But the going too far is Holland's thesis. No one would have paid any attention to Holland's book if he were arguing only that Christianity influenced modernity. Obviously, the modern world came from and through Christendom. No one denies those influences. That is not what distinguishes Holland's book, as I read it.

He's arguing, like John Gray, Nietzsche, and Sade, that modernity is in trouble because Christianity is the main or exclusive source of modern values, that modern secularism is vacuous because these secularists reject their Christian origin. Specifically, he's arguing that modern morality could be based only on Christianity, not on pre-Christian Greco-Roman philosophy or any other ancient tradition.