Historian Tom Holland: Islam, Christianity & the West

We are living through a great choke point in the history of this country. What you saw in twenty twenty and its aftermath. was a deeply Christian movement. The institutional character of Christianity is is is often rejected as part of the problem, a part of what has to be rejected, even though it is that institutional structure that has provided people with the ideological framework that enables them to judge it as evil. Essentially what Christianity has that Islam does not.

is a concept of the secular. Islam is a a totalizing way of leading your life. I think Islam is uniquely indigestible for a a a secular mindset. And people don't want to admit that. If you've ever wanted to ask one of our guests a question, now's your chance. Members get ad-free extended and early access episodes. Plus, they can submit questions for upcoming interviews. Click the link in the description of this episode or go to triggerpod.co.uk to join us.

Tom Holland, welcome back to Trigonometry. Thanks very much for having me back. Uh it's been a while. It's great to have you back on the show. In the meantime, by the way, you and Dominic, uh who's also a recent guest of ours, have had tremendous success. So congratulations on the rest of his history. It's absolutely crushing. How are you handling your newfound fame? Oh, I'm struggling. I'm really struggling. It's amazing. I mean it um uh

We never in a million years imagined that there was quite the appetite for history that there is. And so I'm happy not just for myself, not just for Dominic. But for um history lovers everywhere that they can be reassured that history it really does seem to to kind of

tick people's boxes in a way that I had never, ever expected that it did. Well th there are a lot of memes online that by the time you're forty years old, if you're male, this is i a man by the time he's forty, he's either gotta pick World War Two or Roman history. Like you don't have a choice really.

We like both. So it's great to have you on today. We're I think that the the the meme I always had was that um no male after the age of forty reads a novel and so maybe they turn to not to to non fiction and history perhaps is a kind of obvious And I kind of slightly sense that in myself. I read far fewer novels than I did. That's really true actually,'cause I used to I used to read I was quite a voracious reader of novels and the older I get, the more I veer towards nonfiction.

Yeah, so I I was um chair of the Society of Authors and they prepared a report on this, the gender imbalance. How it operated. Um, and they c kind of th they dug into the stats, and it was genuinely the case that the older men get. the less likely enough to read fiction. Um, which as a non fiction writer was obviously good news for me. It is indeed. Well, look, it's great to have you on. Um your last book, uh Dominions, we we talked about it last time.

Uh, but it's something we wanna come back to a little bit in this conversation and talk about.

uh the history of of Christianity but also Islam you've written about too.

Uh, but starting with Christianity, I mean the thesis of your book essentially is that Christianity is the soup we swim in, uh in in the Western world. Yeah, it's the water we're goldfish and th and Christianity is essentially the water that we're swimming in. Mm. Uh and um Talk to us because one of the things I think very few people now understand is how remarkable the mentality shift that came with Christianity was and how different Christian civilization

is to the pre Christian civilization in terms of its values, in terms of the things that it thought were important, in terms of the things that it believed about, you know, human beings and how they ought to act and what they ought to value and so on. Yeah. I I mean it is radically different. Um but just to to um uh presage what I'm gonna say about that, by pointing out that obviously nothing comes from nothing.

Christianity emerges from a particular matrix that you get in first century AD Mediterranean. There are all kinds of influences on it.

um the the the the Jewish most obviously, but also Greek, Persian and the fact that it is born into the Roman Empire. I I think without the Roman Empire it would not have happened. Um and on the topic of the Roman Empire, I guess the The the clearest demonstration of the the vibe shift, if you want to call it that, is to look at the the classic emblem of Christianity, which is the cross. And the cross is um for the Romans. Um it's an expression of their right.

to torture to death anyone who opposes their rule. It is the fate that is visited particularly paradigmatically on slaves. because it is the most agonizing but also the most humiliating form of death imaginable. Um you are stripped naked. So you know, if you think of pictures of Christ on the cross, he usually has a loincloth. He wouldn't have had a loincloth. He would have you know, it would all have been exposed.

Um, and you are nailed or hung by ropes or suspended in a wide variety of ways. There's no kind of set way of crucifying someone. Um and you are then a kind of public spectacle. You're like a kind of billboard advertising um the power of the state that has put you there. Um and you can be you know, you can't ward the birds off as they flock around your eyes and peck them out. Um, you're constantly levering yourself up and down to try and keep your breath.

um your suffering and your agony is on absolutely public display and perhaps when you die you're left there like a slab of meat. So it is An excruciating, agonizing, horrific death. And

What Christianity does is to turn that value system on its head and to say that the person who is crucified triumphs over the person who's crucified him. And The scale of that value shift, I think, is illustrated by the way in which, in the early decades and centuries of Christianity, The fact that Jesus died on the cross is a cause of deep Anxiety or at least embarrassment.

To Christians who are talking about it. So the earliest Christian writer that we have, the earliest evidence for Christianity, written evidence, is um Paul. And in his letters, he he situates the death of Christ on the cross. at the centre of what he is preaching, but he is also kind of embarrassed about it. And so he says that um to uh to the the Jews or the Judeans, as I I'd rather cause them.

Um it's it's a stumbling block, his message. But to everybody else, the to the Greeks and and to the Romans, it's just madness. And the reason for that is that what f for for the Romans what Paul is preaching, um, the idea that a man can also be a god, I mean that's n that's that's not news because Julius Caesar had become a god. Augustus is worshipped as a god. That's not the madness of it. The madness is the idea that someone who had suffered this death

that paradigmatically is visited on slaves is a god. That's the the lunacy of it. And you sense that Paul is, you know, constantly trying to preempt objections.

to that that kind of position of madness. And it's something that continues throughout Christian writings throughout the second century, into the third century. And even when Constantine in the beginning of the fourth century uh converts to Christianity and Christianity starts to emerge as the uh you know as something that is first of all permitted and then becomes um kind of the the the the state ideology, there's still a reluctance to illustrate

Christ on the cross. And when you so there's um there's a an ivory casket in the British Museum. Which illustrates various scenes from the Passion. And you have Jesus on the cross there. He looks unbelievably buff. Um, he's got he's got his loincloth on and it he he looks like um He looks well he looks like an athlete. Um he looks like someone who's winning first prize in the Olympics. He he looks yeah, well he looks like a footballer.

You know, he's kind of toned, he's muscular, he's relaxed, he's got this kind of completely mellow expression on his face. He does not look like someone who's worried about birds coming and pecking out his eyeballs. Um and so even there. You still don't have the artist is reluctant to portray the reality of crucifixion.

And it's not for another 500 years, not until just before the first millennium, that you you get the first representations of Christ dead on the cross. And then over the course of the Middle Ages, so the High Middle Ages, um the c the culture of Latin Christendom

Becomes increasingly obsessed with the sufferings of Christ. So it's portrayed in art, but it's also in the liturgy, it's in prayers, it's um it it dominates the Christian imagination. And I think that the long-term consequence of that is that we as a civilization, people growing up in in a world still powerfully informed by Christianity, we'd be d being desensitized to what the cross represents. You know, we see it

as a kind of abstract expression of Christianity. We don't stop to think that's that. You know, people have said oh it's like having, you know, the electric chair as a symbol of your feet. There's something of that. But but but it is much, much worse to be crucified than to die in the electric chair.

