Faculty of Theology and Religion

Oxford has the largest department for the study of Theology and Religion in the UK, and is a leading international centre for teaching and research. While the Faculty maintains its historic strengths in the study of the Bible, the history of Christianity, Theology, and Philosophy, it is now also a major centre for the study of world religions, the relation between religion and science, and the place of religion in public life.

Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, is the author of In Defence of War (OUP, 2013) and editor of Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict (Georgetown University Press, 2003). He has written for the Irish Times on a truth commission for Northern Ireland, the Financial Times on the 2003 Iraq war, the Times on British military intervention in Syria, and the Scottish Review on the ethics of renewing Trident. He has lectured on the Higher Command and Staff Course at the Defence Academy of the UK, Shrivenham, and at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Military Ethics and of the Committee of Management of the Council for Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament.

Under Professor Biggar’s direction, the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, in collaboration with the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), has held colloquia at Christ Church on the ethics of national interest (2010), intelligence gathering (2011), humanitarian intervention (2012), remote weaponry (2013), and the First World War (2014). (See http://www.mcdonaldcentre.org.uk/events/archive.)

At present Professor Biggar is supervising one doctoral student in the field—Lt-Col. Martin Gliniecki, in his work on the ethics of asymmetric warfare.  

 

To find out more about upcoming events in the Faculty, please follow this link.