This week Tony Blair spoke candidly at a church gathering of 1,200 people at London's Holy Trinity

Brompton (HTB), the UK's biggest Anglican congregation. On Tuesday 21s July, he was interviewed Rev. Nicky Gumbel, pioneer of the Alpha Course, about his own faith and his Foundation's multi-faith social action programme.


Reflecting on his own faith, Mr Blair said "If you have religious faith, it is in the end the most important thing in your life, so it is not an adjunct. It is at the core."

When asking about the work of the Faith Foundation, Rev. Nicky Gumbel said, "I know that your vision is to see people working together on things we can agree about. But people have been asked whether working with other faiths mean you have to water down your own faith?"

Mr Blair responded, "I'm a Christian. I'm not going to stop being a Christian. And the Muslim people I work with are not going to stop being Muslims. But we can work together, and there are points at which we can at least understand some of our common heritage."

"This Faith and Globalisation programme allows us to create a world-class forum to explore the inter-relationships between the faiths and those from non-faith backgrounds, and provide linked, research-led postgraduate education.

"Our findings and expertise will then be used to inform the work of politicians, business leaders, opinion formers and others to help tackle some of the pressing issues faced by the world today."

When Pope Benedict spoke to the meeting of different organisations involved in interreligious dialogue at the Notre Dame Centre in Jerusalem a fortnight ago, he highlighted the impact of globalisation and the internet on faith. He spoke of a growing sense of "closeness and unity within the worldwide human family" and of the "vast virtual culture the worth of which is as varied as its countless manifestations." And he warned about "the boundless array of portals through which people so readily access undifferentiated sources of information" which "can easily become an instrument of increasing fragmentation."

Why of his many meetings in the Middle East did he choose this context in Jerusalem to highlight these ambiguities? Well, obviously, the divisions between the Abrahamic faiths are acutely felt in Jerusalem where their histories intersect. But It is surely also because the internet and globalisation both demand, and have increased the importance of, interreligious dialogue. This is because true dialogue seeks a proclamation of Truth that will counter half-baked fantasies on religious websites, what Pope Benedict called "the din of egotistical demands, empty promises and false hopes that so often invades the very space in which God seeks us." And dialogue at its best can be a joint search for solidarity, understanding, and commonalities - against fragmentation, misunderstanding and hostility.

The Pope's words certainly found a resonance in the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. The overarching theme of our work is Faith and Globalisation. It is now being taken up in interdisciplinary university courses on three continents. Our Face to Faith programme is linking up classrooms and school children around the world via the internet to allow them to share a deeper understanding of their faiths. Our Faiths Act programme is engaging young adults in a dialogue of life and action against the scourge of malaria.

Nonetheless interreligious dialogue creates fears in many people of faith. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. Is there not a secret intention to proselytise and convert people? Or, isn't there a dangerous slide into settling for the lowest common denominator of religious practice and values, an option for a kind of religious "grey sludge." For those on the wilder side of a psychological weakness for conspiracy theories, isn't the real agenda of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation the creation of some new world religion?

Well, this is what Tony Blair had to say when he launched the Foundation in Britain at Westminster Cathedral in April 2008: "The Foundation will be expressly NOT about chucking faith into a doctrinal melting pot. It is not about losing our own distinctive faith. It is about learning about living and working with others of a different faith." Click here to read the full transcript of Tony Blair's speech at Westminster Cathedral.

The irony is that interfaith dialogue, in the experience of most people who undertake it, tends to increase and deepen the understanding of a person's own faith rather than dilute it. New insights are gained and dimensions that had been unnoticed come into prominence. Another faith can act as a mirror reflecting things that it had not been possible to glimpse before. There are large pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the streets of the beautiful Iranian city of Isfahan, reflecting her veneration in the Shi'a Muslim tradition. But I doubt if any Christian seeing them feels inclined to renounce a distinctive faith in Christianity, or to chuck their "faith in a doctrinal melting pot." The immediate inclination is more likely a questioning: do they really believe the same as me, what different beliefs are in play here beneath the similarity and why? And what do I believe?

A surprising number of people these days do change their religion, recent sociological surveys indicate, but there is absolutely no indication that this phenomenon is because they have become too immersed in inter-religious dialogue. The opposite may be true. It can sometimes be because they have grown up intellectually in a religious ghetto that has allowed no light to fall on their own faith from outside. Then they suddenly make a disturbing discovery with no understanding to deal with it and throw out the doctrinal baby with the bathwater. When young people from different faiths faithfully follow the compassionate teachings of their different religions, and combine to promote the Millennium Goals and to combat malaria, are they going to change their religion or grow in respect and understanding of each other's faiths? Most people would intuitively know the answer to that. This "hands to hearts to heads" approach to interreligious dialogue, a dialogue of life and action, is, of course, the vision behind our Faiths Act programme.

"Lives of religious fidelity echo God's irruptive presence and so form a culture not defined by boundaries of time or place but fundamentally shaped by the principles and actions that stem from belief," Pope Benedict said to the interfaith organisations in Jerusalem. The Tony Blair Faith Foundation "ambassadors for the Millennium Goals are drawn from three countries, Canada, USA and Britain and have a variety of religious motivations for "acting together for the Common Good." With many others in our Faiths Act campaign, they will be building a global compassionate culture for the future.

Now there's a conspiracy that will need watching.

Ian Linden
Director of Faiths Act