Uh Tom, come back with me to uh what you said earlier, uh which I thought fascinating'cause we talked about the moral inversion, the flipping of morality almost. And what we mean by this is effectively in the in the s in the civilization in which Jesus was born and lived, y the idea was that it you know, it was the strong

conquer and win and the weak suffer what they must, or whatever that phrase is, effectively, right? It's the ideology that Nietzsche then kind of reinstated later in the twentieth century, which was this idea that, you know, the strong must get what they want and the weak are gonna suffer and it's good to be strong and it's bad to be weak. And you say this was already there.

It came from something that was already there in Roman society, in the Greek society, in the Jewish traditions that these people lived within. So how does that how does that happen? No, I'm not I'm not exactly saying that. Okay, correct. Um I'm saying that there are El the if you think of Christianity as a a a great sea, there are many rivers that flow into it. So there's the the the there's the um obviously the kind of the Jewish inheritance, the scriptural inheritance.

Um and with with from Greece there is the philosophical tradition. So the influence of Aristotle and Plato on Christianity as it evolves is absolutely immense. Um there's a sense in which a lot of theology is just kind of footnotes to Plato. like philosophy is. Um the the the influence of Persia. The Persians have this idea that that that the universe is moralized. that there are rival principles of dark and light, of uh lies and truth.

Um, and this seems to be a big influence on on the formation of Hebrew scripture because people from Jerusalem are taken as prisoners to Babylon and then Babylon gets captured by the Persians and they're allowed to go back and rebuild the temple. in Jerusalem and Cyrus, the the first great Persian king, is hailed in the Bible as a as a messiah, as a kind of a liberator. Um so that's also a crucial part of it. And then what Rome provides, I think, is is the notion of a universal order.

So the ideology of Rome is that um they have Imperium sine fine, as Virgil called it, Empire without limit. The the the the the remit of Rome is universal. And That is something that Christianity kind of takes for granted, that there is a universal global order. And Paul's ability to, you know, write his letters to the Galatians or the Ephesians or the Corinthians or the Romans reflects that. He uh

the Mediterranean has become a a Roman lake. The shipping lanes can be used without fear of of pirates attacking you and roads a are are being built. and you can travel on them. The it's it's a globalised world. And so that also is part of the kind of the Christian context. The

someone who has suffered the death of a slave could in some way be the universal God who has created everything. That is the radic you know, that's the that's what's novel, that's what's radical. Although having said that I think when you look at Paul's letters, so the tradition of Paul, as re is embodied in the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul talks about it himself in his letters, is that he was a persecutor of the church.

He obviously thought the the the Christian notion that Jesus had risen from the dead and was in some way a part of God was powerfully offensive. And then he has a vision of the risen Christ, he says. Um And I think in the aftermath of that experience.

He goes away and he reads through the scriptures to try and make sense of what he has seen. And it's like being given the It's like kind of a a um being given the key to a detective story where you go back and you you realise that all kinds of things y you know, you've been thrown off the scent, you've missed what the actual solution to the puzzle is. And I think that's the key that Paul is bringing to Hebrew scriptures. And he's realizing that all the promises that that he had thought.

were contained in scripture that a p that a powerful warlord would come to redeem God's people. But actually that wasn't that wasn't what the key was. The key was that the Messiah would come, but he would come as a man of sorrow. And so he is drawing on the inheritance of Hebrew scripture. It is there. But what Christianity does is to kind of enshrine it at the the molten heart of

the gospel, um, a uh Evangelion, the good news that Paul i is is preaching. I really like that we've talked about the difference uh between The Christian God and the gods that preceded it. Because if you know anything about Roman gods or Greek gods from which they were based on, They come across as petty and I think they come across as unbelievably charismatic. Really? I both surely ca charismatic pettiness, perhaps you might say. You see, I as a child, um I went

to church and went to Sunday school and I loved the Bible stories. I mean I thought they were great. But I was always very much On the side of the great empires. So I was very much kind of team Pharaoh as opposed to Moses and loved the Assyrians, loved the Babylonians. you know, very much pro Pontius Pilate as opposed to Jesus. And one of the reasons for that was that I found the I found their gods kind of more glamorous and exciting. So everything that the Hebrew prophets were condemning

You know, they condemn the gods of Egypt or or or Babylon as um so much stock and stone that it's you know, they're just great idols and things. I I'd love an idol. I thought that was much more kind of glamorous than than than what we got in the church. Um And specifically, I loved the gods of Greece. I I found them so much more charismatic.

But you're right, I mean they're terrible. They're awful. But in a way, a god like Athena uh seemed to me to correspond much more closely to how I felt the world was. You know, she's very, very smart. Um she's also very violent. Mae llawer o'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio'r cywilio

inflict appalling things on you, but she looks after her own. Um and I th I I kind of always felt as a child that if Athena had been a viable faith alternative, I would absolutely have gone for her. Um and I think the

The sense that the the the the philosophers have, so going back to the sixth century, um and then through to Plato and Aristotle and to the um particularly the Stoics. Um That they are reacting as you do, that that Plato famously says we shouldn't have poets in our ideal republic because the the poets make you feel the charisma of of of these gods and they are not worthy of of of being followed or or worshipped and that the true divine lies beyond these stories and essentially

it's that understanding of the divine that Christian theologians then kind of adopt and and bundle into the the package. I'd say you could in that sense say that um the Greek gods in a kind of weird way are the malign step parents of Christianity. That it's the rejection of them. I mean in an Oedipal way, very appropriate.

Um it's uh it th th th the the the rejection of the philosophers of that kind of quality of the Greek gods is there. And it's interesting, I mean obviously this is crucially a part of the context. again into which Christianity is born. So when Paul has his vision of Christ according to Acts, Christ says to him, Paul, why are you kicking against the pricks? You know, why are you why why are you kicking against what I'm giving you?

And this is a phrase that comes from Euripides' great play, The Bacchae, which describes Dionysus. appearing and there are people who reject him. Um and the fate that is visited on them is is terrible. Say Pentheus, the king of Thebes, who is Dionysus' cousin, refuses to recognise his cousin as a god. I mean as he would if your cousin turns up and says he's God's

And um he suffers a terrible fate. He um you know, his his aunts go mad, uh roam the countryside, um, tearing cattle to pieces and throwing bits of flesh all over the trees and things. Um Pentheus is tries to arrest them, uh Dionysus drives him mad, he dresses up as a maynad, as a literally a raver um someone who goes to a rave, so he dresses up in whatever you know the Maynads are dr are wearing, kind of um animal skins.

He goes up to try and s and spy on his mother and his aunts, and they see him and rip him to pieces as though they you know, as though he's a wild animal. Um, this is obviously not what Christ is doing to Paul, but There are clearly um resemblances between a god, say like Dionysus and Christ that even Paul can recognise. How often do you get the chance to access a world class education for free? That is exactly what Hillsdale College is offering with its new online course, Athens and Sparta.

