Today sees the start of the international interfaith conference at Cambridge University. It draws notable speakers from all major faiths together, including political leadersTony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameroon.
On Radio 4’s Today progamme this morning Tony Blair was criticised by Labour peer Lord Ahmed for Downing Street using it as part of his farewell tour. Although the peer may have the wrong end of the stick, it does perhaps have a greater significance for the PM.
I recently read in the Guardian about some of the outgoing premier’s future plans. One of his apparent ideas is to instigate the formation of a new interfaith foundation. If the rumours are true, the organisation will probably run from his £3.5m Connaught Square retirement home.
There is, of course, some stiff criticism. One outspoken Lib Dem critic Norman Baker commented, “He may want to build bridges between the world religions, but the fact he is has already burned bridges.
He goes on to berate Tony Blair that his close association with George W. Bush has done little to raise his credibility with the Islamic world, concluding,“His bridge will be at best a pier.”
His own labour colleagues are pretty dubious about the prospect too. Ian Gibson says, “It’s a pity that Mr Blair did not think more deeply about the issues of religious strife before he went into Bagdad. Now he wants to be vicar to the world? It is ridiculous.”
There is no doubt that he is a man of strong conviction and I am sure some clerics such as Canon Guy Wilkinson, the Church of England’s advisor on interfaith relations, will give him every backing. But with his reputation in dispute, is he the best man for the job?
Tony Blair has long been portrayed as a vicar by satirists, as any reader of Private Eye will tell you. You may remember like me that Alastair Campbell once famously said that New Labour didn’t do God. But the fact is the Labour leader is a committed Christian and he is a faith-driven man. This is the man who is reputed to have prayed in the Oval Room with the President before the Iraq war. This is the man who has recently gone public about his pending conversion to Roman Catholicism.
Like it or not, faith is intertwined with who he is. This is not popular with secularists, as this is often seen as a sign of his weakness and mental inability to come to a decision without help from above.
The Christian, in response, might see his acknowledgement of God as not a sign of weakness, but an act of bravery in a hostile liberal environment. Personally, I think it takes courage to say you believe, but I think it takes even more courage to put that belief into practice.
While the colour of our politics and own particular worldview may not conveniently concur with Tony Blair’s, we can however afford to have a trinitarian view, which portrays diversity within unity.
So is he trying to save the world? Maybe. Is he trying to do it alone? I doubt it very much. For Tony, he may indeed see the world as his parish, but he also knows he is ultimately accountable to a higher authority. That has got to mean something - and I would like to see that as something positive.
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