The conference was co-hosted by Professor Miroslav Volf of Yale's Divinity School and Center for Faith and Culture and by HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan. It attracted an impressive array of Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders, scholars and intellectuals from around the word. The Tony Blair Faith Foundation was pleased to be represented at the meeting.

A Common Word was the letter issued by 138 Muslim clerics, scholars and intellectuals, addressed to all Christian leaders across the globe, in October 2007. It was prompted by a deep concern over the state of Christian-Muslim relations and a firm conviction that Christians and Muslims are bound together by a common belief in the Unity of God and a shared commitment to the dual commands to love both God and neighbour. It invited dialogue on that basis.

In his opening remarks last week Professor Volf drew attention to the Christian-Muslim tensions which menace the modern world, but also sensed that a wind of hope was beginning to blow and new light penetrating the darkness, of which the Yale conference was a further manifestation.

The conference was dedicated to deepening understanding between the two faiths, a deepening which is absolutely necessary in a world where faith remains of vital significance to billions of people -how they think, how they behave, how they interact with each other. And in a globalised world where travel, communications and migration are constantly pushing diverse people closer together, such understanding becomes urgent. Religion is not simply a private affair, a common misconception in the West in particular, but a force with profound implications for the public arena. Indeed, this is precisely what motivated Tony Blair to establish his Foundation in the first place. The dual command to love God and to love neighbour, which A Common Word is focused on, provides a powerful and practical way in which to address the many problems which we all share. Prince Ghazi stressed that this was not an attempt to create an artificial union between the two faiths but an endeavour to find an essential common ground, the better to ensure that religions are part of the solution and not an impediment.

Although primarily focused on Christian-Muslim relations, a number of Jewish representatives were present, because of the appropriateness of including insights from the third and oldest of the Abrahamic religions.

Momentum on A Common Word will be maintained through further meetings at Lambeth Palace and Cambridge University in the UK, the Vatican, Georgetown University in the USA and Jordan over the next year, demonstrating the seriousness with which the Common Word process is being taken.

The Yale conference was an important milestone in the dissemination and reception of A Common Word. And A Common Word, and the dialogue flowing from it, offers an important opportunity to help turn conflict into co-existence and suspicion into respect.

I'm writing today to let you know about the launch of my MySpace page dedicated to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. I wanted you to be one of the first to hear about this exciting initiative.

I want to provide young people of faith, and of none, with the opportunity to join together in campaigns, such as our drive for the faith communities to buy a million bed nets for families vulnerable to malaria by September 25th this year, and make a real change in the world for the better. Click here to visit my page on MySpace.

I will be in China on 4th August answering questions from MySpace users about the global challenges we face, in particular related to our campaign to show how people of faith can help the world achieve its Millennium Development Goals. How we can join together as global citizens both of faith, and of none, to tackle the great social ills that we face today and provide the opportunity for young people to make a real difference?

You are one of the first to hear about this exciting event and I wanted to give you the chance to ask a question. Click here to submit a question.

I still need your help for our campaign for September 25th. We are on track, but there is still a long way to go. Please join us and help us achieve this tremendous ambition of providing protection for one million families from malaria. Our faith traditions and teachings direct us to action. Organise, be active, help save lives and protect the vulnerable. Just one $10 or £5 bed net can protect an entire household.

People from faith communities across 5 continents are already involved in this campaign - we want you on board too. Tell us your stories.

On our website you will find toolkits and resources to help you get involved in our efforts. Go to www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org to find out more.

Thank you,

--Tony Blair

Last week I was privileged to be at the opening ceremony of the World Conference on Dialogue held in Madrid. This was an historic inter-faith conference convened by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, HM King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and organised by the Muslim World league.

I am keenly interested in what you have to say about this initiative. Please e-mail me your thoughts and comments at info@tonyblairfaithfoundation.org.

It's of huge significance that the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, with his very particular place in the world of Islam, is launching this inter-faith dialogue. It has got tremendous possibilities for the future. I have been talking with the King of Saudi Arabia about inter-faith dialogue for a long time; as a deeply religious man he has long believed that people of different religious faiths must come together to express a sense of shared values and a shared commitment to peaceful co-existence.

The fact that so many leading representatives of different faiths were at the conference was a measure of its importance - distinguished members of the Buddhist, Christian , Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh faiths were all there. The conference ranged widely over a huge range of important subjects, including the importance of dialogue in society and how to develop it, common values, and pressing social issues. Cardinal Tauran, President of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, responded at the end of the conference on behalf of the participants. There was a tremendous buzz about the place and I know lots of relationships were forged or strengthened in informal encounters as well as in the official sessions, which bodes well for the future.