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It's such a good point you made because when I was reading your book and I was going over Greek and Roman history with the gods, the one word that stood out to me was cruelty. It was viciously the viciously cruel. Take the story of Prometheus. I gave fire to the to the human beings, doomed to have I think it was an eagle rip out his heart every day. His liver liver.

But then you contrast that He grows back every day and then the ego comes back and rips it out. Anyway, but you had like Jesus who when he was dying said to God, whilst he was suffering the most horrendous and brutal of fate. on the cross, forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do. That is a radical transformation, isn't it? It's a radical difference. Yes, it's very radical. And you mentioned Nietzsche. I mean this is what Nietzsche fixes on. Um I I mean I said how

we've become desensitized to the cross. I I think it's amazing that Nietzsche, who is is the most brilliant of all atheist writers who've emerged in in in the West. He gets the cross. He gets what is radical and subversive about the cross. To a degree that theologians haven't really articulated but for centuries and centuries.

bewilderment and perplexity and shock at contemplating the death of Christ on the cross about about Nietzsche. And he he finds it repellent because he thinks that um What he famously calls Christianity a slave religion, that it's a religion for the weak and the and the and the poor, and that um its popularity is driven by the Resentiment, the the the

Not quite resentment, the the kind of mingling of resentment and hostility that those who are weak feel for the strong. Um and Nietzsche thinks that Are healthy? and that healthiness should be celebrated. And that if strength involves um strapping up someone who has annoyed you to a rock and sending an eagle to devour its li his liver every day, well brilliant. Bring it on. Let's crack on.

But there's but there's another aspect of Christianity which is very powerful. We're uh Constantine and I uh went to Sicily and we did w a guided tour of these Greek temples and Roman temples, and one of the things the guide said to us was This was a place the temple was a place for the high priests. This was a place for the upper echelons of religious society. Whereas

The church is a place for everybody. Well, I I I'm not sure that's entirely true. I the The temples and the shrines, say, in Greece or Rome, particular let's look at Athens, the democracy in Athens. the the the temples are seen as And the rituals and the rites that are practiced to keep Athena and the other gods happy are fundamental to the health of the entire Demos, the entire people. And Unless you buy into that, you don't understand what makes a a city like Democratic Athens tick. Um

So the the the power, the karate of the demos, we translate it as as people power and we think of it as as democracy. And but democracy in English is is a kind of it's a it's a false friend. It's it d it doesn't mean what it meant for for for Athens. We tend to think democracy is founded on rights. People have a right to a vote. So um therefore the fact that men in Athens had a vote. and uh women didn't is offensive to us.

This is not how it operated in Athens because the role of the Men and women, all those who are sprung from the soil of Attica are part of a continuum that reaches back into the past, forward into the future, and is in a in a kind of relationship with the gods. So the soil, the people, the gods.

This is a kind of in i uh i it's an ecosystem in which every all everyone flourishes and everyone has the role. And the role of men in this ecosystem is to keep the demos, secure the demos against external enemies, so to go out and fight. against rival cities and also to draw up the laws that will enable the city to prosper in in the that the the the kind of the dimension of the mortal.

But just as important, or possibly even more important, is the role of keeping the gods on side. And in that, women have. a very, very important role. Um they provide uh they they weave the robe that every year is given to one of the two statues uh on the Acropolis. So so every fourth year there's an enormous one that goes to the Statue of Athena in um in in the in the Parthenon and and every year a s slightly smaller one to for kind of the ancient wooden statue of the goddess.

They feed the sat the holy snakes on the Acropolis with cakes. Um, they practice cults, so they uh we're in the great festival of Dionysus, they um they welcome Dionysus in. And um uh uh uh women go to a a a temple in the marshes to Dionysus and there one of them has sex with the um the with the k the a king and nobody really knows what this involves, but I mean it's clearly something's going on there.

And ev and the the the thing I love is that every young girl in Athens, when she becomes ten, goes to this temple of Artemis, who like Athena is a kind of terrifying goddess, virgin goddess. um, Mistress of the Beasts, she's called. And girls go out there um and we're told in the the classical sources that there they turn into bears.

And scholars debate what what does this mean? I mean, does it is it a puberty ritual? Uh, you know, do they put on the robes of be you know, the skins of bears or what? Nobody pauses to think, well, maybe they did turn into bears. But what if they did turn into bears? What if they did? Um they have experienced things that men have not experienced. And every man who marries a woman in Athens is marrying someone who's run with Artemis, who's run with the animals. And

I think people believed that. And it gives a shiver of of the supernatural and the weird to the functioning of of Athens in its golden age that we find very difficult to get a handle on because of course The instincts of historians is are incredibly materialist, and even if they do believe in in the supernatural, they don't believe in the Greek gods. But you've got to try and believe in them. And when you do, you see that

It's part of the rhythm and the fabric of the functioning of the entire city. And this is why, in the long run, the philosophers are so threatening to that. Because if you're turning around and saying, that's all rubbish. God is is kind of perfection in some distant moral order or something. What role is there then for for girls going off and turning into bears and running with With with automation.

I'm I'm I'm fairly comfortable with the idea of women turning into bears every now and again. Uh that that is that is a familiar experience. Um but I I was gonna come back to Christianity because one of the things that I wanted to ask you about is um M from my personal experience, I was surrounded by a lot of Orthodox Christians when I was growing up, my family Orthodox Christians. And uh one of the things I found quite incongruous was that

uh there was a doctrine of what you're supposed to do and then I'd observe people who Orthodoxy. There was an orthodoxy uh that nobody actually did any of those things. They just talked about them. And one of the interesting things to me about Christianity is I imagine, you know, my Anglican friends, let's say, who are kind of very peaceful and docile almost you might say, and very kind and generous, etcetera,

That is not the way that Christianity has been practiced through the centuries, uh, in some parts of the world. So How and how you know, the message of Jesus turning the other cheek and all these other things That is not also the way that Christianity has been practiced throughout the ages either. There's been quite militant periods. There's been periods of internal persecution, of you know, all sorts of recrimination between different

branches, etcetera. How how does how does all of that happen? Amen. Christianity I think is best thought of as um A kind of great pulsing matrix of paradoxes. Paradox.

structures everything about it. I mean, you know, we we we've been talking about one, the the the the the guy on the cross who proves to be greater than the person who's crucified him, um the man who is also a god. Um and I guess that this is the kind of the Christian understanding of the divine, that that in a sense paradox structures the inability of of the human mind to contemplate the the potency of of the divine.

And that being so, um, there are many, many different ways of of structuring and understanding what it is to be a Christian. And a lot of these are generated by the fact that, um You know, and it's a crucial development that might not have happened. But in the second century, um there's a guy called Marcion who makes points out that The God of the New Testament seems quite different to the God of the Old Testament. The Old Testament has been a good thing.

