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.