I am delighted that two members of the Faith Foundation's International Advisory Council attended and played an active part in the conference discussions, The Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Rabbi David Rosen, as did members of the Foundation office. David Rosen said afterwards that the fact that this was the initiative of the King of the Muslim world's heartland made it an event of unique significance and great potential but also stressed the importance of the follow-up.

I've made very clear that the Faith Foundation is ready to help in taking forward and developing the conference outcomes. I warmly welcome the fact that the organisers are already thinking about the next steps.

Send me your thoughts and comments about this initiative, I would like to hear your views. Please send them to info@tonyblairfaithfoundation.org. Or go to www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org to get involved with our activities.

--Tony Blair

Thank you for letting me know you are interested in the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. I am getting in touch today about our Faiths Act campaign. I would like your help to bring faiths together in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals. I've recorded a video message to tell you more about the campaign and what you can do to help us. Click here to view the message.

Helping to end deaths from malaria is our first aim. Between one and three million people die of malaria each year, most of them pregnant mothers and children under five living in Sub-Saharan Africa. One child dies every 30 seconds. Their deaths are preventable. And across much of Asia and the world, malaria continues to strike, and doesn't discriminate between religions.

We call on the 4 billion people of faith in the world to help do more to end the scourge of malaria.

Our immediate campaign is a drive to raise money for one million bed nets by September 25th 2008, the date of the next UN General Assembly and the mid-way point to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Just one $10 or £5 insecticide-treated bed net can protect an entire household. Please, help us achieve this goal.

On our website, you will find toolkits and resources that explain how you can get involved with our efforts.

Get involved now by clicking this link to go to our download page.

I know some of you are already active within your own faith communities, and those of others, to help end deaths caused by malaria. Since I launched the Faiths Act campaign a month ago, we have received thousands of emails from people from all over the world, including the UK, US, Spain, Pakistan, Kenya, Turkey, Uganda, India, Tanzania, Afghanistan, and Chile who support this cause and want to know how they can help.

I want to hear your stories, so I can share them on the website and let others around the world be inspired by your endeavours.

Click this link to send me your story.

I want to thank those of you around the world who have already begun work to help us raise money for a million bed nets by September 25th. I have been deeply inspired by many of the emails we have received about your efforts and it is my hope that in sharing your ideas and stories here on the website, we can motivate others as well.

You can also help us now by making a donation in US Dollars or in UK Pounds Sterling.

It is easy to get involved, and show the good of faith in action. So join us to fund a million bed nets by September 25th. Go to www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org to find out more.

Thank you,

--Tony Blair

Tony Blair today launched an urgent 10 week campaign to fund 1,000,000 anti-malaria bed nets, calling for multi-faith action to show the good that faith can do in the world.

The purpose of the 'Faiths Act' campaign is to bring faiths together in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals. Tony Blair announced ending deaths from malaria as one of the first goals his faith foundation would focus on at the launch in May. Now he has set 25th September as the deadline for the first phase of the campaign.

As many as three million people die of malaria each year, most of them pregnant women and children under five living in Sub-Saharan Africa. One child dies every 30 seconds. Their deaths are preventable.

Across much of Asia and the rest of the world, malaria continues to strike, and doesn't discriminate between religions.

In a video message on www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org, Tony Blair calls on "the 4 billion people of faith in the world to help do more to end the scourge of malaria.

"Our immediate campaign is a drive to raise money for one million bed nets by September 25th 2008, the date of the next UN General Assembly and the mid-way point to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

"Please, help us achieve this goal: just one $10 or £5 insecticide-treated bed net can protect an entire household."

On the Tony Blair Faith Foundation website there are toolkits and resources that explain how people can get involved with the campaign efforts.

Tony Blair said: "I want to hear your stories, so I can share them on the website and let others around the world be inspired by your endeavours.

"Will you join those who are creating multi-faith events and raise awareness for malaria prevention? I'd like to urge you to become an example of the good that faith can do in the world."

"I want to thank those of you around the world who have already begun work to help us raise money for a million bed nets. I have been deeply inspired by many of the emails we have received about your efforts and it is my hope that in sharing your ideas and stories here on the website, we can motivate others as well."

