Liberalism in the U.S. and the UK: A Q&A with Lord Nigel Biggar 

Lord Nigel Biggar, CBE, is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford. He is the author of several books, including (most recently) The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars. For the past decade, Lord Biggar has been embroiled in controversies surrounding his efforts to interrogate the ethics of “empire” and, specifically, the British Empire. The following conversation with his former doctoral student, Matthew Lee Anderson, has been lightly edited for clarity.  

Matthew Lee Anderson: You begin by arguing that the culture wars are real and important. As a frame, “culture war” has governed American public discourse for the last forty years or so. What are the similarities and differences that you see between the American context and the British context?  

Nigel Biggar: I am interested to hear you trace the culture wars in the U.S. back several decades, because it is not something we have talked about in the UK until the last ten years. One reason that you ended up in a culture war over abortion was that the U.S. Supreme Court presumed to make a judgment that, frankly, your legislators should have made. We in the UK passed our first liberal abortion law in 1967, but because the law was passed by Parliament, not by a court, it did not become quite as polarizing. The other reason our culture war came later is that the BBC has a public service duty to present public controversies and manage them in a balanced fashion, giving equal airtime, more or less, to different sides of the debate. We have had institutions that contain these highly controversial issues in a way that the U.S. has lacked.  

For us, the culture wars are much more recent concerning three things: colonial history, transgender identity, and the issues of race and racism. The colonial history issue came alive in 2015 and 2016 because of the Rhodes Must Fall agitation in Oxford, which was imported from South Africa, not the U.S. The racism issue exploded here as a direct result of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the upsurge of BLM in the States, which was exploited by professional antiracist bodies here. And transgender questions are all of our own making, really. The racial front of the cultural war was heavily influenced by American controversies, though we are the ones who imported radical race politics from America. But the histories of the culture wars in the two countries are not identical by any means.  

MLA: What do you think are the downsides of importing war metaphors into social relationships?  

NB: Would that we did not have to use such an image. But “culture wars” is not a false description of what has befallen us. I learned we had a problem in our universities when, in December of 2017, a group of academics sought to shut down my research project on Ethics and Empire—not to engage me in rational exchange, but to use political leverage to intimidate me, to discourage others from cooperating with me, and to get Oxford to take the project out of my hands. War was brought to my doorstep and, since then, I’ve had to fight it. Yet I’m fighting the war to reestablish what we should all want, which is a “liberal” culture.

I know perfectly well the word “liberal” means all sorts of things, particularly in the U.S. In conservative circles, “liberalism” is viewed as a bad thing—to which my response is, well, which liberalism? I am a liberal in the sense that I want a culture where we get to say what we believe the truth to be without suffering penalty, and then give each other reasons why we disagree. If we are honest and patient—who knows?—we might reach the truth, or at least get closer to the truth, together. This is the kind of culture that I thought we had, and we need to restore it. So I am fighting a war that was brought to my door in order to get back to a situation where we debate our differences instead of fighting over them. I’m fighting a war for the sake of peace.

But yes, there’s a downside to there being a war, which is that people like me have to spend time fighting for the freedom to say what we think the truth to be, against those who are so convinced of their own grasp of the truth that they think no one else should be allowed to hear what the likes of me has to say. That’s the problem we have. Some people, particularly in the political center, regard the culture wars as something that other people do. In fact, though, moderate people, liberal people, cautious people like me are saying what we think the truth to be and are being attacked.

So I don’t think the culture wars are politically inspired fiction; they are real. People like me didn’t create them, but we do need to fight them. Hence, the subtitle of my book, The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars. We need to reestablish a culture where we are free to say what we think the truth is, within the law.  

MLA: Your diagnosis of the progressive left and the emergence of the culture wars involves a story about the postmodernism and postcolonialism that have stripped us of any transcendent, universally binding criteria by which we can assess truth claims, which effectively leaves everything bottoming out in power. Is there anything that Christians might learn from postmodern and postcolonial ways of thinking?  

