackRock and IEEFA were the jurors, with a dime of every dollar in the world at stake, President trump might not like their verdict.

    32, let’s begin with Her Majesty’s hat

    Sunday, March 31st, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron — hat and flag, insecurity clearances, quantum physics and what it tells us about truth and spin, paris, city of lovers, sex, scandal naturellement, and would you believe it, treason? ]
    .

    Brexit. Her Majesty’s hat draws a clear parallel, but is it a metaphor?

    That was the hat HM wore for the 2017 Queen’s Speech to the joint Houses of Parliament — and we have no reason to suppose her opinion has changed since then. Visual DoubleQuote courtesy of Federica Cocco

    And then…

    I mean, what a nightmare…

    **

    But then, you can’t always trust the facts:

    I mean, news these daze:

    Spin corresponds to fact, like the hands of a stopped clock, twice a day.. (thanks, Wolfram)

    Here’s some detail from the Ars Technical piece:

    You, however, are in a box and cannot report your measurements to me. Instead, I have to measure your state to discover the result of your measurement.

    So what we have here, if I might say so, is a case of Matryoshka measurements..

    That means you are in a superposition state of having measured a vertical or horizontal photon, even after you have made the measurement. I can measure your state, and we end up with two sensible outcomes: you measure horizontal, and I measure you to have measured horizontal; you measure vertical and I measure you to have measured vertical.

    But there are two more possibilities: you measure horizontal, but I measure you to have measured vertical, and you measure vertical, but I measure you to have measured horizontal. If the second measurement is governed by quantum mechanics, those two are just as likely to occur as the sensible outcomes. So half the time, the measurement result you obtain contradicts my measurement of your measurement.

    Got it?

    If not read, the whole article, then read it again. Frown. You’ll get it.

    There is nothing wrong with either measurement, and there is no calculation that we can perform to resolve the contradiction.**

    **

    Reading an account of the Al Franken affair, focused on the questions of piling on (scapegoating?)nand equal justice for accuser and accused — two sports metaphors:

    Fellow Democratic senators quickly entered the scrum as they fought to be next in line to proclaim outrage and demand he should go.

    One of the most disturbing aspects of #MeToo is that watching someone get destroyed in real time has become something of a sport.

    In the course of reading in and around that article, I ran across this brilliant visual DoubleQuoting of the Christine Blasey Ford / Brett Kavanaugh matter:

    On such balance we may project each our suppositions: but to have achieved such balance!

    **
    And so to my dialysis viewing:

    Hardball, 3/29/2019:

    Julia Ainsley:

    He [Barr] doesn’t have blinders on, he knows the public criticism here..

    David Corn:

    It doesn’t look like he’s playing Even Stephen here..

    Zerlina Maxwell [on Barr making decisions ahead of release of Mueller report]: I look at this situation almost like the track and field runner that’s running down the hoe stretch, and they put their arms over their head, and then they’re crossed at the finish line..

    .. this feels like a premature victory lap

    Chris M:Well, David, Zerlina caught me .. with that visual of the President of the United States, this particular one, running a hundred yard dash. I don’t think that would be his event. I think riding a golf cart would be his event.

    .. that must be the sound of a bus going over you ..


    Chris M [ourob]:

    How can a white person [ie Hillary Clinton] bea racist agfainst white people?

    [ but cf “self-hating Jews”]

    With anyb luck, I’ll get access to a complete Hardball video for 3/29/2019 and be able to find the chyrons “DeVos grilled’ (42); Trump “overriding” (43); and “Trump questioned” (50)

    I have a note, “that’s the inverse of what’s true” which is a superb example of reverse (pos-neg) symmetry, cf the spy vs spy image in a recent post).. There was also a ref to David Ignatius, How the mysteries of Khashoggi’s murder have rocked the U.S.-Saudi partnership

    **

    Then there was the Green New Deal, with Chris Hayes:

    Seb Gorka: They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamed of and never achieved.

    AOC: I expected a little more nuance..

    It’s surreal ..

