Nigel Biggar

Nigel Biggar is professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University and director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Life. There are a few important points from our conversation that I would like to highlight. First, we discussed the inevitability of differences of opinion on important matters within a democratic and pluralist society. Biggar says: “I don’t think that the answer is to require everyone to adopt the same set of terms and language and to suspend their deeper convictions and to bracket them or hide them away. I don’t think that’s feasible…The solution to managing conflict is to be found in the way in which we speak, not the language we speak it in…and the moral rules that we obey in dealing with other people with whom we disagree.” We discussed the controversy surrounding the established Church of England in a society of many faiths. According to Biggar, although the Church of England certainly enjoys a privileged position, the rest of society has complete religious freedom and the church has used its position quite generously to include other faiths in public affairs. In fact, many leaders of minority faith communities support the established church of England, stating that they would prefer to live in a nation “whose public institutions affirmed some kind of religion than one where none was affirmed.”

Biggar anticipated the counter-argument that although the established church does not restrict freedom of religion or impose any type of religious persecution on non-members, its very presence and influence in public ceremonies and institutions must result in making non-Anglicans feel as though they are second class citizens or not truly British. While irritation among non Anglicans is understandable, Biggar views such irritation as inevitable. He explains that “there is no such thing as an empty public space. There are always certain moral or metaphysical views that are either explicit or implicit. Public institutions do take moral, at least implicit moral and metaphysical stances.” If England chose to exclude religion from public institutions as is the case in France, religious believers would then be irritated. Biggar feels that public institutions cannot avoid taking some kind of stand on the issue and regardless of what that is, someone will end up frustrated. He continued: “And the people who are irritated have every freedom to argue in public that institutions should take a different stand. That’s part of democratic politics. But putting up with irritation in public life is what the liberal virtue of tolerance is all about. Tolerance is not putting up with what you don’t care about…I think in a degenerate form, tolerance means that basically you can do whatever you please as long as you don’t bother me. I don’t care what you do just as long as I can get to do what I do. Whereas I think a stronger form of tolerance is where you do something that irritates me and I tolerate it.”

A little side note: The extent of English tolerance is being put to the test as British society becomes increasingly diverse. The presence of multiple faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds is quickly distinguishing between the stereotypical English “indifference” to others as long as they remain at a distance and true, liberal tolerance of very real difference. Characteristic British indifference may not be enough in a multicultural community. Instead, I think pluralist societies are in desperate need of active interfaith and intercultural dialogue, significant steps towards mutual understanding, and the willingness to tolerate substantial differences on a variety of levels. At the same time, I think it is crucial for members of society to not shy away from open and honest discussion about the positive and negative aspects of its various cultures so as to realistically deal with important issues that may be uncomfortable but are vital to the community's cohesion and survival.

Next we discussed whether the established Church and Christian morality are central to the idea of “Britishness” and British identity. Long established British institutions embody particular values that historically have been conveyed through the Christian faith. However, there is a current debate over whether such Christian influence should continue in a multi-faith society and whether society can keep the values and drop the religion. While this may be possible to an extent, Biggar sees it as a very complex and controversial undertaking and mentioned some atheist philosophers who actually doubt it can be done. One philosopher at the University of London has said that he thinks that “the affirmation of human dignity outside of a theological context is the equivalent of whistling in the dark…that the notion has no home outside of that context.” Additionally and very significantly, Jürgen Habermas, a German intellectual who previously subscribed to the secularization thesis, more recently “made the interesting statement that he thinks that religious traditions have the capacity to articulate our moral intuitions…by which I think he means his liberal humanist moral intuitions…so here’s a non religious person recognizing that religion, and in his case Christianity, can articulate important values that he holds, and he’s not confident that if you can extract these values from a religious context, that they will make much sense.” Overall, Biggar believes that the British people will lose more than they realize if they choose to divorce their values from the Christian tradition.

On a slightly different note, the debate over the essence of “Britishness” is especially important in light of the massive population mobility and immigration into the UK of people from all over the world. The ideology of multiculturalism has admirably aspired to allow and appreciate diversity by encouraging newcomers to maintain their cultural heritage within their new home. However, this policy has led to a kind of cultural relativism in which all cultures are to be considered as equals and can ultimately stifle intelligent conversation about which values, traditions, and customs are truly harmful or beneficial to society. According to Biggar, the idea that all cultures are equal is “just not true. And anyone who is liberal knows it’s not true.” In his opinion, the silver lining to the 7/7 tragedy is that it awoke many people to the reality of extremist fundamentalism and “the fact that there are certain cultures that we cannot tolerate.” While British society may be plural, “that does not mean that anything goes.” When immigrants choose to make Britain their home, they must realize that they are becoming part of a country with a “certain definite character and if they want to become citizens, in a sense, they have to commit themselves to be British...this is not just an empty space for them to inhabit…this was never an empty space. We just forgot that it wasn’t. So I think more thought about what modern Britishness consists of is important and immigrants need to be aware of it—whatever we decide it happens to be…”