NB: Postmodernism, of course, can mean a variety of things. But insofar as it means the rejection of modernist hegemony, the rejection of the notion of constant modernizing progress, the rejection of a kind of grand narrative whereby, inexorably, we become ever more rational, more secular—well, the history of the twentieth century exposed that myth. So, the rejection of grand liberal narratives or grand Marxist narratives—I’m in favor of that. As a Christian, I can’t bin grand narratives altogether, because we Christians certainly have a grand narrative of creation, fall, and redemption, that we plug our little lives into.

But within that Christian grand narrative, human beings are creatures and sinners, not gods. Therefore, we have to exercise a certain humility and restraint toward one another. We cannot assume we have the whole truth. We need to listen to each other. So, I am liberal in the sense that I described earlier because I am a Christian, because of the grand narrative I inhabit. And because of that grand narrative, certain traits like humility and docility and temperance and patience and charity are virtues. They’re not virtues to Nietzsche or Aristotle. So, there is a critique of certain kinds of grand narrative—dogmatic, doctrinaire, ideological grand narratives—that postmodernism rightly makes.

As for postcolonialism, I think the nugget of truth I take from that is that those of us who are blessed with—or privileged with—wealth and power, need to be aware that social and economic interests may well deflect and infect our reason. Reason is never pure. It’s always in the service of some interests or others, and some interests may be illegitimate and unjust.

Therefore, we need to listen carefully to those who are not so privileged because they may tell us truths we need to hear. By the same token, however, according to my Christian grand narrative, even the unprivileged are sinners and creatures, who also need to be careful not to assume that their interpretation of the causes of the disadvantage or injustice they suffer is correct. They may be wrong. So, everyone needs to listen, even the underprivileged. But yes, the idea that reason can be distorted to serve the interests of the privileged and the powerful is a truth that I take on board.  

MLA: This is a highly polemical book. Do you think of it as a prophetic book? And I’m curious what sort of prophetic stance, with respect to the culture war, do you think Christians should or might be able to have?  

NB: I tend to suck my teeth when people describe me as being polemical, because I think of polemic as being unbalanced and strident, and I think I’m not that. But I identify certain targets and I don’t pull my punches. Do I think I’m being prophetic? To say so seems to me presumptuous. Other people have to judge that. I just say what I think to be true and important. And although I’m not someone who likes to make enemies, I’ve identified certain things that I think are obnoxious and need to be named and shamed.

I came to identify the zealotry I described by reflecting on the puzzling, bewildering behavior of some of my critics. Of course I am interested here—I was the object of the criticism, and maybe what I’m saying is unfair. I just have to leave readers to judge. But I was bewildered by the fact that my critics didn’t seem to be able to read what was on the page and would claim I said things I never said, and in fact things I denied saying—despite having title of professor in front of their name and PhD after. They would make straw men that purported to represent me and then blow them down, although they didn’t represent me at all. They would go beyond what the evidence allows them to say, or they would ignore whole swaths of data. And one of them appears to have made it his life’s work to discredit me.

So, I thought, My goodness, these people cannot help themselves. They are being driven. It was at that point that I first reached for the word demonic to describe the phenomena—demonic in the sense that these people don’t seem to be able to stop themselves being driven to go beyond what careful attention to the data or reason allows.  

And then I noticed that not a single one of the main critics I’ve engaged has conceded anything. I’m willing to admit I’ve made a mistake. I answer my ten most hostile critics and make some minor concessions in the paperback edition of my book on colonialism. But the other side makes no concessions whatsoever. And I remembered that, as a Christian, I perceive myself as a creature and a sinner, so I might be mistaken. That’s why I try to be careful. That’s why I’ve answered these people as best I can, because I do not think I’m God. However, by contrast, my critics behave as if they think they are God.  

In light of this, I’ve taken to saying that one of the great advantages of believing in God is that you’re less likely to mistake yourself for one. That’s really why I started talking in those terms. Criticism, of course, is absolutely fair game, but many of my critics don’t want a conversation because they have no sense we are equals trying to find out the truth together, who are assuming we might have something to learn. That’s not how, in my experience, the other side behaves. So I reach for theological language: they behave like little gods, not sinful creatures.  