    No more disposable people, no more disposable places ..

    Ref:

    A Green New Deal Is Technologically Possible. Its Political Prospects Are Another Question.

    **

    Rachel Maddow 3/29/3019:

    Rachel re Barr:

    It was kind of him free-styling, this was him showing off his dance moves ..

    Now, tonight, it appears there’s a little bit of panic in the disco, because now William Barr has released yet another unexpected, taken it upon himself, ad lib, figuring it out as he goes along letter ..

    **

    Let’s close with this stunning image by Stephane De Sakutin / AFP / Getty:

    A mold of the Genie de la Patrie damaged during a “yellow vest” protest at the Arc de Triomphe in December is seen during its renovation by the French restorer Agnes Le Boudec in Paris on March 25, 2019.

    Twenty of, plenty of chyrons, metaphors, etc

    Monday, March 11th, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron — we’re talking Beto and sharp knives, Dem contenders and their clown car, Amazon and knee-capping, the Founders and game shows — loyalty above brains — & ending with the Brexit endgame ]
    .

    Peggy Noonan said on MSNBC Friday morning, quite unexpectedly, to work is to pray — known to me in Latin as laborare est orare, a graceful phrasing indeed.

    **

    “HE’S NEVER REALLY BEEN HIT FROM THE LEFT BEFORE”
    Progressives are ready to paint O’Rourke as a lightweight elitist, a poseur who is out of touch with the crucial Democratic-primary electorates.

    Hitting is one thing, running, sharpened knives and Achilles heels are quite another. And then there’s lightweight.

    And there’s an extraordinarily rich mix of metaphors in this para — and article:

    It’s been a decorous war so far. Sure, some criminal-justice reform advocates have dinged Senator Kamala Harris for her years as a tough district attorney and state attorney general. And Senator Amy Klobuchar continues to absorb shots from anonymous former staffers about her abusive management style. But the 12 declared candidates themselves are still gushing respect for one another. That’s partly because it’s early in the game, and they are focused on building their own name recognition; partly it’s because President Donald Trump is such a massive target and villain. “In 2016, Hillary versus Bernie was a wrestling match,” a senior adviser for one of the leading 2020 contenders says. “And in a wrestling match, you have to size up your opponent and think about your strengths in relation to their weaknesses and vice versa. This one is truly a race. But in a race with, like, 35 cars coming up to the starting line, it is about staying in your lane and going faster than everybody else.”

    **

    Also:

    “WHY THE HECK NOT?”: DEMOCRATS AREN’T DONE PACKING THE 2020 CLOWN CAR
    Brown is out, but Swalwell and Moulton still want in. Can they break out of the pack or will they be lost in the shuffle?

    Virality, that magic elixir that made Beto O’Rourke into a household name, is unpredictable. Democratic voters, who are caught in a tug-of-war between the party’s left and centrist wings, are still undecided.

    Clown car is a spectacular Shriner ref, eh? And there’s a pack and a shuffle in the subtitle, but I’m thinking the pack is a pack of hounds, not the kind of pack you shuffled.

    **

    I’m thinking nepotism is a variant on the ouroborosserpent-dad bites nephew-serpent‘s tail, or vice versa — only in this case, it’s son-in-law..

    **

    **

    I have only the briefest of notes from my dialysis session 3/8/2019:

    Meet the Press :

    MTP had a chyron regarding Cohen & credibility @ m38.
    there’s a good segment @ m47.
    two quotes:
    President Trump, the Projector-in-Chief ..
    m51: the longer he’s not in the line of fire {Biden] ..

    There was mention of this Axios header with its ouroboros overkill:

    **

    Melber:

    Amazon .. is not going to be knee-capping everyone ..
    They bully towns, cities, states, all around tthe counrty ..
    The problem is the hunger games ..
    The problem we’ve got right now is a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington ..
    the kill zone

    Hardball

    Chris M:

    You know, when you’re winning a game of eight-ball in pool, don’t scratch ..