The children of Israel out with a plague. You know, there's a lot of smiting and that kind of thing going on. And now suddenly Jesus is saying, Oh, you know, turn the other cheek and put up your sword and what's going on here. And so he's it Marcin's theory was that um

That the God of the Old Testament was a different essentially a kind of subordinate angel who had usurped the true God's um role and that Jesus had therefore been sent by the true God to kind of put humanity back on the straight and narrow. And he he he proposed that uh

There should be a very finite number of of of scriptures. So the Gospel of Luke, Acts of the Apostles, some of the letters of Paul basically. And this is a a a a key moment because I think you can already by this point talk about Orthodox Christians, Christians who embody the kind of the mainstream of or the at least the kind of the the the central gravity in the church. They did not follow that.

But they but but because of this challenge they have to decide what is what you know, what uh what is the canon going to be, what uh what what are our what are our scriptures gonna be. And they they choose the four gospels because these are the ones that that are the most closest to the time. They're the ones that that are generally accepted as being the most authentic record and, you know, the various letters of Paul and the book of Revelation and so on.

And they also decide to keep what they they come to term the Old Testament and the sense that God had prefigured the coming of Christ in the Hebrew Scriptures. And by doing that, it It it sets up opportunities for Christians to Emphasize the things that perhaps aren't being emphasised in the passion narrative.

Let's put it like that. Well what what I'm getting at, Tom is Uh let me put it more bluntly. You know you're very eloquent in a historian. I'm just what I'm saying is my in my understanding. Why have Christians behaved in a monstrous way throughout history? For example, I guess what I'm saying is my experience of Christians today

Is that if somebody stood up and went, you know what? These people are heretics and they must be eradicated, most Christians would be like, Well, that's a bit much. Do you know what I mean? Well that's been a long process of weathering and and transformation. And the thing is that Christianity isn't a a you know, it's a constant leaf I I mean, it's best thought of I think as a kind of civilization.

You would you know things evolve and change and the different emphasis are happening all the time. But this is why I'm asking because uh when you talk to Christians today they will say say compare it to Islam, right? If you say well Islam is not as drastic today as it was when it was first created. Probably true. And process of weathering is perfect explanation for to my layman understanding. You probably rip into this, right?

But with Christianity, there was the message of compassion and empathy and turning the other cheek and and all of that from the beginning. So what is it that's being weathered over this two thousand years? Okay, so go back to the the issue of paradox. Writing to the Galatians, so this is really ri I mean m might even be among the earliest of letters, so right at the start of the Christian tradition. He writes to them and he says that that in Christ

There is no Jew or Greek, there is no man or woman, there is no slave or free. So he's dissolving the traditional boundaries that have separated, you know, the two sexes, the different peoples of the world, uh and the different social orders. It's very progressive. Well He's saying in Christ Jesus. I mean he's not

The world the the world is fallen. These differences and the what stems from these differences are are part of the lot of the children of Adam and Eve. You know, we've all we're all part of this fallen world. I mean that's the gist. But that in Christ. They will be dissolved. This is the the heaven that is promised. Um now. Of course, there is...

It's like an acorn from which a great oak will flourish. And I would say that the the um The assumptions that govern a a a liberal society derive from that, the idea that men and women have an inherent equality, that um differences of between peoples are you know are iniquitous to emphasize. Um I mean the you know, we'll come to slavery perhaps in due course, but the idea that um There should be uh

I mean you can see that there is no no slave or free. It feeds in the long run into abolitionism, it feeds into French Revolution to the Russian Revolution. I mean, these are very, very long term consequences. I mean, another metaphor, I love mixing up with metaphors, would be that is You know, that is a a a grumbling of the earth, a grinding of the tectonic plates, and in due course Tokyo gets drowned by a tsunami. It's that kind of

That's that that that's what it is. But right from the beginning, there is a problem with one of those in particular, which is Paul's assertion that there is no Jew or Greek. He he writes it what he means is Judean or Greek. He is a Judean. He's from Judea. He is therefore a provincial like any other you know, th th there are all kinds of people, Judeans, Egyptians, whatever.

And he's comparing them to to the Greeks and he's saying that the the Jud the differences between Judeans and Greeks will dissolve in Christ. I. e. there will be a kind of universal brotherhood, sisterhood, whatever. Mm-hmm. Famously, not all Judeans are keen on having their sense of distinctiveness dissolved into a kind of universal mark. And so they do not, in the main, follow Paul's exhortation to accept Christ as Lord.

And that then means that there is a fracture point right from the beginning between people who will come to be defined as Christians and Jews. And that is obviously an incredibly dark shadow that has hung over the entire course of Christianity. But you can see how What seems to us a progressive message has kind of led to what we could also see as very dark consequences. And that is just one verse from one book.

Of the New Testament, which in turn is part of, you know, includes the Old Testament. There is a lot of material there that can. Provides sanction for a broad, broad array of responses and that can also set in train all kinds of trends that you know, would would have seemed unimaginable in the first century A D.

Tom, is that why so everyone can drink? So my mother's Venezuelan, and it's really fascinating to see the way that the Spanish conquistadors behaved in South America and the Portuguese. Empire behaved in South America and they come from a Catholic tradition to the way that the British Empire behaved. Was that a large part of the way they behaved based on religion or was there something else to it?

Well, the the the Spanish are the first to discover great powers in a world that no one had imagined before. And so when they When they conquered the Aztec Empire and then the I the the Inca Empire. They I mean, I don't know if you played um you know a game like Civilization. I played colonization, which is very problematic. But civilized Civilization. It was a great game. Civilization you could end up with

Attacking archers. Yes. And that's basically what you have because the Aztecs is kind of bronze age civilization. I mean beautiful, fascinating, extraordinary, but c but collapses before everything that the Spanish bring because they're the the the kind of beneficiaries of thousands of years of Eurasian, you know, crops and cattle and all kinds of things like that. Um and this in and obviously the Spanish interpret this as as as an expression of of kind of Gods.

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and see what you've been missing. And now back to the show. Sorry to interject very briefly. How much of it was that were they genuinely to expand in the new world for religious reasons or was there a lot of pragmatism to it, you know obviously it varies. Um I mean the the conquistadors are unbelievably brutal in the main and if they hadn't been brutal then they wouldn't have done what they did.

you know, they wouldn't have conquered what they what what they ended up conquering. They uh the the the lust for gold becomes notorious. Um it is absolutely about wanting material goods. But to imagine that um the uh The desire to win souls for Christ is simply cynical window dressing, is a very, you know, that's a very anachronistic take. There are absolutely people who are going out there who who feel that

This is a you know, this is absolutely part of God's plan. And There are There are friars, of whom the most famous is a guy called Bartolome de las Casas. Who condemns the oppression and the greed of the conquistadors as an offense against God? Um and There is a great kind of scholarly debate in Spain. between those who are drawing on Greek philosophers, particularly Aristotle. To essentially.

yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw. you know, slavery is is an evil. Um, these are these are people who who who are as worthy of respect as any other anyone else who has been one for Christ. They must be one for Christ. And you can see there the beginnings of kind of ideas that will feed ultimately into kind of notions of of international law.

