AP

Author: Nigel Biggar

Publisher: Polity

Year: 2026

Reviewer: Mark Powell

Everything is ‘Woke’

How pervasive is Cultural Marxism as a coherent philosophy in Western society? What does it explain or partly explain? If it is sunk, is that the end of the ‘woke’ approach to life? Over the past few years there has been an explosive rise in the popular understanding—and cultural concern—or what is pejoratively called ‘wokeness’.

While placing everything under the paradigm of ‘Cultural Marxism’ would be inaccurate, the influence of ‘Cultural Marxism’ is ubiquitous. The recent tragic scandal involving the black Professor Jason Arday at Cambridge University is a case in point.

Should a Christian be Engaged in the ‘Culture Wars’?

Flowing out of all this are the so-called ‘culture wars’. One of the worst things an evangelical Christian can be called in some circles is a “culture warrior”. Biggar argues that the issues are so important that we should all be engaged.

Unfortunately, the connotation is that those engaged in such activity are not as committed to the proclamation of the gospel as they should. Some have even argued that the follower of Jesus today must be prepared to ‘lose graciously’ rather than boldly take a stand for the truth.

However, entering into this mix is Nigal Biggar’s The New Dark Age, and it presents a most articulate, concise and compelling case for being engaged in the culture wars. As the Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, Biggar is eminently qualified to state the case.

Biggar himself was thrust upon the international scene via the controversy surrounding his first book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023) as well as its sequel, Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilty (2025). Biggar’s Colonialism was originally supposed to be published by Bloomsbury, and selling approximately 20,000 copies.

However, Bloomsbury subsequently withdrew the contract when some in the organisation allegedly got cold feet about being associated with the subject. This then led Biggar to publish with William Collins, and the book has become an international bestseller with sales in excess of 70,000 copies.

This background is important because it forms the impetus for The New Dark Age and the concerns which Biggar has, especially involving the academy. As Biggar states:

W. B. Yeat’s famous line, ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’, was written on the eve of civil war in Ireland. Ours threatens to become a new Dark Age of unreason, where the demon of passionate self-righteousness drives a revolutionary minority of ‘progressive’ zealots to ride on the backs of a mild majority who have forgotten the difference between conflict-aversion and commitment to Millian liberal principles.

The Death of Liberalism

While Biggar is himself a first rate scholar, the book is high on readability. This is not so much an academic examination as it is a story on how we got to where we are today. Generously scattered throughout The New Dark Age are numerous examples on how illiberal the universities have become. Biggar’s main target is that of postcolonialism. As Biggar explains:

This specifies modernity, with its faith in reason and science, as European or Western, and condemns the use of colonial power in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to impose it on the rest of the world. It regards colonialism as nothing but a litany of racism, oppression and exploitation, from which indigenous American, African and Asian peoples continue to suffer.

Sound familiar? Anyone alive in the West today would acknowledge that ‘postcolonialism’ is the pretty much the air we all breathe. Biggar, however, does a superb job at taking this entire worldview apart showing just how illogical and illiberal it is. Not only that, but how it has been weaponised by governments around the world.

The Recovery of Intellectual Virtue

One of the things I appreciated most about The New Dark Age was Biggar’s attempt to present a positive solution. Significantly, Biggar identifies that universities are no longer focused on the moral formation of the individual. After expertly analysing the problem in tertiary institutions around the world today Biggar’s final exhortation is to develop ‘intellectual virtue’ and these should be developed in nine key areas:

1. Temperance. This is not a reference to alcohol per se—although many university students are notorious are well-known for their lack of restraint in this area—but towards the emotions or passions in general. “…emotions that are out of control – passions – blind and deafen us to things we ought to see and truths we ought to hear. Among those truths are the duties we owe other people. Passions can make it impossible for us to perform them.”

• Respect. “One thing that other people deserve, at least on first encounter, is the presumption that they are acting in good faith. So, when they speak or write, we should assume that they are expressing the truth as they see it. We should not cynically, presumptuously, arrogantly assume that they are simply rationalizing some unjust interest or advantage.”

• Carefulness. “When reporting what someone has said or written, we should take care to be strictly accurate, not omitting inconvenient bits, distorting others, bending the whole into a straw man, the easier to knock down.”

• Patience. “…if what someone is saying is unfamiliar or complex or ambiguous, careful listening will take a lot of time. So, in order to be careful, we will have to be patient. Sometimes, the meaning of what is said will not give itself up quickly and only becomes clear with careful attention, patiently sustained over time.”

• Charity. “Sometimes what others say or write is not only complicated; sometimes, it is uncertain, inconsistent or ambiguous. One possible response is to represent it in its weakest form. But that is mean and unkind, and possibly cowardly. The generous response is to give an ambiguous utterance the strongest possible construction, not the weakest.”

• Humility. “We should acknowledge that authorities and professionals sometimes get it wrong – and, if they are arrogant, they almost certainly will. Moreover, temperate, careful, patient, charitable amateurs sometimes get it right. It is not uncommon for truth to speak from an unlikely quarter.”

• Teachableness. “Aware of our cognitive limits and moral flaws, we should be open to the possibility that we have things to learn and that we might be mistaken in what we think we know.”

• Thoughtfulness. “We will allow the difference between what we have assumed and what another says to provoke us to reflect, interrogate ourselves, perchance to think and rethink.”

• Courage. What Biggar says here is really a further exhortation to humility. To be courageous in having “our most cherished convictions challenged, threatened or toppled”. This is all true, but we need to have the intestinal fortitude to speak the truth when we know there will be some who will ferociously oppose us.

Conclusion

This short review has barely scratched the surface, but I hope it encourages you to avail yourself of this excellent little volume. Everything Biggar has written so far is excellent and The New Dark Age is no exception. While there are other works which cover similar ground, only a few do it with as much academic insight or graciousness.