Is Christianity responsible for Woke? Tom Holland on the Making of the West

Historian Tom Holland has provocatively argued that Christianity was responsible for the greatest revolution in history and fundamentally forged the Western mind. It did this through emphasising the dignity and universality of human nature leading to the concept of human rights and extolling the virtues of love, self-denial and care for the weak. This revolution wove its way through the late Roman Empire, the 'Dark' and Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Enlightenment, into our own time with its manifestation in the civil rights movement, gay rights, feminism and wokeness. Ironically, these are not universal ideas at all as secularists claimed. Even as adherence to Christianity waned or was repudiated, its ideas live on, like dinosaurs living on in the form of birds (it's true!).

Many conservatives see Christianity as a source of resistance to wokeness, but have we been mistaken as (anachronistically speaking) Nietzsche and some neo-pagans have argued? Or is there more to the story?

I will speak about Holland's thesis and what it means and then invite discussion.

Tom Holland gave a number of interviews about his argument, including with our own John Anderson. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUUkY164jhc. I encourage you to watch one.