Newly Catholic Tony Blair ... and His "Faith Foundation"

[John Allen reports in today's NCR:]

In so many ways, Tony Blair is not your typical Anglican convert to the Catholic church.

For one thing, of course, Blair is the former British prime minister. Almost as atypical these days, however, is the fact that Blair does not belong to the traditionalist wing of Anglicanism, meaning Anglicans disenchanted with the ordination of women and homosexuals, the blessing of same-sex unions, and other liberalizing currents, and hence usually most likely to contemplate the "Roman option."

Instead, Blair espouses a theologically moderate, socially engaged Christianity. By the standards of British politics, Blair is a social moderate, and his largely permissive positions on abortion, birth control and embryonic stem cell research have drawn strong Catholic criticism over the years. (Some outraged English Catholics have gone so far as to charge that Blair should not have been received into communion with the church, at least until he recants.)

Last Friday, I attended a press conference at the Time-Warner Center in New York to present Blair's new "Faith Foundation," a global inter-faith coalition designed to mobilize religious leadership to achieve social good. Most immediately, the Faith Foundation intends to enlist religious believers in global efforts to eradicate malaria, estimated to kill one million people each year, primarily in the developing world, and the vast majority are children. A related aim is to combat extremism and terrorism carried out in the name of religious belief.

Interestingly, Blair's Faith Foundation counts a slew of prominent religious leaders among its advisors - Sir Jonathan Sacks, for example, Chief Rabbi of England, as well as Reverend Rick Warren, Senior Pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. Yet there's not a single Catholic, though promotional materials say that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of England will join the advisory council after he steps down as Archbishop of Westminster.

To call Friday's press conference "high-profile" is an exercise in under-statement. It was hosted by CNN's Christiane Amanpour, and featured opening remarks from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who said he had come to "wish my friend well." Richard Levin, President of Yale University, where Blair will be a visiting professor, was also on hand.

Eboo Patel, founder and director of the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago and another advisor to Blair's Faith Foundation, provided the day's sound-bite.

"The worst mistake would be to think that the fault line of the 21st century runs between Christians and Muslims, or between theists and secularists," said Patel, a Muslim. "It's between pluralists and totalitarians."

That line was picked up by other speakers, so much so that it almost became an anthem - with Blair and his admirers clearly on the side of the pluralists.

Blair was careful to say that his foundation does not seek "to subsume different faiths into one universal faith of the lowest common denominator." Nevertheless, it seemed clear that Blair's Faith Foundation reflects what one might call a "center-left" religiosity, with emphasis on tolerance, dialogue, and cooperation in the pursuit of humanitarian objectives.

What future the foundation may have is tough to handicap. From a purely Catholic point of view, however, it's at least worth noting that the church's most high-profile recent convert also seems a natural spokesperson for a more "progressive" or "liberal" form of Catholicism, at a moment when that constituency appears to be, in many other ways, on the ropes.