"So join us to fund a million bed nets by 25th September. It is easy to get involved, and show the good of faith in action."

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is working with Malaria No More and Interfaith Youth Core to raise funds for one million bed nets by September 25th.

The speech by Tony Blair at the launch of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation at the Time Warner Centre, New York on Friday, May 30th, 2008

Last month in Westminster Cathedral, I set out the purpose of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. It will concern itself with the six leading faiths: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish. Today we launch the first of a series of partnerships to give effect to that purpose.

Let me describe the reason for this Foundation. The world is undergoing tumultuous change. Globalization, underpinned by technology, is driving much of it, breaking down boundaries, altering the composition of whole communities, even countries and creating circumstances in which new challenges arise that can only be met effectively together. Interdependence is now the recognised human condition.

So, the characteristic of today's world is change. The consequence is a world opening up, and becoming interdependent. The conclusion is that we make sense of this interdependence through peaceful co-existence and working together to resolve common challenges.

In turn, this requires an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional as well as an intellectual response consistent with this conclusion. A sentiment that we are members of a global community as well as individual nations means we must be global citizens as well as citizens of our own country.

All this sounds impossibly idealistic.

But if the analysis of the nature of the world is as I set out, then it is in fact the only practical way to organise our affairs. Idealism becomes the new realism.

This is especially so since the world is changing in other ways too.
Power is shifting east. The centre of gravity of political interest and political power is moving. The emergence of China and India, has been obvious, in prospect, for years. Now it is here in our lives, in practical impact. And not just in the Far East, but the near East too.

Just think of an institution like the G7; think of when it was founded and its members; think if it were invented today and how different that membership would be. The 20th Century order is history. There is a new reality. We have to come to terms with it. And it implies, at its fundamentals, peaceful co-existence or catastrophe.

Into this new world, comes the force of religious faith. Gallup have kindly made available for me today, the latest polling information in their rolling poll of religious attitudes, which is a hugely important source of analysis.

Here is what the polling shows.

Most Christians want better relations between Christianity and Islam but believe most Muslims don't. Most Muslims want better relations but believe most Christians don't. Most Americans think most Muslims do not accept other religions. Actually most Muslims say they want greater and not lesser interaction between religions.

In answer to the question: "is religion an important part of your life", many Muslim countries' citizens answer in the high 80's or 90's as a percentage; in the US it is around 70%; in the UK and mainland Europe it is under 40%. Interestingly, though, even in the UK over a third of people say it is important.

So: religion matters and there is a lot of fear around between the faiths.

In summary, you cannot understand the modern world unless you understand the importance of religious faith. Faith motivates, galvanises, organises and integrates millions upon millions of people.

Here is the crucial point. Globalisation is pushing people together. Interdependence is reality. Peaceful co-existence is essential. If faith becomes a countervailing force, pulling people apart, it becomes destructive and dangerous.

If , by contrast, it becomes an instrument of peaceful co-existence, teaching people to live with difference, to treat diversity as a strength, to respect "the other", then Faith becomes an important part of making the 21st Century work. It enriches, it informs, it provides a common basis of values and belief for people to get along together.

I believe, as someone of Faith that religious faith has a great role to play in an individual's life.

But even if I didn't, even if I was of no faith, I would still believe in the central necessity of people of faith learning to live with each other in mutual respect and peace.

That is the "why" of the Foundation. Now for the "what".

There are many excellent meetings, convocations, conferences and even organisations that work in the inter-faith area. We do not want to replicate what they do.

We do not want to engage in a doctrinal inquiry.

We do not want to subsume different faiths in one faith of the lowest common denominator.

We want to show faith in action.

We want to produce greater understanding between faiths through encounter.

We want people of one faith to be comfortable with those of another because they know what they truly believe, not what they thought they might believe.

There will be four specific aspects to our work on which we concentrate today.

First, the Foundation aims to educate. We begin today with the association with Yale University. Yale's School of Divinity and School of Management will help design a new course called "Faith and Globalisation". It will run over three years.

I will lead a series of seminars each Fall, starting in September 2008. The idea is to create a course which, over time, can become an enduring part of Yale's teaching; can be spun off to other universities in different parts of the globe; can stimulate original research and be a resource for those working in this field.

We are going to use new and interactive media to engage young people of different faiths. Annika Small, who has done such a brilliant job with Future Lab in the UK bringing together software and education, has agreed to head up this part of the Foundation's work.

