JourneyOnline
Former British prime minister Tony Blair has launched a new Faith Foundation to promote interfaith initiatives to tackle global poverty and conflict, and promote understanding between the world’s major religions.
"Globalisation is pushing people together. Interdependence is reality. Peaceful co-existence is essential," Blair said at the 30 May launch of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation at the Time Warner Media Center in New York. "If faith becomes a countervailing force, pulling people apart, it becomes destructive and dangerous."
The former prime minister said his initiative would assist organizations that combat extremism and promote reconciliation in matters of religious faith.
"Though there is much focus, understandably, on extremism associated with the perversion of the proper faith of Islam, there are elements of extremism in every major faith," the former British prime minister said. "It is important where people of good faith combat such extremism, that they are supported."
In an interview with Time magazine that coincided with his foundation’s launch, Blair said of the new initiative’s work, "This is how I want to spend the rest of my life."
Blair was an Anglican but in 2007, after stepping down as prime minister, he converted to Roman Catholicism. In a BBC television document after he left office, Blair acknowledged that his belief in God played a "hugely important" role during his 10 years as prime minister. Still, he said in the documentary he was reluctant to speak about his religious faith while he was prime minister as he felt people in Britain might regard him as a "nutter [insane]".
In his speech to launch the foundation, Blair said it would promote the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations, and would join with the Malaria No More Campaign to mobilise people across the faiths to act together to combat the disease that claims the lives of one million people each year.
"If you got churches and mosques and those of the Jewish faith working together to provide the bed nets that are necessary to eliminate malaria," Blair said in his interview with Time, "what a fantastic thing that would be. That would show faith in action, it would show the importance of cooperation between faiths, and it would show what faith can do for progress."
In a statement, the faith foundation said it would give priority in its first three years to encouraging inter-faith initiatives to tackle poverty and to improve understanding of the great religions through education at every level throughout the world.
"We cannot afford religious illiteracy," Blair said in New York. "No modern company would today be ignorant of race or gender issues. The same should be true of faith."
The foundation is also supporting plans to create a centre in London called Abraham House to promote understanding between the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The website for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org
ENI
Photo : Former British prime minister Tony Blair
