[See also “Former PM Tony Blair is Now Raising Funds for Homosexual Group.” Quote: “John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) commented on the matter saying, ‘During his premiership, Tony Blair became one of the world’s most significant architects of the culture of death – promoting abortion, experiments on human embryos, including on cloned human embryos, and euthanasia by neglect.'” This should shed some light on what constitutes “extremism” to Mr. Blair.]
London, Apr. 4, 2008 (CWNews.com) – Former British prime minister Tony Blair called for a greater appreciation of religious faith during an April 3 address at Westminster cathedral.
Blair– who entered the Catholic Church shortly after his resignation from government leadership last year– said that “we ignore the power of religion at our peril.”
“Religious faith is a good thing in itself,” Blair said, and “should be a force for progress.” But he said that the influence of religious leadership is too often wielded by extremists.
Although Islamic terrorists have been most prominent in exploiting their faith, the British leader said that “virtually every religion” is tainted by extremism. He defined extremists as those who see their faith “as a means of excluding the other person who does not share it.”
Today, he continued, religious faiths need to be protected from the influence of extremists on one hand and militant secularists, who would exclude all religious influence, on the other.
Looking back on his own public career, Blair said that he had encountered a “packet of trouble” whenever he spoke about his faith. Yet he insisted that for someone with clear religious beliefs, “there is no conceivable way that it wouldn’t affect your politics.”
Blair told the Westminster audience that his goal in establishing a Faith Foundation is to use the power of religion for beneficial projects, notably including the fight against global poverty.
