Their crude chants and slogans have also found more eloquent echoes amongst elements of the continent’s intelligentsia. Right wing populist movements (including avowedly racist elements) have in recent years co-opted Christian symbolism (if not its theology and rituals) as shibboleths of European identity, primarily as an exclusionary mechanism for ‘otherising’ the Muslim interloper and in an attempt to instil a sense of unison in the native population. The effects of which might not have been so acute, however, had it not been for the sudden influx of those millions for whom morality was anything but relative and whose inexorable belief in scriptural authority perturbed and bewildered in equal measure. As the moral certitudes of yesteryear have found themselves supplanted by the vagaries of moral relativism the ensuing sense of anomie amongst Europe’s native (for want of a better word) populations has become ever more palpable. In an increasingly de-Christianised public landscape displays of Islamic religiosity and symbolism have grown ever more pronounced. Works of kulturkritik are rarely penned in vacuo and a true appraisal of Dominion, therefore, requires a consideration of its Sitz im Leben.Īs atheism has soared and birth rates plummeted amongst its ‘indigenous’ populations, Europe has, over the past thirty years, seen a commensurately steep rise in its Muslim population partly the result of immigration and partly due to the latter’s higher birth rates. ‘Religion’, ‘secular’, ‘atheist’: none of these are neutral…The West, increasingly empty though the pews may be, remains firmly moored to its Christian past.” Even to write about it in a Western language is to use words shot through with Christian. “Whether it be the conviction that the workings of conscience are the surest determinants of good law, or that Church and state exist as distinct entities, or that polygamy is unacceptable, its trace elements are to be found everywhere in the West. That modernity (and even post-modernity) as it is commonly understood in the West is a product of Christian assumptions not necessarily shared by other civilisations and that these continue to inspire and inform its moral precepts and social mores.
Holland’s central thesis is that the West, despite its loss of faith and abandonment of religious ritualism, remains nonetheless thoroughly Christian.
Tyrant unleashed dominion shard plus#
Amongst the dramatis personae are to be found several familiar names as well as others more obscure and in the remarkable historical breadth of Dominion one finds justification enough for expending the effort to plough through its 500 plus pages.
Poignant vignettes of saintliness and sacrifice coalesce with visceral anecdotes of barbarism, fanaticism, revolution and slaughter as the narrative sashays its way through the epochs before arriving at its post-modernist terminus. Those familiar with Holland’s oeuvre will already be acquainted with his extraordinary talent for fusing gripping story telling with historical narrative and his latest work, Dominion proves no exception.
0 kommentar(er)
