By: Mathieu Yuill on December 7, 2024
For two years, I didn’t have a home. Not in the figurative “I’m searching for where I belong” sense, but in the very real, very cold “I have no idea where I’ll sleep tonight” sense. I became an expert at overstaying my welcome on friends’ couches, right up until the moment I could feel the…
By: Todd E Henley on December 5, 2024
As I prepared to delve into Dominion, two words resonated deeply within me: Adam Harris. As I settled into my seat next to him on that train departing from Oxford, he gently nudged me to read Dominion. It was clear how much it resonated with him. Later that year, he shared in class how a…
By: Tim Clark on December 3, 2024
I’m sitting alone at my computer, shaking my head, and laughing. After 2 years of inspectionally reading books, I’m staring at a thick and dense volume that virtually defies me to engage it with the efficient approach I learned in this program. We’re not ending our semester—and our whole series of lead mentor classes—with a…
By: Adam Harris on December 2, 2024
About a year ago, I came across an article proclaiming Aayan Hirsi Ali as a Christian now. I only knew her as an outspoken ex-Muslim atheist from the books I had read. She has been considered the fifth horsemen of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse. As I listened to her interview outlining her…
By: Russell Chun on December 2, 2024
Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono (Hawaiian) “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. – Hawaii state motto. Part 1 Introduction Part 2 What my peers are saying Part 3 What Holland Says Himself Part 4 What I learned Epilogue Part 1 Introduction In his book Dominion: The…
By: Scott Dickie on December 2, 2024
Tom Holland’s book, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, (1) is an expansive review of Christianity’s influence in our world over the past 2000 years. It is detailed, comprehensive, objective, humbling and compelling. And for the vast majority of readers, Holland’s task is like trying to explain water to a fish: ‘This is just…
By: Kally Elliott on December 2, 2024
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing…
By: Dinka Utomo on December 2, 2024
When I was a teenager, I used to think that people outside of Christianity saw Christianity with only one face, namely, as a religion full of goodness. In the mind of a teenager like me at that time, I felt great pride because I believed that many people must think that Christianity is noble. After…
By: Jenny Dooley on December 2, 2024
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland, is a fitting book to end our extensive reading list. Holland writes a compelling and insightful history of how Christianity has influenced the world. He asserts that even those who reject the faith live out the unmistakable principles of Christianity. Conversely, he exposes the…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on December 2, 2024
Pierce and Abbey Lane How do you capture a portion of a book that tells such a comprehensive story? Well, you write about the subject that you are most interested in, drawn to. For me, it was a choice between two, The Apocalypse and Love. I know that sounds strange, well maybe not so strange…
By: Pam Lau on December 2, 2024
“When contemplating how the Wisdom of God had entered the womb of a woman, and been born a baby, and cried for milk, the paradox of it all was too much for even him,”[1] Abraham Kuyper was born in 1837 in the Dutch town of Maasluis and served as a minister in the Dutch National…
By: Kim Sanford on December 2, 2024
Here goes, the last blog post of our LGP journey (calamari!) Knowing that Tom Holland’s Dominion was waiting for us at the end of this semester, I’ve noticed his name popping up seemingly everywhere I look for the past couple of months. First, I saw his book on a friend’s bookshelf. Then he was discussed…
By: John Fehlen on December 2, 2024
A couple weeks ago I stood in the pulpit and made a confession: I absolutely hate playing board games. I’d rather have my teeth cleaned and drilled into, which I should know because I just had that done recently, for two hours straight, all because I hadn’t been to the dentist in over 4 years!…
By: Jennifer Vernam on December 2, 2024
The stories societies tell reflect their cultural values and expectations. If I were living in Greece or Rome at the time of Christ’s birth, here are some of the stories of gods who might have been retold in my local temple: Prometheus[1], a god of fire, who, dared to defy the gods and share fire…
By: Esther Edwards on December 2, 2024
Tonight we honored friends of ours as they celebrated the anniversary of the church they planted twenty years ago. Today it is a thriving congregation that has planted a host of churches and continues to reach out locally and globally. We have been in the trenches as friends throughout these many years weathering highs and…
By: Jana Dluehosh on December 2, 2024
Ten years ago, at my church on the north side of Portland, we had a “mission” moment. This moment of mission was not what I had expected. It was not missionaries from some foreign country or inner-city project; it was different than I had ever heard. Three young women got up from their pew and…
By: Cathy Glei on December 2, 2024
“Inevitably, to attempt the tracing of Christianity’s impact on the world is to cover the rise and fall of empires, the actions of Bishops and kings, the arguments of theologians, the course of revolutions, the planting of crosses around the world. It is, in particular, to focus on the doings of men, yet that hardly…
By: Travis Vaughn on December 2, 2024
A “theory of everything”[1] behind how we think. A “freakonomics”[2] for the Western world. These were phrases that came to mind as I read Tom Holland’s 2019 book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade The World. To locate what’s underneath our culture’s values and moral framework, Holland asks, “How was it that a cult inspired…
By: Mathieu Yuill on November 23, 2024
When was the last time your plans went exactly as expected? If you’re anything like me, the answer is probably never. The world doesn’t work that way. It’s messy, unpredictable, and full of surprises—the good, the bad, and the bewildering. And yet, so much of our leadership training, our organizational structures, even how we run…
By: Jana Dluehosh on November 21, 2024
I met my husband in Chicago. We both worked in residence life at North Park University and were in Seminary together. I love big cities, the chaos, the unpredictability, and the order, especially Chicago, where everything is in a grid. When we started dating, as all dating people do, you take an interest in their…