And that's a Catholic perspective. The British obviously are uh Protestants. Um, and therefore they bring a slightly different perspective. One perspective is is that the Spanish are evil. So so the what they call the black legend, the idea that um the Spanish are uniquely appalling. Um, which is often their drawing on Las Casas and other Spanish writers like him to to kind of condemn the Spanish. I mean it's it's it's very much kind of Protestant black propaganda, I think.

But the British have their own route to deciding that slavery is is wrong. Um it's as Christian as this as as the Spanish one, but it's it's um it's distinctively Protestant. And What you have with the kind of radical form of Protestantism that develops in England in the Civil War and then the Commonwealth and its aftermath is this notion that The spirit descends on you and enables you to read scripture in the way that it's meant to be properly understood. So the simple words on the page.

You know, this is inadequate to properly understand it. You have to have the spirit, you have to have been granted grace by the spirit, by by by God. And when you do that then you can uh see what it properly means. And this revolution um in England is trans is transported to the Caribbean and it's transported to um the the American colonies. And so Quakers are the most obvious example, but um Baptists and and people like that.

And this coincides with the development of plantation slavery in the Caribbean and in in um the American colonies. And this Britain is starting to industrialise by this point, and industrialisation is about utilising resources in a way that is more intensive than has ever been done before. And what that means for slaves is obviously horrendous because you industrialise the process of of transporting slaves, of exploiting them, of of working them.

So you have the conjunction of that, the industrialization of slavery, and the um this radical notion that um you can only understand God's purpose by reading the the s the scriptures with a sense of the spirit. And it it it combines

to inspire in Quakers and Evangelical Anglicans um a sense that slavery is wrong, even though famously, notoriously even, there it nowhere in the Bible does it say that slavery is wrong. Slavery is taken for granted in the Bible because it's it's Seen as the Yeah, in the way the fact that hunger is or poverty or homelessness or whatever, it's just part of the human condition.

in the eighteenth century and then into the early nineteenth century are saying, No, actually it may not say this, but but I I feel the spirit is telling me slavery is wrong. And it spreads like a wildfire, and the spirit is conceptualized by Christians as fire, Pentecostal fire. So it's literally Pentecostal fire blazing across the Atlantic, in Britain, in the Caribbean, in the the North American colonies, particularly in the northern colonies. And it's a

inspires the first great activist movement in Britain. You have people writing to their MPs, you have demonstrations going through the streets of London demanding the abolition of slavery. And it becomes um so unignorable for the government that in eighteen fourteen Napoleon has been defeated and sent off to Elba. There's his Congress in Vienna to draw redraw the map of of um Europe.

And Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, has to go to Vienna and basically say, Guys, I'm really sorry, but I've got all these all these guys who are you know, people in London who are holding street demonstrations and things. We've got to sort this out, we've got to abolish the slave trade. Um and this carries on even you know through Waterloo and and and the second defeat of Napoleon. And The Protestant tradition that Castlerey is representing the first time.

is obviously means nothing to the Catholic powers, to the French, to the Spanish, to the Portuguese. So they they draw on that those traditions that Las Casas had been articulating, um, so Catholic traditions, and it gets bl blended with the Protestant traditions, and so also do the radical traditions of the Fr of the Revolution, of the French Revolution.

kind of the the the the the radicalism of that. Because because the the French Revolution had abolished slavery um in in the Caribbean and then Napoleon had brought it back in. So there are the so essentially it's a pooling of these three traditions, all of which

a bread of the marrow of of of Christian Europe, the the Protestant, the Catholic, and the kind of the Enlightenment tradition, if you want to call it that. And This is what gives birth essentially to international law, the concept of international law, the idea that there are principles that transcend religious doctrine so that a Protestant and a Catholic can equally accept the dictates of international law. And this is what enables British ships when they are patrolling the Atlantic.

that that gives them the legal right to stop Portuguese or Spanish slave ships and arrest those who are doing it and say put them on coast of Cuba and try them under international law. And it's also provides a rubric for what then happens in the nineteenth century when the British start to go on the attack against the Muslim slave trade. Because of course Muslims

have very different sanctions for slavery. And so The process by which Muslim powers come to accept that slavery is an evil kind of requires them to accept the primacy of international law, which is a massive, massive deal for Muslims because they have a framework of law that derives supposedly from God. So it's much trickier for them.

than it is for Christians,'cause Christians don't have that notion of a God given corpus of laws that have come from God. But essentially that is the framework of international law that governs, you know,

upholds the notions of human rights and so on to this day. Tom, when you were talking about the fact that it was a religious movement that spread like wildfire that helped to eradicate well, for the British Empire to stop using slaves and to eradicate slavery in the Empire. It made me think, and I'm only gonna touch it on it briefly, i uh with the way that the woke movement talked about slavery.

And how we were the beneficiary of slavery, which to a certain extent we are. But it it it the way they talked about it was in the form of original sin. Yes. We are born into this sin. And we are never going to be washed clean and is an indenable stain on our reputation and fundamentally our souls as well. Well, I so I think what what happens is that um Slavery comes to be seen as as as the the great sin. I mean it's it's clearly a monstrous, appalling crime.

But we judge that by Christian standards. We accept it as an appalling crime because we have bought into the assumptions of Las Casas or the Quakers or whatever. It it it's If you look at the entirety of global history, it's not in any way a moral given.

um civilizations have dep always depended upon the exploitation of the masses, and that could be chattel slavery of the kind that you have in Greece and Rome and then in the the um the the Atlantic in in the eighteenth century, or it could be founded on car The idea that certain people are born to be inferior, or it could be upon the exploitation of proletariats, which you get in the 19th century industrial civilization, you always

You know, there is no form of civilization that does not is not also a reflection of barbarism, is the is the the kind of the famous quotation. I'm paraphrasing, I can't remember it exactly, the Walter Benjamin comment. So there's always been exploitation. The idea that that that slavery is therefore um not just an unfortunate corollary of the way of things. But a a a moral stain that has to be eradicated is very, very novel. And because it's Because it happened um

in a uniquely horrible form in the Atlantic. And because it was Christians who who drove that, to a degree it contaminated, I think, the kind of Christian record. in the eyes of of of people who were themselves absolutely saturated with Christian assumptions. And it kind of bled into anti-imperialism moving into the the 20th century. Again, the the idea that the that powerful countries shouldn't dominate weaker countries. I mean most

problematic, to use you know, your favourite phrase of of the woke, is again a relatively recent one. Um And it's meant that that Christianity which is A universal religion. It it it Christians believe that it's for the good of the world that everyone becomes a Christian. Um there are more Christians practic you know, more Christians than any other kind of practicing ideology in the in the world. That has come to be seen by lots of people as itself. Meaningful.

the uh the kind of the the evangelical impetus of Christianity is seen as, you know, going out and and and and You know, overthrowing the right of the Aztecs to do what they want, even if that is um human sacrifice, um, or you know, whatever.

And so the consequence of that is that today we remain the heirs of these Christian impulses, the notion that slavery is a is an evil. Um But Christianity has been implicated in that, and so therefore the The institutional character of Christianity is is is often rejected. as part of the problem, of part of what has to be rejected, even though it is that institutional structure that has provided people with the ideological framework that enables them to judge it as evil.