We are in discussion with leading publishers about a specific publishing imprint for the Foundation and with others to create a set of programmes explaining the world of faith. We will make announcements of these partnerships later in the year.

We will use the material we design not just for young people and faith communities but also for business and the worlds of commerce and politics.

We cannot afford religious illiteracy. No modern company would today be ignorant of race or gender issues. The same should be true of faith.

Secondly, we are announcing the first of our partnerships to mobilise those of faith in pursuit of the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Today we call on the 4 billion people of faith in the world to help do more to end the scourge of malaria that has killed so many millions of our fellow human beings and will kill many more unless eradicated.

We are joining with the Malaria No More Campaign, a wonderful organisation whose mission is to end death through malaria in the next 5 - 10 years. Saleema will talk more about it. Put simply over one million people die of malaria each year. Their deaths are preventable. In Africa, 40% of victims are Muslim. But across much of Asia, malaria continues to strike and combating it is a huge opportunity for people across the faiths - Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist as well as the Abrahamic faiths - to act in unison.

The solution lies in distributing bed nets and medicines. The resources are becoming available. But the need to get the bed nets and medicines to the people and see them properly used, is where the faiths, who are present in each of the affected communities, can help. Our purpose will be to help mobilise the different Faiths in pursuit of this goal.

Thirdly, we believe that inter-faith interaction can benefit from a physical structure to which people can come, to learn, to discuss and to contemplate. We have agreed to partner the proposal initiated by the Co-Exist Foundation to establish Abraham House in London.

Though expressly about the Abrahamic faiths, it will be open to those from the wider faith community. It will be a standing exhibition, library and convention centre for the inter-faith world. The extraordinary success of the "Sacred Texts" exhibition at the British Library last year shows the potential for such an initiative.

Finally, we will help organisations whose object is to counter 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. It is important where people of good faith combat such extremism, that they are supported.

To summarise, the possibilities of a world of change are enormous.

This is a century rich in potential to solve problems, provide prosperity to all, to overcome longstanding issues of injustice that previously we could not surmount. But it only works if the values which inform the change are values that unify and do not divide. Religious faith has a profound role to play.

For good or for ill.

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation will try to make it for good.

Tony Blair calls for faiths to act for global good

Tony Blair launches Faith Foundation

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.

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.

RELATED: Tony Blair's speech to launch the Faith Foundation

Let me summarise my argument to you this evening. Under the momentum of globalisation the world is opening up, and at an astonishing speed.

Old boundaries of culture, identity and even nationhood are falling. The 21st Century world is becoming ever more interdependent. In this world, religious faith, crucial to so many people's culture and identity, can play a positive or a negative role. Either positively it will encourage peaceful co-existence by people of faith coming together in respect, understanding and tolerance, retaining their distinctive identity but living happily with those who do not share that identity. Or it will work against such co-existence by defining people by difference, those of one faith in opposition to others of a different faith.

In this context, inter-faith action and encounter are vital. They symbolise peaceful co-existence.

That is my primary argument. It is directed to people who have religious faith and those who have none.

However, I then go further and argue that religious faith is a good thing in itself, that so far from being a reactionary force, it has a major part to play in shaping the values which guide the modern world, and can and should be a force for progress. But it has to be rescued on the one hand from the extremist and exclusionary tendency within religion today; and on the other from the danger that religious faith is seen as an interesting part of history and tradition but with nothing to say about the contemporary human condition. I see Faith and Reason, Faith and Progress, as in alliance not contention.

One of the oddest questions I get asked in interviews (and I get asked a lot of odd questions) is: is faith important to your politics? It's like asking someone whether their health is important to them or their family. If you are someone 'of faith' it is the focal point of belief in your life. There is no conceivable way that it wouldn't affect your politics.

But there is a reason why my former press secretary, Alastair Campbell once famously said: 'We don't do God'. In our culture, here in Britain and in many other parts of Europe, to admit to having faith leads to a whole series of suppositions, none of which are very helpful to the practising politician.

First, you may be considered weird. Normal people aren't supposed to 'do God'.

Second, there is an assumption that before you take a decision, you engage in some slightly cultish interaction with your religion - 'So, God, tell me what you think of City Academies or Health Service Reform or nuclear power' i.e. people assume that your religion makes you act, as a leader, at the promptings of an inscrutable deity, free from reason rather than in accordance with it.

Third, you want to impose your religious faith on others.

