Nigel John Biggar
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THE MCDONALD CENTRE for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life Report 2018-19 MA = Matthew Anderson, Associate Fellow NJB = Nigel Biggar, Director JB = Jonathan Brant, Associate Research Fellow EB = Edward Brooks, Associate Fellow DD = Dafydd Daniel, McDonald Lecturer in Christian Ethics ED = Edward David, Research Assistant ML = Marc LiVecche, McDonald Visiting Scholar AM = Ashley Moyse, McDonald Post-Doctoral Fellow in Christian Ethics and Public Life MW = Matthew Wilkinson = Associate Research Fellow A. Strategic aims The mission of the McDonald Centre is to bring a Christian intelligence to bear on ethical issues of public concern, with a view to developing Christian ethics’ grasp of contemporary issues commending a Christian vision of moral life in society at large raising the quality of public deliberation about ethical issues; and encouraging Christian ethicists in the art of honest engagement with fellow-members of a ‘secular’ (i.e., plural) public. B. Highlights Dr James Orr, McDonald Post-Doctoral Fellow in Christian Ethics and Public Life from 2014-18, has secured a permanent position as University Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge from 1 September 2019. The edited proceedings of the 2017 conference, “The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology Meets Anthropology and the Social Sciences”, edited by Dr Brian Williams and Dr Michael Lamb, have been accepted for publication by Georgetown University Press. In October 2018, the Oxford Character Project’s “The Humility Gap”’, a public engagement initiative exploring the virtue of intellectual humility in contentious public debates, was launched with support from the University of Connecticut’s Humility and Conviction in Public Life Project. “The Great War: its End and its Effects”, a McDonald Centre–Christ Church Cathedral series of public lectures to commemorate the end of the First World War was run from January to March 2019. Professor Nigel Biggar was invited to join a panel discussion of “The Legacy of Empire” at the Times Cheltenham Literary Festival in October 2018, which drew an audience of 1100. Dr Dafydd Daniel featured in an episode of The Story of God with Morgan Freeman entitled ‘Deadly Sins’ on the National Geographic Channel (broadcast in March 2019 in the USA and in May 2019 in the UK). 2 In January 2019 Dr Marc LiVecche gave four lectures at the US Army Chaplains Europe annual training in Germany, speaking on just war and moral injury to about 150 US Army chaplains stationed throughout the Europe and Africa commands. Dr Ashley Moyse was appointed Associate Fellow of the Academy of Fellows, the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity at Trinity International University in October 2018. C. Summary of activities and achievements Professor Nigel Biggar, Director NJB was on research leave from mid-October 2018 until late April 2019, intent upon completing his book, What’s Wrong with Rights? In the three and a half years from April 2015 to October 2018, he had written 75,000 words of it; in the six months of research leave he wrote a further 100,000 words and finished the book. It is now under consideration for publication by Oxford University Press (e.t.a. Spring 2020). Notwithstanding his monomaniacal focus on writing his book, NJB flew to Japan in January at the invitation of the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, an American Methodist foundation, to deliver a keynote lecture, “Nationalism, Historic Grievance, and Reconciliation”. The following month he flew to Florida to take part in a day-conference on pacifism and just war at Palm Beach Atlantic University. His entry into military circles has continued to deepen—with invitations to address a conference at the National Defense University, Washington, DC; a Royal Navy conference marking the 50th anniversary of its Continuous At Sea Deterrent; the UK’s Chief of Defence Staff Strategy Forum; and international students at the Royal College of Defence Studies. The success of the Times newspaper’s panel discussion on the ‘Legacy of the British Empire” in May 2018 resulted in an invitation to repeat his performance at the Times Cheltenham Literary Festival, which attracted an audience of over 1100. Although he has not written for the press as much this year, he did write his longest article—a two thousand word-long piece on Cambridge University’s decision to dig up its connections with slavery, which appeared as a Times ’Saturday Essay’ in May 2019. Dr Dafydd Daniel, McDonald Lecturer in Christian Ethics In January 2018, DD was chosen as one of ten BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) New Generation Thinkers: early career academics working across the humanities, “who can bring the best of university research and scholarly ideas to a broad audience through working with the media”. He appeared at