WOULD THERE BE AN AMERICA IF ROME NEVER FELL? Thinking about history in its potential alternative outcomes is not a common topic of discourse these days, but doing so remains a superb tool for eliciting a deeper understanding of what did happen and why. Think — What if the South had won the Civil War?

So consider the Brit popular historian Tom Holland:

Holland is an immensely popular public historian who has attracted great controversy for speaking with brutal candor about Islam, Western liberals and sundry other topics. More recently, he offered some arresting thoughts in this “Unbelievable” interview about the true character of the ancients and how Christianity changed the course of history, philosophy, politics, economics and, perhaps most significantly, what we today understand to be moral.

Holland is no Bible-thumping Fundamentalist, yet he declares “I was wrong about Christianity” and the ancients. That declaration alone ought to be sufficiently tempting to check out this HillFaith post.