And so I think what you saw in um in twenty twenty and its aftermath was a deeply Christian movement. I mean something that the Quakers in the eighteenth century would have recognised. Um the kind of the line of descent from the activism of Quakers in the eighteenth century is very, very clear. That's what they're doing.

but because they have jettisoned the Christian scripture, the Christian practice, the Christian self identification that had provided structure for the Quakers and the early activists, they essentially have to construct their own traditions. And so that's why you had all the um the toppling of statues, which is kind of very Protestant thing to do, toppling idols, um, taking the knee.

um uh people um you know offering themselves up for uh uh uh as penitentials, white people. Um It it's it's very, very these are very, very Christian forms of practice. It's just that they have been divorced from the the the institutional framework that gave them birth. And so where they are where they how and where they're developing. is unclear. And I think that they are clearly mutating very fast because once you you unmoor

ideas and stories and traditions from the the context that gave them birth, they can mutate very, very quickly. It's very interesting you mentioned that because we we had a super viral, very popular uh interview we did with a journalist called Richard Minata in which we talked about some of the ideas from Albion C to the idea of how the United States became what it became. And one of the things he explained to us, I think this may have been off camera.

was how many of these work ideas originate from the very areas of America where the Quakers would have once settled. Very interesting. But moving on, Tom, one of the other great religions that I think we are incredibly uneducated about, and I speak for myself above anyone else here, in the Western world particularly, is Islam. And it's becoming

a bigger conversation politically and societally because of immigration policy, because the number of Muslim followers is followers of Islam in the Western world is growing.

Um and I'd love to know more about how that religion came into being, what are its core values, what are its principles. You mentioned some of them already, but can you expand on that? Could I could I could I just before before I do that just put Islam in the context of the the kind of the Christian story as manifested in in the present West.

Because I think that's important to understand why there are tensions between Islam and Western secular liberalism and why there is such a reluctance to acknowledge this. on the part of of um enthusiasts for secular liberalism. Because essentially what Christianity has that Islam does not a concept of the secular. And this is goes right the way back to to um ultimately I mean you can trace it to the story of of um Jesus.

being asked whether taxes should be paid to Caesar. You know, he's famously asked for a coin and there's the picture of Caesar and he says, Who's Hedicus? And he says, Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, render unto God what is God's And so so that sense that there is Um

You're talking about the separation of what the Americans call church and state. And they c and and we call it here church and state. And in the West, that's because it th this notion of there being two rival orders gets enshrined by the towering theological genius in the Latin Church. Augustine, um great f in in North Africa in the late fourth, early fifth century um AD. And this is against the backdrop of the collapse of Roman power. Rome has been sacked.

And there are Romans who say this is because we have rejected the old order, the old customs that enabled us to keep the gods on side. So you know, going back to that stuff I was saying about Athens. These rituals, these festivals are are like kind of insurance payments to keep the gods happy. Uh, and now we've abandoned these. And the Romans call these religiones. So a a a you know, a sacrifice or a festival in honour of a God is a religio. It's a bond that joins you to um to to to a God.

And is a kind of guarantee that this God will then look after the s after the city. And these religiones have been been abandoned. And Augustine says, No, not a bit of it. Um, and the reason for that is that Everything in the fallen world is bound upon what he calls the culum, which is basically the span of human life, but it means the notion that everything is. Is doomed to to to to to pass away. All things must pass, as George Harrison would put it.

He says that he this is true of of empires as well as of individuals. Rome is not permanent. Rome has no special significance. It will pass away. It is bound upon the cyculum. If you want eternity, you must You you you you must bind yourself to the pure eternity of heaven. That's what the the real religious. And it's only the church that can give you this religious so there you have at the you know as the Roman Empire falls.

This notion of of there being a d an order of the Ciculum, the order of religious and Over the course of of medieval history this becomes institutionalised. And it going into the kind of the the Reformation and into modernity, it mutates to become this idea that there is this space called the secular, which is kind of neutral. It's separated from what has come to be called religion.

And this is a mad idea. No other culture has ever had this idea. So so when you read about, you know, ancient Greek religion They did they had no concept of religion, and they certainly had no concept of religion as being something that is separate from the the kind of the the everything else. It's you know, the the relationship of people to the gods is like the the jinn in a tonic. You can't separate out the jinn and the tonic. What what what Christianity does

is to say, yeah, you can have jinn and here's the tonic and you can separate them out. That's that's the madness of of the way that we conceptualize the world in the West. And Islam d has no concept that you can separate this out. And so this means therefore

Like what we have in the West is an idea that you have freedom of religion. And Jews in the nineteenth century had freedom of religion in the wake of the the the French Revolution. They are told, you know, you can you can practice your religion as you want. Jews didn't have religion. They they were a people. But they're being told if you want to become the citizens of the French Republic, that's that's brilliant, but you can no longer define yourself as a citizen of of of of Israel.

You know, you are now a French citizen who practices what comes to be called Judaism as a religion. And so Jews in the nineteenth and in in the twentieth century have to adapt the you know, their traditions to fit this very specific modern Western secular template. And and Western secular democracies require Muslims to do the same.

to to to conceptualize what they belong to as being a religion. But classically that's not how Muslims understood it. Islam is a a totalizing way of le leading your life. There are there are rules that govern every aspect of your existence. God is manifest in everything that you do. The idea that there are kind of safe spaces. where everyone can meet up and kind of join in a in a secular space is something completely alien. And I don't think that most

kind of enthusiasts for liberal secularism understand this. They tend to th I think they th they think that the notion of the secular is something that is common to everybody. That it's kind of like, you know, everyone has a sense of what a tree is, everyone has a sense of what a dog is. Um, everyone has a sense of what the secular is. They don't. And so Muslims are being forced in when they come to the West are being forced into this kind of Proclustion bed of

the secular nation of what a religion is. The only reason I keep t trying to interject is I'm trying always to convert what you're saying into simpler, more uh easier to understand language. And I guess what you're saying is the central tension there is theologically speaking, Islam doesn't allow the separation of politics

and Islam, if you are a Muslim Well classically it has that's why I said theologically speaking, there are of course individual people who are able to do so. But within the way that the religion is Um, y if you follow that faith, then that faith controls everything. It controls the way you participate in society, the way you live your life. And the way you v you might vote in a in a society. Your your your loyalty will be to that above other things. Is that fair summation?

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As classically understood, Mohammed is a seal of the prophets. He has brought God's last message. And the Quran is a record of um humanity's disobedience to prophets. Prophets arrive, they reveal God's wishes, they then ignore it or they corrupt God's message or whatever, and so more prophets have to come. Muhammad is the last prophet.

He uh and and what he teaches mankind is mankind's last hope. If if Islam goes, then mankind is doomed, everyone will go to hell. So it's absolutely, you know, existential state. And The proof that um that Islam is true. again classically, is that Islam is triumphant.

for most of its existence. I mean, it pulverizes um the Sasanian Empire, it it dismembers the Roman Empire, conquers vast swathes of the Christian world, the kind of ancient Christian heartlands of Mediterranean Christianity. Um And it's really only with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in the at the uh at the very end of the eighteenth century that Muslim powers are suddenly brought up against the fact that the the the despised Christian powers are incredibly powerful.