Fourth, you are pretending to be better than the next person.

And finally and worst of all, that you are somehow messianically trying to co-opt God to bestow a divine legitimacy on your politics.

So when Alastair said it, he didn't mean politicians shouldn't have faith; just that it was always a packet of trouble to talk about it.

And underlying it all, certainly, is the notion that religion is divisive, irrational and harmful. That is why for years, it was assumed that as humanity progressed intellectually and matured morally, so religion would decline.

Even ten years ago, religion was still being written off as a force in the world. For over 200 years, the view had grown that advanced men and women no longer needed religion. It was a view rooted in the new thinking of the Enlightenment. It was a view reinforced by scientific discoveries which challenged traditional religious understandings of the nature of the world. A view underpinned by a belief in the inevitable progress of all humankind, but especially those branches of humankind who happened to live in the West. It was a view which increasingly confined religion to the private sphere. And it was a view which lasted a long time. As late as 2000 the Economist magazine published the so-called obituary of God in its Millennium issue.

But in fact at no time since the Enlightenment has religion ever gone away. It has always been at the very core of life for millions of people, the foundation of their existence, the motive for their behaviour, the thing which gives sense to their lives and purpose to their journeys - which makes life more than just a sparrow's flight through a lighted hall from one darkness to another, in that memorable image of the Venerable Bede. In the last few years we have been reminded of the great power of religion.

We have seen its great power for good, for example in the Jubilee campaign, that great mass movement which did so much to help the poor of the world.

And in the last ten years we have also been reminded sharply, in acts of terror committed in the name of faith, that we ignore the power of religion at our peril.

But let us also recall for a moment the evils of the 20th Century done in the furtherance of political ideology; fascism and the holocaust; communism and the millions of Stalin's victims. And recall how the heroic defiance of those evils was often led by men and women of faith.

Add to that the rich tradition of religion as a force for good in history.

Only last year we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Of course we need to remember that plenty of people of belief willingly engaged in the slave trade and enjoyed its profits. But we also need to recall that many of the leaders of the abolition movement came from the evangelical Clapham sect or the Society of Friends.

We need to recall the role of Christian and Jewish groups in instigating the Genocide Convention in 1948.

We can think of the great humanitarian enterprises which bring relief to those who are suffering - the Red Cross, the Red Crescent or Islamic Relief, CAFOD and Christian Aid, Hindu Aid and SEWA International, World Jewish Relief and Khalsa Aid - all the charities which draw inspiration from the teachings of the different faiths.

And of course all these bodies draw on the traditions which the great world faiths have of social justice - the moral imperative of helping the poor, the oppressed, the dispossessed, the weak and the powerless.

Think of Gandhi; of the radical and brave liberation priests of South America; of those that spoke out in the time of apartheid; of those that in their thousands and hundreds of thousands work in the poorest, most disease-ridden, conflict ravaged parts of Africa this day and every day.

Think of women religious fighting the trafficking of women and children around the world.

And in the West, for example, we owe an incalculable debt to the Judaeo-Christian tradition in terms of our concepts of human worth and dignity, law and democracy.

Reflect on the work done by churches, mosques, synagogues and temples in care for the sick or the elderly or the socially excluded.

Such work is selfless, often unremarked upon in society, often dramatic in lifting individual human anguish and suffering.

For all these actors faith is not something incidental to their actions. It is the wellspring of them, the font, the origin, the thing that makes these people who they are and do what they do.

To them their faith is realised in action: in commitment to others; in caring; in compassion; in an all-embracing feeling of solidarity. They believe they act as instruments of God's love when they perform such actions.

But enacted love of neighbour is one aspect only of what people think the faith communities represent.

Religion can present two other faces to the world.

One face is that of religion as extremism. There is no point in ducking this issue. Religious faith can give rise to extremism. It is most obviously associated with extremism in the name of Islam through the activities of Al Qaida and others. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. Even if by far most religious people are not prone to the use of terror, at least not nowadays, there are extremists in virtually every religion. And even where there is not extremism expressed in violence there is extremism expressed in the idea that a person's identity is to be found not merely in their religious faith, but in their faith as a means of excluding the other person who does not share it.

Let me be clear. I am not saying that it is extreme to believe your religious faith is the only true faith. Most people of faith do that. It doesn't stop them respecting those of a different faith or indeed of no faith. We should respect humanists too and celebrate the good actions they do.

