Dominion is an impressive synthesis of the history of the Christian world with a view to the influence of Christianity on Western thought, hence the subtitle The Making of the Western Mind. After a cursory examination of the ancient world and the events of the Old Testament, Holland traces the development of Christianity by focussing on pivotal events over the next two millenia, but always with a view to how the impact of these events on Christian thinking and by extension Western thinking.
Holland's treatment of Christianity is surprisingly balanced and sympathetic. He was brought up as an Anglican, but later accepted the standard Enlightenment arguments against Christianity. However, over time his studies of the ancient world have lead him to realise the values we treasure as typical Western values are in fact Christian in origin. His book argues again and again in defense of this idea. He is very fair towards the Church, and does not repeat the hackneyed explanations of the "crimes" of the Church, eg. in his treatment of the Galileo controversy he shows how Galileo's own firey and arrogant manner had much to do with his fate. Church teaching on homosexuality receives a negative treatment. Holland suggests that the Christian revolution "still had a long way to run" to recognise that "men and women might be defined sexually by their attraction to people of the same gender".