If you hastily grab a copy of Tom Holland’s Dominion from Waterstones, only to reach into your bag and gaze in profound confusion at Alice Roberts’s Domination, you can’t be blamed too much. Quite apart from the similarity of the names, they address the same fundamental question: how did Christianity come to be the dominant force in Western culture?
It’s a fascinating subject, and in the hands of a more capable or objective writer, it would have made for a gripping book. Unfortunately, Roberts is Vice President of Humanists UK, and the book is written as a thinly veiled and poorly researched polemic against Christianity. I can save readers a great deal of time here — her view is that Christianity’s success was due to its usefulness to elites, and that its members were primarily motivated by the desire for wealth and power. That is a precise summary of her view, and at no point in the book does it become more nuanced or complex than that.
I am a keen fan of popular history, and of grand narratives. But Robert’s book is a perfect example of where it goes wrong. She is not an historian or even an archeologist. She has no education in the humanities and is essentially self-taught. I would not bring these facts up if she had written a book that was original but somewhat flawed. Instead, she has done what self-taught people so often do — reproduced a garbled partial version of well-trodden arguments and themes.
Worse, she presents this distorted picture as if it were novel, and personally discovered by the iconoclastic mind of Professor Alice Roberts. She explicitly suggests to her readers that she is breaking new ground: “I was astonished by the answers I found. I was also surprised by how many people had been looking at this question in various different scholarly fields, while barriers between these disciplines seemed to have prevented the exchange of ideas, making it difficult to reach a holistic, integrated answer. (Some people are clearly trying to join up the conversation, but there also seems to be some resistance.)”
It isn’t uncommon to present an old story in the manner of a new discovery, and it’s certainly a style that Professor Roberts will be familiar with from the manipulative art of documentary filmmaking. Yet this goes far beyond fresh-faced faux-ignorance next to burial mounds, and descends into Dan Brown levels of “they don’t want you to know the truth”. Roberts goes on to suggest that “What I hadn’t anticipated when I set out was that quite so many myths would be uncovered, exposed and pierced in the course of my enquiry: myths of humble origins, asceticism, pacifism – and the popular narrative that Christianity was ever about questioning the status quo, or challenging ‘the establishment’. Come along with me, then, as I delve into this archaeology and history – and lift the veil on secrets that have been hidden in plain sight.”
“Hidden in plain sight” is enough to set alarm bells off in suspicious brains, and so it should. There are few periods or topics about which as much has been written as the rise of Christianity in the ancient world, or its relationship to the Roman Empire and political power. It has been the subject of continual debate, including as it was happening. The claim that “holistic, integrated” scholarship has not been done is simply nonsense. Peter Brown, author of numerous works on this exact subject of huge breadth, readability and originality, is only the most obvious of counter-examples. Strangely, Peter Brown is referenced only once, in relation to charitable giving, and is left out of the “selected references” section altogether. Cynicism about the role of the Church in antiquity is not new ground either, whether coming from pagan critics, or later scholars like Montesquieu or Gibbon. Indeed, much of Robert’s narrative and arguments appear to be little different than ones presented more capably and expansively in a 2023 book by Peter Heather, who Roberts quotes approvingly. There is nothing wrong with reproducing prior scholarship in a punchy popular book, but it should preclude implying that you alone have pierced a 2000 year old veil of deceit.
The book spends a lot of time shadowboxing with an opponent that never steps into the light: the argument that, as Roberts puts it, Christianity “spread because of some sort of inherent spiritual and psychological superiority over all other cults and religions”. Roberts rejects this argument, and very obviously has Tom Holland in mind, but never quotes him, references him or names him. The argument is not unique to him, of course, but Domination fails to grapple with any version of the argument, and in the process doesn’t really make its own.
The book jumps around from example to example, ranging widely in time and space to show the intimate links between Christianity and temporal power, and its ultimate continuity with imperial politics. Despite the itinerancy of this approach, it is convincing, because the relationship between Christianity and power is a matter of utterly uncontested historical fact. This basic reality has never been forgotten or obscured by fond myth-making. Catholic historian Christopher Dawson made the continuity between Empire and Church the central theme of his great book The Formation of Christendom. Catholic theologian Erik Peterson explicitly relates Christian liturgy to imperial court ceremonial.