Faith is problematic when it becomes a way of denigrating those who do not share it, as somehow lesser human beings. Faith as a means of exclusion. God in this connection becomes not universal but partisan, faith not a means of reaching out in friendship but a means of creating or defining enemies. Miroslav Volf in his book 'Exclusion and Embrace' describes the difference brilliantly.

When those who are not of faith see such a face presented as religion, they turn away from it, understandably repelled.

An adjunct to such a form of religious faith is a refusal to countenance scientific discovery if it appears inconvenient to an aspect of organised religion. After what happened to Galileo, it is easy to see why some later scientists tended to think religious belief and scientific endeavour could not co-exist.

Yet for most people of faith, religious belief is quintessentially about truth. So, science and faith, reason and faith should never be seen as opposites but as bedfellows. Sometimes, as with those whose faith led them to denounce the false science around race and genetics, it is faith that can lead science. The seeking after knowledge is a powerful motor force in many faiths, not least in the Qur'an where people are exhorted to acquire knowledge, something which for centuries put Islamic countries not Christian ones, at the forefront of scientific advance.

Now, you may say, this is all very well. If you are of religious faith, all this may be of interest to you. But if not: Why should I care? So, there are these competing strands of vision about faith in the modern world. So what? Why does it matter in the world beyond the faith communities? The answer is this.

Accept the premise that faith is not in decline. It isn't disappearing inevitably under the weight of scientific and technological progress. It is still here with us, not just surviving but thriving.

In an era of globalisation, of political interdependence, where the world is ever more swiftly opening up and the cliché about a global community becomes an economic, political and often social reality; in this new world, how religious faith develops will have a profound impact.

The forces shaping the world at this moment are so strong and all tend in one direction. They are opening the world up. I sometimes say to people that in modern politics, the dividing line is often less between traditional left vs. right; but more about open vs. closed.

Mass migration is changing communities, even countries. People communicate ideas and images instantly around the world, creating immediate political and ideological movements in a ferment of quickly devoured information. Economically the world system is ever more dependent on confidence, robust when things seem good, extraordinarily brittle when confidence dips. The world is interdependent today, economically, politically, even to a degree ideologically.

The divide, then, is between those who see this as positive - the opening up offering opportunity; and those who see it as threatening and wish to close it back down.

As you can see from the Presidential race in the U.S., there are new questions that cross traditional Party lines: free trade vs. protection; engagement in foreign policy or isolationism; supporting immigration or opposing it. In these, the issue is less left vs. right but open vs. closed. And they all derive from a fear that globalisation is throwing people, cultures, countries together but with no common sense of values or understanding of each other. The landmark Gallup Poll, being taken world-wide, demonstrates the huge centrality of inter-cultural sensitivity as to how globalisation is perceived.

It is in this context that the role of faith is especially important, not least because most religions were global, even before political and economic systems were. If people of faith reach out to one another, learn to co-exist, believe in respecting 'the other' they can play an important part in reducing fear and tension, being proud of their own distinctive religious, and often cultural identity, but open and in amity towards those of a different religion. Alternatively, religious faith could be used to bolster, to promote, to intensify the very clash of civilisations we seek to avoid.

This is why it matters to those of different faiths and those of none, to have a powerful inter-faith encounter, precisely because such an encounter symbolises and enacts a world of co-existence not exclusion.

I would widen the argument still further. Faiths can transform and humanise the impersonal forces of globalisation, and shape the values of the changing set of economic and power relationships of the early 21st Century. This is one of the issues I'll explore in a Faith and Globalisation course which I am starting with Yale University later this year.

Since leaving office, I have understood better a phenomenon I understood only partially as Prime Minister. For obvious reasons, I was focused on the threat of global terrorism and the struggle against it. But it was not the only phenomenon of recent times.

The other - which I see so plainly now - is that the centre of gravity, economically and politically, is shifting East. And it is shifting fast. China has gone from a standing start to arguably the most powerful nation on the continent of Africa. China and India together, will industrialise the bulk of their populations, presently employed in subsistence agriculture, probably within two decades. Because of the size of their populations, understand what this means: it is an industrialisation roughly three times that of the U.S.A. and at roughly five times the speed. Yes the mind boggles.

It is one reason why a sensible long-term partnership with China, and of course with India, is of vital strategic importance to us.

Take the major sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf States and you will find a sum of money equal to a sum several times the funding of the World Bank and IMF combined.

