Author: Nigel Biggar
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Christian Realism
27 March 2024. By Nigel Biggar. The issue of how the moral principles stemming from the example and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth should be applied to political life has always been uncertain and controversial. This largely because, as the son of a village carpenter in 1st century Palestine, Jesus had no responsibility of any…
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Imperial Quandary: Nigel reviews ‘One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink’ by Matthew Parker
24 March 2024. The approach is imaginative: to present a snapshot of the British Empire a century ago, five years after its victory in the First World War, when its territory was most extensive and at what must have seemed its zenith. The result is a display of the Empire in all its ad hoc variety, from…
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Euthanasia: Taking Life and Death Seriously
12 March 2024. “Euthanasia and assisted suicide became a hot topic in Hungary, after a young human rights lawyer, who was diagnosed with ALS disease, filed a petition at the European Court of Human Rights in order to change the relevant Hungarian legal regulation. Our guest speakers will discuss the most pressing moral, philosophical, medical,…
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Israel’s founding is complex and messy – but it certainly wasn’t imperialist
3 March 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Telegraph. Opponents of the Jewish state smear it as a colonial project. This is a false narrative and fake history. The “decolonisation” story is a moral melodrama, performed in stark divisions: black versus white, oppressed versus oppressor, good versus evil. That’s the comic- book source of its…
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Decolonisation is an Assault on Britain
29 February 2024. Nigel joins Deprogrammed, a podcast of The New Culture Forum, to discuss decolonisation with host Harrison Pitt of the European Conservative magazine. Nigel and Harrison are joined by Connor Tomlinson of Lotus Eaters.
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Colonialism, Empires, and War
20 February 2024. ‘Historian, theologian and ethicist Nigel Biggar CBE, emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford and Danube Institute Visiting Fellow David Oldroyd-Bolt discuss Professor Biggar’s bestselling book ‘Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning’, which his original publisher tried to cancel before it had even been published, as well as…
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Autonomy’s Suicide
10 February 2024. Campaigners to legalise assisted suicide invoke the principle of arbitrary autonomy. This threatens to give us a libertarian society at the expense of a humane one. “There should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal.” No doubt the novelist Martin Amis was exaggerating for…
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The Spoils of War
18 January 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Spectator. Israel’s fight against Hamas is not genocide. Last week Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, expressed his concern that Israel ‘may have breached international law’ in its three-month bombardment of Gaza. Two days later, at the International Court of Justice, South Africa’s lawyers presented their case accusing…
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Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps
9 January 2024. ‘When we accuse a country of being a “coloniser”, it’s meant as a bad thing. But what if colonialism is okay? What if the British Empire was, on balance… good? That’s the position of Nigel Biggar, a Professor Emeritus at Oxford University whose new book, “Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning”, is making heads…
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The Empire State of Mind
8 January 2024. Today’s anti-colonial narrative ignores the peace, justice, order—and even the abolition of slavery—that the British Empire brought to the world. Derek Turner reviews Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning for Chronicles magazine. ‘Ideologues are often performative, but sometimes they are simply pantomimic. One of today’s major stock villains is the British Empire—seen in melodramatic…