the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival at the Sage in Gateshead in March 2018, where he spoke about Sir Isaac Newton’s Christian theology and belief in alchemy (a portion of which was later broadcast on Radio 3). Since then he has had proposals for appearances on BBC Radio 3 accepted and been invited to discuss such issues as: the relationship between rioting and reform, and the emergence of the mob as a political entity, in eighteenth-century Britain and America (May 2018); theological conceptions of witchcraft and the history of witch-trials (October 2018); secularisation and religious heterodoxy in the British Enlightenment (November 2018). He 3 appeared again at the BBC Ratio 3 Free Thinking Festival in March 2019 to deliver The Essay, which will later be broadcast on Radio 3; it is entitled: “Where do human rights come from?”’ DD features in an episode of The Story of God with Morgan Freeman entitled ‘Deadly Sins’ on the National Geographic Channel (broadcast March 2019 (USA) May 2019 (UK)). As well as a book contract, papers at academic conferences, and articles submitted for review, DD had pieces commissioned by The Spectator and Inference: International Review of Science. In January 2018, DD received funding from the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), to run the conference: “Who Chooses Who We Are? Tensions in Identity”. After a number of submissions, papers were accepted from scholars at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, SOAS, KCL, and Oxford Brookes University. The conference was fully-booked and took place in Oxford, January 2019. Dr Marc LiVecche, McDonald Visiting Scholar Beginning his work at the McDonald Centre in August, ML’s first major goal of his time in Oxford, the publication of his dissertation The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, is advanced as far as he can presently take it. His completed revised manuscript is with Oxford University Press (USA) for review. He has heard positive, if partial, feedback from one reviewer and is sitting uncomfortably on pins and needles whist awaiting official word from the publisher. His second major book project, provisionally titled, Moral Horror: A Christian Defense of the Bombing of Hiroshima is being researched and outlined. By the end of May, ML will submit a proposal to publishers. This book is geared toward a more popular audience then the first. George Weigel, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (not Centre) in Washington, DC has offered to help shepherd it to an editor at Encounter Books. He wants the draft done by the end of summer. Additionally, ML is working with Eric Patterson, an American just war scholar, on an edited volume evaluating the life work (still ongoing!) of just war scholar James Turner Johnson. The book has a very nearly complete table of contents and full stable of committed writers. A proposal is being drafted to be sent to a publisher. Beyond books, ML has been doing a modest amount of lecturing and other-writing. In November, he spoke at the Providence journal’s Christianity and national security conference in Washington, DC. In January, he gave four lectures at the US Army Chaplains Europe annual training in Germany, speaking on just war and moral injury to about 150 US Army chaplains stationed throughout the Europe and Africa commands. In March, he lectured on Christian love in the midst of war at the English L’Abri. Later that month, he gave a paper on moral injury at the McCain Conference, the annual ethics conference at the US Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center for Ethics and Leadership. In May, ML will also be speaking on C.S. Lewis and war at the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, and on just war and moral injury, again, at the European chapter of the International Society of Military Ethics Conference in Vienna. Like NB, ML is keen to more firmly position himself in military circles, both educational and professional. A further manifestation of this desire is ML’s work to develop a new Providence sub-project: a digital reader geared toward military chaplains and others in the profession of arms charged with the moral formation and care of warfighters. It will 4 feature accessible essays drawn from the other Providence work, newly written pieces, interviews, resource (book, movie, etc.) reviews, study guides, etc. Aiming to be published quarterly, or possibly three times a year, ML is working with US Command Chaplain for US Army Europe Col. Timothy Mallard and others to have the reader approved by the Department of Defense. Beyond regular writings for Providence, ML finalized a chapter for the upcoming volume on World War I and Christian ethics for National Defense University Press, to be released in spring of 2019. The paper was drawn from his participation in the same NDU that NB participated in. ML is also finishing up an invited essay on Christian realism to The Public Justice Review, to be published in June.