All this, without even detailing the potential power of Indonesia, a country now growing at 6% per annum and of a size four times that of the UK; Vietnam, the size of Germany and moving rapidly up the economic league table or Thailand, Malaysia and several others.

For the first time in centuries the West will have to come to terms with the seismic change happening about it. The East is rising. At the least it will demand parity with the West. And perhaps more.

But what values will this daunting new world use to guide it?

I believe, in this era of rapid globalisation, where power is shifting away from its traditional centre in the west, the world will be immeasurably poorer, more dangerous, more fragile and above all, more aimless - I mean without the necessary sense of purpose to help guide its journey- if it is without a strong spiritual dimension. Today, precisely because all the fixed points of reference seem unfixed and constantly in flux; today is more than ever, when we need to discover and re-discover our essential humility before God, our dignity as found in our lives being placed at the service of the Source and Goal of everything. I can't prove that religious faith offers something more than humanism. But I believe profoundly that it does. And since religious faith has such a strong historical and cultural influence on both East and West, it can help unify around common values what otherwise might be a battle for domination.

In her remarkable book 'The Great Transformation' Karen Armstrong traces the evolution of religious thought from the earliest times, both East and West, when religion did indeed seem often cruel, unforgiving and irrational, to the modern times in which the faiths share many common values and much common purpose.

The Foundation that I am starting is an attempt to do something a little different from the many excellent inter-faith bodies and organisations that already exist and many of which are represented here today. Indeed, I want to pay warm tribute this country's pioneering record of inter faith relations and dialogue. I am proud that the Council of Christians and Jews was set up as long ago as 1942, and that many other bodies have since then come into existence, such as the Inter Faith Network, the Three Faiths Forum and others too numerous to mention. But my Foundation will attempt to complement their work, not duplicate it.

I am not a religious leader. Actually today I am no longer a political leader. I am aware of all the jibes and ridicule that attends anyone in politics speaking about religion. I make no claims to moral superiority. Quite the opposite.

But I am passionate about the importance of faith to our modern world and about the need for people of faith to reach out to one another.

The foundation will concentrate on certain key specifics. The first will be to help the different faith organisations to work together in furtherance of the Millennium Development Goals, which I helped advocate as PM and which are, in many ways the litmus test of the world's values. Faith groups do great individual work in this area. But they could do even more, if helped also to combine together. The MDGs are stark in their ambition and necessity. We are falling short as a world in meeting them. It would be a great example of faith in action to try to bridge the gap and awaken the world's conscience.

The second will be to produce high quality material - books, websites, every means of communication - to educate people better about the different faiths, what they truly believe not what we often mistakenly think they believe.

The foundation will concentrate, in the immediate term, on the six main faiths, the Abrahamic three and Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. But, though the foundation will expressly not be confined to the Abrahamic faiths, we will partner existing organisations that promote better understanding and co-existence between Christians, Muslims and Jews, notably in The Coexist Foundation's vision of creating Abraham House here in London, where people of those faiths but also others, can encounter some of their traditions, explore their roots and, without glossing over their differences, discover what they share.

We will also help partner those within any of the faiths who stand up for peaceful co-existence and reject the extremist and divisive notion that faiths are in fundamental struggle against each other.

But I freely confess there is a broader objective.

The Foundation will expressly not be 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. But it will also be concerned with promoting the idea of faith itself as something dynamic, modern and full of present relevance.

For religion to be a positive force for good, it must be rescued not simply from extremism - faith as a means of exclusion; but also from irrelevance - an interesting part of our history but not of our future. Too many people see religious faith as represented in stark dogmatism and empty ritualism. Faith is reduced to a system of strange convictions and actions that, to some, can appear far removed from the necessities and anxieties of ordinary life. It is this face that gives militant secularism an easy target. It mocks certain of the practices and traditions of organised religion which they define as 'faith'. 'Faith' is to be found in the cassocks and the gowns and the rituals.

Reading the Dawkins book - The God Delusion - I am struck by how much the militant secularist and the religious extremist need each other. The God Delusion is a brilliant polemic but rests entirely - as does the more reasonable The Blind Watchmaker - on the view that those who believe in God believe in Him as a means of exclusion, as a frightening, irrational piece of superstition and mumbo-jumbo which then justifies the unjustifiable.

To be fair, people of this view do respect some of what is done in the name of faith, but believe it could be done and done better in the name of humanity, without the encumbrance of faith. I agree that you don't need to be religious to be good - a true statement but which itself often then becomes one that can exclude religion from the idea of doing good - a very different proposition.