And over the course of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, most Muslim powers come under either the direct or the indirect hegemony of Christian Western powers. And so that's a massive, massive shock. And it requires a recalibration of what of what Islam is. I mean the the the um the attitude to slavery would be a c a classic example. The reason that the Sultan in Constantinople is willing

to contemplate banning the slave trade, even though it had been legitimized by the fact that Mohammed had slaves and that the the early caliphs in you know, they were all in favour of slavery, they thought it was brilliant. Um And that that it's mandated in in Islamic scriptures. Um the only reason he was willing to do that was that he needed the help of the British and the French in the Crimean War against the Russians. And so he essentially kind of employed his top

his top scholars to try and work out a way in which you know this this this th you know Islamic law could be squared with this radical new new new notion. And this has been part of the kind of the great trauma for Muslims in in the modern world is

How do you adapt it? And essentially what what Muslims did was to kind of Protestantise themselves. So they slightly adopted the sense that You know, it's in the heart. You you know, it may say this in the Quran, go out and crucify people who are offenders against God. But what that actually means is that you should try and be kind to them. So this is the people who say jihad is the internal. Jihad is it yeah, which it kind I mean that that that that is a part of it, but it's not.

It absolutely is not part of it. But yes, absolutely. And so you have you have the the You know, you look into your heart and therefore you can adja adjust and adapt uh the legacy of Islamic um scripture for the modern world. you know, get on the right side of history, all these kind of very Protestant ideas. Or uh the the the counter reaction to that.

is again a very Protestant one, which is to go fundamentalist, because in in in twentieth century Protestantism you have Protestants who were, you know, faced with Darwin and all this kind of stuff, and they say we've got to go back and interpret the scriptures literally. Um which neither Christians nor Muslims had ever really done. Um they have you know they have very, very sophisticated, complicated, almost poetic understanding of of the scriptures.

But but fundamentalist Protestants were saying, Well, what does the Bible say? It's inerrant. That's what we're gonna do and so Muslims also have have adopted that policy. And the consequence of that has been a kind of very brutal understanding of Islam, because there's quite a lot in the Quran and in the um the hadiths and in the life of Muhammad that if interpreted in a kind of brutally literal way

sanctions quite a lot of bloodshed. Mm. And so that's that's, you know, part of the problem. Well quite. And and this is this this is so informative, Tom. I'm so glad we're talking about this because I I'm really keen to understand this from a deep perspective.

And one of the things that I wanted to ask you about in this context is How is it is there a unique challenge for Islam to uh you call it Protestantize itself, which is to to start to develop an interpretation that's more compatible with modern reality? For a number of reasons, one of them being the Quran is l the literal word of God and the last word of God. This is the kind of the problem. You can't have a reformation if this is

This is it, right? Like you you can't challenge any of that. I think Islam is uniquely indigestible for a a a a secular mindset. Um and people don't want to admit that b in a way because um There's a default assumption that secular civilization can swallow anything up. There's a kind of arrogance there. That secular civilization of the secular civilization of the West is such a broad tent that everyone can be brought into it.

But Islam is at least as sophisticated um a civilization as as the civilization of the Christian West um and a very ancient one uh and for most of its existence has been much, much more powerful than the Christian world. And Therefore the idea that that it should accommodate itself to what liberal secularists think it should do isn't a given. So Muslims in in say in a country like Britain have freedom of religion.

But there are lots of Muslims who do not see Islam as a religion because they see religion as a Christian category. Islam is much more than a religion. It's something that saturates every aspect of existence and therefore they don't necessarily want that. They want to they want to live in a a world where um, you know, as as Has traditionally been the case, Islam is everywhere. But that is obviously something that the Liberal State is not prepared to offer. So there are limits to what

Secularism and liberalism can and will offer. So where's what's the obvious question is and I mean it's probably an unfair question to ask a historian, but We where's this going? I don't know. I'm not I'm not a prophet, unlike Mohammed. Um I mean my um my guess is that that um that that Islam uh rather in the way that um uh Judaism has done will accommodate itself uh to

to to to the the the host society. I mean that's traditionally what happens, but that there will always be kickback because of what makes Islam distinctive. And also obviously the more Muslims there are, the more weight their voices will have, and so the more under pressure the the kind of the the secular assumptions of the West will come. And I don't quite know I know I don't know where that go.

Because I mean I mean the worry for a lot of people is It's not necessarily Islam, it's that kind of very hard extremist edge of Islam. that we see in this country. And if you go Will will that remain? Will it ever be weathered? Will I mean I these are impossible questions to ask because I I think that's a worry for a lot of people, Tom.

Is the Yeah, I think it is. And if there's no reformation possible, then is this just a continuation? Well, I th I I mean I think Islam in to a degree has had a reformation because the reformation is all about going to back to to to to scripture and and getting rid of the kind of accretion of of what's seen as superstition. And Islam has has repeatedly been doing that. It's it's a constant kind of summons to to To reform Islam said.

Uh and so certainly, you know, the ideologues of the Islamic State would say that they were reformers Um that's why they they, for instance, um completely dismiss any notion of international law. It's why they dismiss notions of human rights, it's why they think that slavery shouldn't just be allowed, but should be positively encouraged.

because it's in the Quran and therefore, um, if you want to be true to God's message, you should have slavery. I mean, that's a very, very uh radical minority position, but it is an example of the um

the the the the direction of travel that a certain understanding of the Islamic inheritance can lead people in. And it's, you know, it's it's I g of course it's a worry. But I I find this conversation very valuable actually because what you are actually explaining that even people who go, I'm an atheist, I don't believe in God, I don't believe in Jesus Christ, I reject all of that. But you were still a product of Christianity. Yes.

And as a result of that, you look at the world whether you accept it or not through Christian eyes. Yes. And I don't think that people quite understand what that means. Particularly when we look at religions like Islam. Or we look at other cultures and we're like, We're all the same. Yeah. Well so so that is I mean, that is the foundational principle of of whatever our new religion is. This kind of this this gelded, mutated

Be kind, isn't Paddington wonderful? Kind of post Christianity that remains the the kind of the dominant ideology. And I would say that the pa you know the paradigmatic pulpit that this religion has is uh thought for the day on Radio 4's Today program where you will have Catholic priests and Anglican bishops and rabbis and Islamic scholars and Sikhs and Hindus.

preaching exactly the same message. You know, one will give it a little bit of garnishing from the gospels, one from the Quran, one from the um Bhagavad Gita or whatever. But basically th it's it's the same core message and the idea you know, and this is the

And what is that message? Be kind, diverse. Be kind, it's brilliant. Yes, we're all we're all uh we're all basically the same. There are many root root routes to God. Um there are many paths up the mountain. Isn't that all true? No, I don't think it's remotely true. I think that um I think that what the study of history reveals and it's why it's so fascinating.

is the infinite number of ways there are to be human and the infinite number of ways there are to ord order a society. And that at at any given time, the majority of people who live in a particular place at a particular time will assume that their way of doing things is obviously the standard way of doing it. Why wouldn't you do it? And that's as true of Athenians in fifth century Athens as it is of um us today in twenty first century Britain. We just assume that

The way we see the world is the way that the world is. But it clearly isn't. And you just have to look at the world through the eyes of um. I dunno, uh Protestants in the eighteenth century, or Muslims in the fourteenth century, or Aztecs in the 15th century, to realize and to try and see the world through their eyes, and to realize how relative. I mean it's a very powerful point. I guess the next logical question is we've got this new religion, whatever this is, as as you've said yourself.

