Dominion

Beforehand I vaguely knew that the argument was that lots of things about our society which we don’t think of as Christian derive from Christianity, and this was sometimes summarised as ‘and so we are all Christian really’ - this latter summary always annoying me.

He does make the first claim, but rarely backs it up. He occasionally makes a comment about how something is ‘drinking deep from Christian roots really’ but sometimes it’s not clear why he thinks that.

A takeaway about Christianity which was interesting, is that it is distinguished (1) by its belief that we are all created in the image of God and therefore all worthy of dignity, (2) by its reverence for the status of slave and oppressed, because its deity died a slave death, and (3) its presumptions of universality. All three of which were entirely novel to the world it arrived into, and have probably been responsible for a lot of its success.

That said, the book is also a reminder of just how much energy has been wasted on all of this.