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Between Kin and Cosmopolis, by Nigel Biggar

Reviewing in early 2017 a book which was published in December 2014, it is impossible not to be forcibly struck by the weight of events which have subsequently taken place, and which have a direct bearing on the themes illuminated by Nigel Biggar’s1 stimulating and challenging text: the shift to the political Right in the UK General Election of June 2015; the wave of migration across Europe, prompted by events in the Middle East and North Africa; the EU Referendum of 2016; the Trump presidential campaign and election in the United States. These events, each one of them significant in their own right, but, taken as a totality, momentous in the cultural and political landscape of the Western world, make Biggar’s insight and prescience all the more remarkable. To have written, as it were ante eventum, is a credit to the independence of Biggar’s mind, especially as the conclusions he reached were, at the end of December 2014, deeply contested, whereas in the current climate they have a wider resonance – especially outside the anticipated readership of the book. The central themes could not be more relevant for a 2017 audience: immigration, public orthodoxy, international intervention and national independence. The context for Biggar’s work is his perception that until the 1980s the apparently inexorable rise of supra-nationalism, epitomised by the European Union or the USSR, had led many to suppose that the nation-state or national identity was dead, or at the very least subsumed into a larger entity. However, ‘after the jihadist terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, the deficiency of a laissez-faire multiculturalism became apparent to many, as did the correlative need to strengthen new immigrants’ identification with their adopted country’ (p. XIV). His premise, then, is an empirical observation that ‘nations, nationalisms, and nation-states are now back’ (p. XIV). Chapter 1 (Loyalty and Limits) starts from an exegetical and Christian perspective, and challenges the widely assumed religious position that ‘natural loyalties are subordinate to the requirements of loyalty to God’ (p. 3). While accepting the equality of all humanity, Biggar argues that loyalty to near neighbour – and the cultural institutions which form the state – is justifiable: ‘notwithstanding the fact that all human beings are equal in certain basic respects, no matter what their native land, we might still be obliged – depending on the circumstances – to benefit near neighbours before or instead of distant ones’ (p. 6). This, in turn, becomes a line of reasoning to support border control and the limitation of migration. Chapter 2 (Unity in Diversity? The English Case) finds Biggar in dialogue with the American moral and political philosopher, John Rawls. Progressing the argument that it is justifiable for the state to protect its borders, Biggar argues that ‘an unconstrained libertarian, multiculturalist free-for-all is, therefore, not a responsible option’ (p. 52). Against the argument that public orthodoxy necessitates the affirmation of only one worldview on which multiple liberal values can ‘float’, Biggar cites what he sees as popular support for the English tradition of the Anglican Establishment, based on generosity and hospitality. ‘The Church of England was originally conceived as a relatively liberal space, and, despite itself, it has maintained a continuous liberal strand ever since’ (p. 39). While nodding to the history of seventeeenth–century England, he does not seem to take account of how other non-conforming voices might view ‘Anglican liberality’! Touching on Grotius, Hobbes and Suarez, Chapter 3 (Sovereignty and Responsibility) contrasts what Biggar views as the United Nations morality in which ‘nation-states are free ... to