But to me it doesn't seem more a religion, it seems kind of a mishmash of ideologies with no rule Well that is what religion is. But there is no God. And I guess my question away. And I guess my my my question is, unpleasant as it may seem, is can s can society last without this core to it? We will find out.

I mean I would say I would say that there are I mean th there are many, many paths. And many paths that that our society will take because it's it's fracturing in all kinds of ways. Um, you know, there are many, many different perspectives. Um and and those aren't just political, they're cultural all all kinds of ways. But I would say that say for for Britain, this ancient Christian country. Um one one one path is that um

this this kind of post Christian Paddingtonism, if you want to call it that. Um It's like the head of the rocket. It's gone through the atmosphere, all everything else underneath it has been jettisoned and now it's got the power to blast through the solar system.

And all that kind of all all you know, all the stuff that's been jettisoned is all the nonsense about the Bible and Jesus and the church. It's just baggage. We don't it's just baggage, it's gone. It's drifted it's you know, it's it's detritus.

Um, we have now blasted out and we're going forward and um the secular principles, the liberal principles are sufficiently self evident self evidently right and good that it will sustain the future uh evolution and development of our society for for decades and centuries to come and therefore you know it it it It's culturally determined. I mean it's it's it's

clearly derives from Christianity, but but you don't need Christianity anymore to kind of provide the rocket fuel. It's it's it's it's going on its own way. Another s another option, which the history of the 20th century suggests. The default assumption among humans is that strength and might is right. power does have a a a glamour. And this is what Nietzsche predicted. You know, he said when Christian Christianity goes there will be this great convulsion and there will you know it will be a

Terrifying powers will emerge. And of course he was right because they emerged in the form of fascism. And fascism and Nazism cast such a shadow over us that We've lived in their shadow. In a way, one of the reasons I think for the decline of institutional Christianity is that Hitler has taken the place of the devil. um and that that that a modern liberal now, rather than ask what would Jesus do, as his Victorian forebear would have done.

says what would Hitler do and does the opposite. Mm-hmm and that's kind of kept us on our liberal straight and narrow. But that is clearly fading. As as the you know experience of fascism becomes in Europe becomes a you know dies out, lived experience of it. So the the the kind of the the bogeyman power of Hitler will fade and people who are no longer bounded by Christian inhibitions or assumptions, I can imagine them turning around and saying, Well, what what's wrong with

Why shouldn't I do what I like? I'm very rich, I'm very powerful. Why shouldn't I do exactly what I like? And it's not obvious what the answer to that is, I think, if you don't have the kind of the the the the Christian answers. And I suppose a third possibility is that, um people will return to the the the source and say, well actually maybe Maybe I am Christian, maybe I you know, maybe I should take this a bit more seriously than I have been.

And there are kind of thing I think tentative signs that that might be happening. Of course, and that's what I'm saying, is that all of these things might be happening. And of course we will also have the growth of Islam, so that also provides a a force. option. Um and how quite how all these different traditions all cope with each other. Oh you know, it's gonna be interesting.

But but doesn't it also He seems very excited about this for reasons that are beyond him. You're gonna get some fascists, uh you're gonna get the Rise of Islam, you're gonna get these woke idiots running around ruining everything, and what was the other one? Oh, the resurgence of protection. I think that's the one I'm I I think we are we are living through a great choke point in the in the history of this country and of of of this continent more generally. And Western civilization, absolutely.

the c the culture of say just looking specifically at England has radically changed, say the Norman conquest, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution. I think that that we are on the verge of going through

something similar now. Um Bruno. And I don't know where it's gonna go. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean people people in um you know, seventeen ninety looking at Birmingham or Manchester would have had no idea where that was going, but it everything changed and and maybe we're going through something We're on the verge of going through something similar now.

Well, at least you said it with a smile on your face, Tom. Brilliant. But I was gonna say just one thing. Doesn't this talk about Oh an arrogance of our culture. But all cultures are arrogant. But aren't we especially arrogant to think we can divorce society? No, that's your arrogance showing me. Yes. Am I not really special about thinking I'm special? Yeah. I am special. Mother said so. But um no she didn't.

Uh but I was gonna say th Explains the comedy career, mate. But thinking that we can surely aren't we the only society that has ever thought we can divorce culture and religion. Yes.

Is that not arrogant? Yeah, it is arrogant. But but the arrogance, people would say that's justified because of the fact that that that we have the most um We're we're the products of the of an incredibly advanced civilization that industrialized, um, and therefore basically we've you know, we've we've got the answer. And I think obviously that that now rubs up against all kinds of anxieties about um Western exceptionalism. But I think it does the idea that um Our secular liberal society is

I mean to be progressive is itself a very Western thing. And if you're progressive, you're progressing ahead of everybody else. I mean, a sense of arrogance is baked into that word, I would argue.

Well, it's gonna be a very interesting time. Uh Tom, thank you so much. It's always such a pleasure speaking with you. We're gonna ask you a bunch of questions from our supporters, which they've submitted. Uh but before we do, uh what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be? Before Tom answers a final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our Substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.

What's required in the character traits of a historian to engage hostile audiences with their most controversial academic insights? Is Christianity's resurgence in the West a response to Islam's growing presence? What has Tom changed his mind about during his career? Uh well, um I uh have you talked about um the uh cultural and social significance of sport? On your we have not. Um I I I think that because um

Uh we've just had this incredible climax to a cricket series. Um and I went on the today programme this morning to talk about it and was reminded I went to the oval yesterday where it was played and the sense of tension was unbearable. And I'd been through this um quarter final in the Champions League where Villa, who we were talking about earlier, had played against PhD and that also had been so excruciating.

And I realize that these are the two moments where I have lived most fully this year. And that is I am just one person among millions, perhaps billions, who share in experiences like that. And it is obviously part of an enormous, vast global, industrialized um construct. I mean it's i enormous and

the way that this has evolved, the fact that we take it for granted, I su it's it suddenly struck me, this is very odd. This is this is something I've always taken for granted that actually is very, very strange and unusual. So maybe maybe something on that. Excellent. Uh head on over to triggerpod dot co dot uk where we ask Tom your questions.

Apocalyptic millenarian cults have played an important part of Western Christianity's history and culture. Do you see any similarities in today's movements which would indicate the emergence of such cults in the present day?