MLA: So let me ask you this question then, because in Behaving in Public, you wrote, “As a Christian would love the world, he will play the pastor before he plays prophet. For the only people a prophet has the right to prophesy against are those he has first cared to make his own.” That’s a striking line in juxtaposition with your critique of “demonic” ideological tyrants. Are there limits to the types of denunciations we should have toward our foes in the culture war? And if not, what does it look like or what might it mean for Christians to make our foes in the culture war our own?  

NB: That is a very good question which is a species of the generally difficult question of how one should relate to and treat zealots. In my life, I have come across a variety of zealots. I misspent many hours of my youth trying to argue with Jehovah’s Witnesses before discovering that, actually, there’s not a lot of point here.

And then I was very interested in other kinds of ideologues; for example, members of the Irish Republican Army or young radical British Muslims. I wanted to know why some people exited their ideology. The conclusions I’ve drawn from reflecting on the question are simple. First, we never know what the effect of telling the truth will be. It’s always worth telling it once, maybe twice. But there may come a time when you’ve done that, and there’s nothing more you can do. The penny may drop in their minds over time. It’s always worth saying what you believe to be true and maybe repeating it, but not forever.  

A second conclusion is, however, that ideologues again are not interested in a conversation; they’re interested in either persuading you or making you submit. If someone approaches you in a provocative, insulting manner from the get-go, you know they don’t want a conversation. If you engage with them, you’re likely to be reduced to an undignified scrap in which you lose your dignity and your temper. So if someone approaches you in that fashion, refuse to engage on those terms. Some exchanges are simply not worth having. They’re dangerous, and silence is the best response. And there is good dominical precedent for Christians to use silence in response to what other people say.  

The third thing I’d say is that even ideologues and zealots may speak the truth. And that’s why I felt I ought to respond to the ten most hostile critics to my book on colonialism. I paid them the respect of taking what they said seriously and assessing how much sense it made. I conceded three or four minor points to my most obsessive and recalcitrant critic.  

Finally, zealots are not the only ones we are speaking to. In a conference I held in Oxford in 2019, Bret Weinstein gave us the gnomic advice, “Always remember the room is not the room,” which means, when you’re faced with an aggressive zealot, you need to think about how you behave to the people who are watching. They are the more important audience. So for their sake it may be important to speak the truth as best you can without being drawn into an undignified scrap.  

MLA: You detail a number of intellectual vices that undermine liberal argumentation, including “pulling rank” and engaging in ad hominem attacks. One worry that someone might have is that your account of liberalism is too idealized, that the image of dispassionate debate and dialogue might fit a university but is too precious for a non-academic context. How should the boundaries of speech be enforced, if at all?  

NB: If my account of a liberal culture is too ideal, we should consider the alternative: a culture where people don’t reason together, but shout at each other, use political leverage against each other, and extremists use violence.  

Second, as I argue in the book, the typical liberal virtues of respect and tolerance are far too thin. They need a wider array of supporting virtues: humility, docility, temperance, courage, etc. And that such traits are virtues is not obvious to every worldview. As I mentioned earlier, Aristotle didn’t think much of humility, nor did Nietzsche. There are certain worldviews where these virtues make sense, including a Christian worldview. If we want to sustain a liberal culture, we might have to dig deeper both morally and metaphysically.  

That said, political life is rambunctious and messy. Even in polite debate in the House of Lords, there are lots of articulate speeches, but less listening than pontificating. So even in that low-temperature political forum, liberal values are not always well represented.  

I still think the ideals are worth holding up and there are political figures who rise up to them. For instance, I give you Barack Obama as an example of charity, by which I mean giving an opponent’s argument its strongest construction before dismantling it. Such an approach is generous, but also more effective because you’ve dismantled your opponent’s strongest position, rather than the weakest. From my reading, that was Obama’s practice as an attorney: he would scrupulously represent his opposition’s argument and only then begin to take it apart. It’s effective rhetorically, because it shows uncommitted observers that you’re being fair. And it’s politically effective, because generosity impresses. So I don’t accept that the ideal is incapable of realization. As a Christian, and as someone with a little political experience, I don’t expect life to be much less than a mess. One has to try and work his way through. But one is called to do so as scrupulously as one can. 