There is no “gotcha” moment, no secret to be unearthed, no new ground to break for the sceptical writer. But in her desperate hunt to find one, Roberts allows herself to descend into self-parody. She sets out, amongst other things, to puncture the “myth of asceticism”. It’s trivially easy to show that Christian bishops generally lived the good life, or that many Christians were well off urbanites. But faced with extreme and extraordinarily well documented examples of extreme Christian courage and self-denial, Roberts has to get creative. You or I might think that Celtic monks huddling in remote islands fasting half the year were pretty unambiguously ascetic, but monks were members of “the social elite”, their isolation merely “relative”, and they were seeking “the iconic status of celebrity”.
According to Roberts: “Strip away the religious aspect and what we see is the same wealthy, powerful families helping each other, competing with each other, periodically fighting each other, conspiring to hold onto their status and influence: bishops, abbots, kings – round and round it goes.”
Even poor Simon Stylities was just in it for the fame: “he’s said to have climbed the pillar in order to get away from people, but he clearly wanted his asceticism to be seen.”
It’s a breathtaking level of cynicism, and it makes for a historical narrative that is both boringly flat and highly selective. You cannot “strip away the religious aspect” and no serious or truthful historian would do so. Getting up on a pillar sounds like attention seeking, but only because Roberts passes hurriedly on without giving us the details. Simon, unlike the “social elites” she emphasises, was a poor shepherd who entered a monastery at a young age. Whilst there he engaged in such extreme fasting and penance that the community judged he should become a hermit. Seeking ever greater penance and isolation, he eventually chose to live on a pillar, where he is described as enduring extraordinary torment, and perpetually praying, up until the hour of his death. The idea that someone would endure all this for a fame that he would never cash in on for money, power or sexual success, or even encounter outside of the wide-eyed faces of Syrian peasants spotted from a distance, is so absurd that it is almost indescribable.
One does not have to be an unsceptical apologist to see that the motives of ascetics must be spiritual. Gibbon casts no doubt at all on the religious motives of what he calls a “voluntary martyrdom”, yet is if anything far harsher in his attack of Simon, writing that “A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished the monks of every age and country: their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition.”.
It’s a pity that Roberts didn’t spend longer with Simon. The basic story (which she presents as a personal discovery) of Christianity stepping into the breach of a failing empire is a powerful and moving one. But it isn’t a story that’s just about power-mongering and personal ambition. When powerful regional leaders deserted the Syrian countryside for the cities, locals had to turn to other figures as sources of arbitration and authority. Simon may indeed have wanted to be seen, but perhaps out of a sense of charity and duty rather than celebrity. According to Peter Brown, local people regularly sought his advice and judgement. Simon controlled no lands, ruled over no monks, and had no formal authority. He was not an upper class Roman nobleman in the heart of imperial power like Ambrose or Augustine. His judgement was sought and valued entirely because of his faith and asceticism.
She misses the essential reality: that Christianity acquired political and economic power because of its transformational message
Robert’s central argument that we should dismiss “purely cultural explanations for Christianity’s success” fails so profoundly because she advocates in its place a purely political explanation for its success. She misses the essential reality: that Christianity acquired political and economic power because of its transformational message. At a time when the Republic was centuries dead, and the Emperor and his magistrates had become remote, inaccessible figures, Christian leaders were as available to their public as the old consuls and senators of Rome had been. The Roman elite might be well represented in the leadership of the Church, but they were rubbing elbows with slaves and plebeians every Sunday in a context of spiritual and moral equality.This is all profoundly political, but it’s a political revolution that is unimaginable without the underlying theology. Christianity acquired ever more power because it is morally and spiritually exceptional, and whether you frame this exceptionalism positively or negatively, you cannot plausibly deny it.
Domination is precisely an attempt to deny this reality, and as a consequence it is a deeply confused work, one lacking in the rhetorical power and coherence of Dawkins or Hitchens. The reader is left continually waiting for a satisfactory explanation as to why Christians were able to displace hundreds of ancient and highly successful cults and establish an entirely new civilisation. The truth, presumably, is out there — because it’s certainly not in the pages of Domination.