    A bit obvious, but for the record, race:

    Chris M:

    You’re not winning if you’re playing defense ..

    **

    All In Chris Hayes:

    Carol Lam:

    On the one side people dangling the possibility of a pardon and on the other side people angling for the possibility of a pardon ..

    Chris:

    You can’t help but feel that we’re watching in public these flags being sent back and forth..

    Ian Bassin:

    And the Presiudent is essentially treating pardons like some sort of reality show prize, right? But this is not The Apprentice, and the Founders did not intend the Presidency to be a game show

    game show *****

    Jamie Raskin:

    .. public tweets and statements he [DJT] was making, which were like little valentines sent to Paul Manafort ..

    There’s a fox for every hen-house in Washington ..

    Jane Mayer:

    There’s such an open kind of a feedback loop there, I don’t actually think that that’s going to change because Bill Shine is leaving ..

    Alex Witt 3/9/2019:

    I’m actually borrowing chyrons from two versions of Witt’s program here:

    Anon: I am of the opinion that only Jesus should be signing Bibles ..

    The authorship of the Bible — ta biblia, the books, in Greek — is a vexed question: was it written by God, or men — or maybe angels? Was the Torah / Pentateuch written by Moses, or by the so-called Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly writers? Were the Gospels written by the authors to whom they are attributed? John certainly differs notably from the “Synoptics” — Matthew, Mark and Luke.. and each appears to have different audiences and emphases..

    To cut a long story short, the authorship of the Bible can be attributed either to a cluster of dead men or to an ever-living God — but in neither case is Donald Trump the author: not even close.

    The pardon playbook might have come into play with Cohen, or perhaps Manafort? And this next one’s for Rep. Ilhan Omar:

    Anon: There’s no question but this [anti-Semitism, anti-Israel, anti-Netanyahu &c] is a political minefield ..

    John Harwood:

    Donald Trump is the White House Communications Director, and the revolving cast of characters is just the people he brings in to do some of the ministerial duties below him ..

    I didn’t capture it, but there was a “Simmering frustration” chyron towards the end ..

    **

    Misc oddment: war of words .. — there’d be plenty of examples.

    **

    MSNBC LIVE Up with David Gura 3/9/19:

    A devastating sequence:

    **

    Let this be our endgame for the day — personally, I’d like to end Brexit now:

    Umpires, Brexit, and the State of the Union

    Thursday, January 31st, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron — the UK looks to be teetering over the White Cliffs of Dover, with 22 miles of channel separating them from the rest of Europe — and a hard border with Éire ]
    .

    There are few more tumultuous games on earth than the British House of Commons, with its two sides lobbying and lobbing insults at one another, while the no-side-works-for-me cross-benchers face the no-side-I’ve-retired-from-the-fray Speaker across the length of the chamber, no doubt relishing the spectacle but, in the Speaker‘s case, regulating it with roars of “Order, order!!!”

    And fray it is, glorious in its freedom, so wild as to demand frequent pruning — the Speaker, in the New Yorker‘s words, “presides over whatever fare — technical, listless, boorish, crazed — is unfolding in the chamber at a given moment. The House may be full with paper-waving cries of “Foul!” “Fiend!” Recant!” or even these days, I suppose, “Repent” — we do live, after all, in a remorselessly secular age..

    **

    But then..

    Pattern recognition: there seems to be a pattern of Speakers disinviting Donald Trump.

    **

    Sources:

  • NYorker, Is the Speaker of the House of Commons Trying to Stop Brexit?
  • WaPo, Sorry, judges, we umpires do more than call balls
  • WHOtv, Speaker Pelosi Tells President Trump State of the Union Won’t Happen
  • Dates and Times:

  • te [re-invited] State of the Union is scheduled for 6.00pm Pacific, Tuesday, February 5
  • the Superbowl is 3.30pm Eastern, Sunday, February 3rd
  • Brexit will occur in un-negotiated form if nothing stops it, at 11pm GMT, Friday, March 29.

  • One way or another, fun times ahead..

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