MLA: I think a lot of readers of this book will have no idea that it picks up themes that you articulated in your inaugural lecture as the Regius Professor at Oxford, where you argued universities need an Augustinian liberalism. You argue in that lecture that theological premises will sometimes reshape ethical concepts in important ways. As you put it, “from time to time the theologian must … say something theological.” I’m curious when you think it might be time to say something theological about the culture wars.  

NB: I do say something explicitly theological in this book: the worldview of monotheists, and especially Christian monotheists, generates and makes intelligible liberal virtues. If people were to adopt that worldview, it would help enormously to sustain a liberal culture. But lots of people who now warm to Christian virtues can’t quite bring themselves to endorse the theological assertions. I want to say to them, “Okay, if you can’t bring yourself to buy the full fat version, there may be ways in which you can approximate it for reasons you may not entirely understand yourself.”  

This goes back to an experience I had when I was chaplain of Oriel College in Oxford in the 1990s. After one of our very atmospheric services in chapel, a female undergraduate came up to me and said, “Chaplain, I really enjoyed that. But I feel such a fraud because I don’t believe.” People are drawn to Christianity at a variety of different levels and can assent to it at different points. We’re not always consistent. The Christian worldview is important to generate and support certain virtues. I am explicitly theological there. Not everyone is able to buy the full package for reasons that God alone knows, but they may still appreciate the ‘liberal’ virtues for various reasons, including the ugliness of the illiberal, warring alternative. I have also argued elsewhere that “wokery” or progressivism is a Christian heresy and explained that I am liberal because I’m a Christian. So I have in fact made a point of saying a number of things theological on this matter. 

MLA: One conclusion a reader might draw from your trajectory of addressing these issues at the outset of your time in Oxford to arguing them when you have left the academy would be that the university cannot be saved from within. Can it? What counsel would you give to young, academically inclined conservatives as they seek to navigate this terrain? 

NB: The kinds of things I say in The New Dark Age, I began to say around 2005 in Dublin, when I preached a sermon in Trinity College Chapel about the university’s crucial role in the cultivation of virtue. Up until recently, my academic colleagues would have sucked their teeth or taken a step backwards if they were told that they should be in the business of cultivating intellectual virtue among their students, and would have expressed horror at the idea they should be responsible for assuming such a Victorian-Edwardian morally formative role.  

Now universities have decided that they are in the business of propagating progressive virtues like compassion and kindness. They apparently now recognize they are in the virtue-formation business. So we have the opportunity to expand the range of virtues universities should be in the business of cultivating. But these are early days in terms of that in the UK. 

My sense is that the U.S. has a wider range of higher education institutions—you have explicitly Christian institutions and a number of recent conservative foundations. And I think your original republican political tradition speaks the language of virtue in a way that we don’t hear in Britain. I remember reading an early state constitution and noticing how the language of rights was accompanied by the language of virtue. So I think the idea that colleges are responsible for moral formation is not so alien in the U.S. But in the UK now, it’s very strange.  

Can universities be redeemed? In addition to being chairman of the Free Speech Union in the UK, I am also chairman of the Pharos Foundation. We are in the business of injecting scholarship of a high caliber that is not obsessed with race, gender, or decolonization into the bloodstream of Oxford University. We’ve held a series of lectures the last five years in honor of Roger Scruton, which have been highly popular. We think the ground here is fertile for more conservative, more pro-Western, less “progressive” thinking.  

My advice to younger scholars would be to ask themselves whether they have the opportunity to infiltrate the system. They might have to bite their tongues until they get tenure, but if they can carve out space to breathe intellectually, then infiltrate, be the mustard seed, be the yeast. Do not abandon the system but find colleagues who are sympathetic with you. Many of them will be intimidated. But it is a practical certainty that there are more people around in universities who are both “liberal” (in my sense) by temperament and harbor heterodox conservative thoughts. If conservatives gather together, they can begin to change things.   

It may be that you conclude that certain institutions are irredeemable and you need to create new ones. This has been happening in the States, as you know. Here, it hasn’t happened recently. But when non-conformists were not allowed into Oxford and Cambridge in the nineteenth century, they founded their own colleges in northern England, which became universities in the twentieth century. Play the long game. The task of reconstruction may take more than a generation. But then, abolishing slavery in Britain took fifty years, so let’s not be impatient.   

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