Vanilla faith

I got another email from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation today. And every time they send me something, it gets scarier and scarier.

Blair's initial vision for the foundation (as set out in his Westminster Cathedral speech in April) was to promote the relevance of faith in the modern world, to educate about the role of faith, and to encourage faiths to work together towards achieving the Millenium Development Goals. So far, so good. He was also keen to stress that "The Foundation will expressly not be about chucking faith into a doctrinal melting pot. It is not about losing our own distinctive faith." Trouble is, he seems to have had problems communicating this vision to the staff he has recruited to take it forwards.

Today's email ends with the following quote: 'faith is the belief that human kindness is at the core of our souls. Therefore, it doesn't matter what faith you believe in. What matters is that we all have the ability to use our faiths as a positive catalyst for peace and goodwill in our increasingly interdependent world.' I guess this is superficially inspiring (in the same manner as a Whitney Houston song). But none of the world's great faiths actually believe this kind of vacuous fluff.

Whatever it was that motivated Jesus to go to the cross, it wasn't a vague concept of human kindness or a conviction that it doesn't matter what you believe in. Deploying the redemptive power of faith to targets as challenging as the Millenium Development Goals means recognising and respecting the power and passion of people's beliefs for what they are, not trying to redefine them into some kind of post-religious niceness.

Right now the Tony Blair Faith Foundation aren't promoting the relevance of faith. They are effectively trying to start a new one, and recruit a generation of young people to join it. And that scares me.

Marks out of ten

I walked into Millbank Tower for the the Theos annual lecture this week with high hopes. It's not every day that you get to hear the Director-General of the BBC address the subject of 'faith, morality, and the media'.

It's amazing how disappointed you can be in less than two hours. Not with the event itself, but with Mark Thompson's sterile treatment of the subject. The DG spoke like a guilty man with a good lawyer: defensive, unadventurous, and sticking strictly to his script. The only consolation he must have taken from the night was that it was a lecture not a debate; any half decent opponent would have had a field day.

It appears that the head of our most influential media institution refuses to even contemplate the idea that the contents of our airwaves could have any effect on the moral character of our society. His formula for making editorial judgements was 'the benefits of a programme weighed against the potential offense'. This again abdicates any form of cultural leadership; the only moral failing the BBC now officially recognises is a failure to get away with it. It is also an open invitation to a culture of offense-taking, as it is clear that our national broadcaster chooses to be swayed by brute force of opposition rather than quality of argument.

The overall effect was like watching a man realising in front of a live audience that the words coming out of his mouth were just inherited dogma and actually made no sense. Admittedly it's a tricky subject to wrestle with, but the Director General is paid over three quarters of a million pounds a year to do exactly that.

In best BBC fashion, I am obliged to try and find at least one positive thing to say. As he staggered across the finish line, Mark Thompson observed that "whatever else it is, religion is about story-telling – about stories which are so compelling that they can change the lives of the hearers for ever. There has never been a better moment in history for story-telling". Amen to that.

Time to leave the closet?

This morning I was at a politics and government prayer breakfast put on by the guys at Holy Trinity Brompton. As always, the atmosphere was great and the sense that Christians in political life can share genuine fellowship and unity despite party differences was tangible.

Because it was an off-the-record event, I won't reveal the names of any of the attorney generals, financial secretaries to the treasury, or shadow home secretaries present. However, it did make me realise that Christian faith in public life is not quite such a rare commodity as some would have us believe. Maybe it is Tony Blair's fear that anyone making a public declaration of their beliefs would be branded a 'nutter' that is causing people not just in politics but in sport, media, and the arts to be somewhat backwards about coming forwards.

But it did give me an idea. Maybe we should start an 'outing' website, on which we could publish sordid details of public figures' dalliances as churchwardens, gospel choir singers, or former student Christian Union committee members. Perhaps it would help people to realise that in our tolerant 21st century society it is OK to come 'out of the closet' and admit that you are.. well... yes... a follower of Jesus. Any nominations to the usual address.

Lock, stocks, and 2 smoking Bishops

In an apparently co-ordinated assualt a fortnight ago, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York both waded into the fray surrounding the credit crisis. Dr Williams (in typically measured tone) called us to "recover some sense of the connection between money and material reality", while Dr Sentamu (in characteristically less-than-measured tone) called those responsible "bank robbers and asset strippers" and observed that "One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable".

They have a point. There is a current trend for comparing the money required to tackle global poverty to our spending on luxuries (America's annual expenditure on golf or Europe's on ice cream are two that spring to mind). But whether or not you are willing to forego your 4 iron or 99 flake, the sum is clearly dwarfed by what has been pumped into the banking system over the last few days.

This morning's Metro (London's normally celebrity obsessed free commuter rag) ran with a headline 'Bank Aid', and pointed out that the latest finanicial bail-out is alredy costing 30 times the amount raised by the global band aid / live aid initiative. Not bad for a paper who's other lead story involved Madonna's footwear. I blame the bishops, and a good thing too...