Tag: News
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The Elgin Marbles: ‘They weren’t stolen – or even treasured’
6 August 2024. By Nigel for the Daily Express. None of the reasons for returning to Athens the sculptures known as the ‘Elgin Marbles’ adds up. The historical reason – theft – is untrue. The sculptures originally adorned the Parthenon, which was used by the Ottomans as a military base for centuries. In 1687 a…
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Deconstructing decolonisation
6 August 2024. Deconstructing “decolonisation”: what it is, why it matters, and why it’s (mostly) wrong “The ‘decolonisation’ movement assumes that the colonial record of the West is simply a litany of racism, exploitation, and oppression of ‘black’ victims by ‘white’ victimisers. As a matter of historical fact, this is false. But when ‘decolonisers’ are…
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The risk of ‘loaning’ the Elgin Marbles to Greece
4 August 2024. By Nigel for The Spectator. Sir Keir Starmer’s government looks ready to smile upon the British Museum’s apparent desire to by-pass the legal prohibition of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens by negotiating a ‘long-term loan’ instead. Since Greece believes that the Marbles were stolen, that ‘loan’ is bound to…
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Conservatives can’t afford to ignore the culture war – Kemi Badenoch gets this
30 July 2024. Nigel for The Telegraph. All candidates to lead the Party must demonstrate that they understand the issues that are at stake – and are willing to tackle them The “era of the culture wars is over”, declared Lisa Nandy in her inaugural speech as the Labour government’s culture secretary on 8 July.…
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Podcast Against Antisemitism
25 July 2024. “Reverend Canon Nigel Biggar is a historian, theologian and ethicist currently serving as Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford. Nigel has been described as “one of the leading living Western ethicists” by the New Statesman, and is named as one of Prospect Magazine’s Top Thinkers of 2024.…
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God is in the world, not just the Bible
11 July 2024. Nigel on The Natural Theologian podcast. In this podcast, Nigel joins King Laugh and Joel Carini of The Natural Theologian to discuss theological method and more.
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Making Moral Sense of the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza
01 July 2024. By Nigel for The Centre for Independent Studies. The pacifist answer to the problem of war is straightforward. Any use of violent force by anybody in any circumstances is immoral and should cease. War is always worse than its alternatives; peace is always preferable. This is not a view to which I…
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Was Colonialism All Bad?
20 June 2024. Nigel joins the Bigger Than Me Podcast, exploring the distinctions between colonialism and colonisation, motivations behind European expansion, Sir John A. Macdonald’s legacy, and the ongoing impact of First Nations people, including the controversial claims of unmarked graves at Kamloops Residential School, while advocating for integrity and humility in confronting our colonial…
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Nigel discusses colonialism on the Ill Literacy Podcast
20 June 2024. Nigel joins Tim Benson of the Heartland Institute to discuss his Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. They discuss whether the British Empire was driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate, whether we should speak of “colonialism and slavery” in the same breath, and whether the Empire was essentially racist. They also…
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History lessened: Who gets to decide how we see the past?
13 June 2024. By Nigel for The Spectator. Three weeks ago, I received an SOS from a distressed citizen of Glasgow, urging me to protest against a recently installed display at the Kelvingrove Museum, ‘Glasgow – City of Empire’. Predictably, the exhibition falls over itself to clock every conceivable association between the city and slavery,…