Historian & Writer

Dominic Erdozain

Dominic Erdozain writes on the history of ideas — from the religious roots of the Enlightenment to the moral crisis of American gun culture and the meaning of patriotism. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Time, CNN, and scholarly journals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Photograph · Adam Davila

Books

To Love a Country

The Problem of Patriotism in America

Crown · 2026

One Nation Under Guns

How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy

Crown · 2024

In the Press

“The Two Kinds of American Patriotism”

The Atlantic · June 2026

“An America Where Guns Do the Talking”

The New York Times · January 2024

“‘Things Are Not Set in Stone’: How to Reframe America’s Gun Debate”

Vanity Fair · January 2024

The Dangerous God

Christianity and the Soviet Experiment (editor)

Cornell University Press · 2017

The Soul of Doubt

The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx

Oxford University Press · 2015

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The Problem of Pleasure

Sport, Recreation and the Crisis of Victorian Religion

Boydell · 2010

The Knotted Gun sculpture (Non-Violence) outside the United Nations headquarters in New York — The Knotted Gun · Kirill Levin

Essays

“Healing America Means Rethinking Patriotism.” Time, July 3, 2026.
“Opinion: Supreme Court’s Bump Stock Decision Is a Huge Step Backward.” CNN, June 15, 2024.
“If Men Were Angels: A Conservative Case for Gun Control.” Comment Magazine, February 29, 2024.
“How Guns Brought America the Tyranny Its Founders Feared.” Time, January 31, 2024.
“Opinion: America Once Valued Life More than Guns. How Did That Change?” CNN, November 27, 2023.
“What the Supreme Court Gets Wrong About the Second Amendment.” Time, November 7, 2023.
“What the Founders Would Say about Mass Shootings.” CNN, April 8, 2021.
“Faith against Faith: Recovering the Religious Character of the Enlightenment.” ABC Religion & Ethics, July 4, 2019.
“After the Terror: Christianity in the Soviet Union.” The Tablet, November 11, 2017.
“The Cult of Certitude: Martin Luther and the Myth of ‘Sola Scriptura.’” ABC Religion & Ethics, November 2, 2017.
“Trump, Reagan and the NRA’s Radical Agenda.” CNN, April 27, 2017.
“An Educated Fury: Faith and Doubt.” OUP Blog, November 17, 2015.

Scholarship

Journal articles and chapters

“If Men Were Angels: Reason and Passion in the Enlightenment.” In Between Secularization and Reform: Religion in the Enlightenment, ed. Anna Tomaszewska and Hasse Hamalainen. Brill, 2022.
“The Church of America and the Heresy of Peace.” Studies in Church History 57 (2021): 364–85.
“Karl Marx and the Invention of the Secular.” In Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion, ed. Joshua King and Winter Jade Werner. Ohio State University Press, 2019.
“Jesus and Augustine: The God of Terror and the Origins of European Doubt.” Journal of Religious History 41, no. 4 (2017): 476–504.
“A Heavenly Poise: Radical Religion and the Making of the Enlightenment.” Intellectual History Review 27, no. 1 (2017): 71–96.
“‘An Inward Music’: Revolution and Resurrection in Doctor Zhivago.” In The Dangerous God: Christianity and the Soviet Experiment. Northern Illinois University Press, 2017.
“‘Cause Is Not Quite What It Used to Be’: The Return of Secularisation.” English Historical Review CXXVII, no. 525 (2012): 377–400.
“Does Sport Build Character? A Progress Report on a Victorian Idea.” Studies in Christian Ethics 25, no. 1 (2012): 35–48.
“The Secularisation of Sin in the Nineteenth Century.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62, no. 1 (2011): 59–88.