For the less militant secularist the notion of faith is at best harmless but misguided; and the role of religion at best expressed in beautiful churches, in religiously inspired art, in all the history and culture of countries when religion was dominant. This aesthetic or historical view of religious faith sees faith as an interesting part of tradition but with little or no contemporary relevance.

Again, I agree: belief in God can be about superstition, or fear - how many of us make promises to God when frightened, only to forget them when the danger passes? But if that were all faith was, it would never have lasted or deserved to.

So why despite it all does faith persist, why has it not disappeared with the advent of modern science and technology; why despite all the aspects of organised religion and unorganised religion that put people off, does religious faith continue to be a focal point for millions as to how they lead their lives? Why does it continue to inspire works of supreme self-sacrifice and selflessness?

This is because, along with all the doctrine and theology, the practice and the ritual, at the core faith represents a profound yearning within the human spirit. Indeed it is why we talk about the spirit.

Faith answers to the basic, irrepressible, irresistible human wish for spiritual betterment, to do good, to think and act beyond the limitations of selfish human desires. More than that , it is rooted in a belief that the impulse to do good or try to, is not utilitarian or self-interested but is about putting aside self, in being aware of something bigger, more central, more essential to our human condition than self. In this, the 'other' is not to be rejected still less excluded, but embraced as more important than you or me. And people of faith believe we are driven or guided to this end. For those who feel in this way, God is not some wise Old Man up in the sky, but the true source of life. God is selfless love, merciful and an infinite dispenser of Grace.

Organised religion seen in this light, is, then, not about arid ritual but a collective demonstration of faith, a coming together of people who believe in the power of God' s mercy and love, who believe that it is of universal application, and who in coming together symbolise that communion with God and with fellow human beings.

In this way, Faith guides our lives, knowing our weakness and granting us strength.

Faith corrects, in a necessary and vital way, the tendency humankind has to relativism. It says there are absolutes - like the inalienable worth and dignity of every human being - that can never be sacrificed. It gives true moral fibre. We err, we do wrong, we sin but at least we know it and we feel the compunction to do better and the need to seek God's forgiveness.

Faith is a living and growing belief, not stuck in one time in history, even if for those of faith at some point in history our own religion began, but moving with time, with reason, with knowledge, informed by scientific and technological discovery not in antithesis to it, as well as directing those discoveries toward humane ends.

Faith is not something separate from our reason, still less from society around us, but integral to it, giving the use of reason a purpose and society a soul, and human beings a sense of the divine.

This is the life purpose that cannot be found in constitutions, speeches, stirring art or rhetoric. It is a purpose uniquely centred around kneeling before God.

For those of us of faith, this is what it means. And whilst we should not foist our belief on others, we should not be ashamed either to assert it or be proud of it. For us, faith is not an historical relic but a guide for humanity on its path to the future. A faithless world is not one in which we want ourselves and our children to live.

If people of different faiths can co-exist happily, in mutual respect and solidarity, so can our world. And if faith takes its proper place in our lives, then we can live with a purpose beyond ourselves alone, supporting humanity on its journey to fulfilment.

Under the momentum of globalisation the world is opening up at an astonishing speed, and religious faith has a major part to play in shaping the values which guide the modern world, Tony Blair said in a keynote speech at Westminster Cathedral.

However, the former Prime Minister warned that it has to be rescued on the one hand from the extremist and exclusionary tendency within religion today; and on the other from the danger that religious faith is seen as an interesting part of history and tradition but with nothing to say about the contemporary human condition.

In a wide-ranging speech on 'Faith and Globalisation', Tony Blair said that he is passionate about the importance of faith in the modern world and highlight the need for people of faith to reach out to one another.

Tony Blair said: "If people of different faiths can co-exist happily, in mutual respect and solidarity, so can our world. And if faith takes its proper place in our lives, then we can live with a purpose beyond ourselves alone, supporting humanity on its journey to fulfilment."

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation will launch later in the year. It will promote understanding between the major faiths, and increase understanding of the role of faith in the modern world. The foundation will work with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.

The Foundation will work with faith leaders and with grass roots organisations - finding the best examples on the ground where faith is used as a progressive force and providing the backing of the Foundation and its partners to give this real global impact.

Read Tony Blair's speech on 'Faith and Globalisation'

Get more information on the Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Video copyright of the Diocese of Westminster.