The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars

by Nigel Biggar

In an increasingly polarized age, culture wars are everywhere. They are often criticized as superficial or confected disagreements designed to distract us from more important issues. Is this true, or are they rather more fundamental than that?

In this thoughtful and passionate intervention, renowned theologian and moral philosopher Nigel Biggar argues that 'culture wars' are in fact political and moral debates that cut to the very quick of some of the most substantial questions of our time, ranging from the welfare of children to the way we conceive and manage ethnic and cultural differences in diverse societies. The fact that these debates are so often characterized by bad faith, dishonesty, and mindless abuse exposes the rot at the heart of the intellectual culture of the west, in universities, the media, and beyond. An authoritarian desire to suppress or smear opponents and exercise the power of intimidation and coercion is a dramatic illustration of a dangerous our fragile and valuable liberal culture of rational truth-seeking and good faith civility is under threat. A new dark age looms.

Mixing firsthand experience with broad ethical, political, and cultural reflection, this is a powerful and erudite polemic from one of our most respected thinkers.

Genres: Philosophy

192 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication April 27, 2026

About the author

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 holds a B.A. in Modern History from Oxford and a Ph.D. in Christian Theology & Ethics from the University of Chicago. He was appointed C.B.E. “for services to Higher Education” in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. His most recent books are Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023), What’s Wrong with Rights? (2020), In Defence of War (2013), and Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation (2014). In the press he has written articles for the Financial Times, the (London) Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, the (Glasgow} Herald, the Irish Times, Standpoint, The Critic, The Article, Unherd and Quillette. He served on the Committee on Ethical Issues in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians (London) from 2000 to 2014, the Royal Society’s Working Group on People and the Planet from 2010 to 2012, and the Pontifical Academy for Life from 2017 to 2022. He now chairs the board of trustees of the Free Speech Union.

He has lectured at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London; the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham; the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Hamburg; the US Military Academy, West Point; and the National Defense University, Washington, DC. His hobbies include visiting battlefields. In 1973 he drove from Scotland via Iran and Afghanistan to India. And in 2015 and 2017 he trekked across the mountains of central Crete in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh-Fermor and his comrades, when they abducted General Kreipe in April-May 1944.