Tony Blair calls for faiths to act for global good
NEW YORK, May 30 2008 - Tony Blair launched his Faith Foundation with a call for the creation of a new coalition to harness the moral leadership of people of faith to do good and to show the relevance of faith to the challenges of the modern world.
The event, moderated by Christiane Amanpour, included representatives of a number of the organisations the Foundation will partner with.
Dr Eboo Patel, founder and director of the InterFaith Youth Core, and Malaria No More campaigner Saleemah Abdul-Ghaffur addressed how the Foundation and its partners will help people of faith do more: they are part of the Faiths Act campaign - multi-faith action on eradicating deaths from malaria.
President Rick Levin and Professor Harry Stout from Yale University addressed different aspects of how the Foundation will help people understand more about how religion can go wrong and how it is at its best.
The goals of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation are:
- to promote respect and understanding between the major religions;
- to make the case for faith as a force for good; and
- to encourage inter-faith initiatives to tackle global poverty and conflict.
Announcing the launch of the Faith Foundation Tony Blair said: "Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century. In an era of globalisation, there is nothing more important than getting people of different faiths and cultures to understand each other better and live in peace and mutual respect; and to give faith itself its proper place in the future."
Tony Blair has argued that faith has to be rescued from those who would use it to divide and those determined to write it off as an irrelevance. By stressing the values of respect, justice and compassion which the great religions hold in common, he believes faith can help unite the World and shape its direction for the better.
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is a response to these opportunities and challenges. It will use the power of modern communications to step up efforts to educate, inform and develop understanding about the different faiths and between them. At the same time, the Foundation will use its profile and resources to help mobilise people of faith to work together in concrete action to build a fairer and better world.
In the first three years of the Foundation, priority will be given to encouraging inter-faith initiatives to tackle global poverty and to improve understanding of the great religions through education at every level.