Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Last updated

Tony Blair Faith Foundation
Registration no.1123243
HeadquartersLondon
Budget
£2,836,000
Staff
30
Website www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation was an interfaith charitable foundation established in May 2008 by former British prime minister Tony Blair. Since December 2016 its work has been continued by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. [1]

Contents

Launch

The Foundation was launched in May 2008 in New York at the headquarters of the media group Time Warner. In his speech, Blair outlined the Foundation's aim that "idealism becomes the new realism", and that one of its goals was to "counter extremism in all six leading religions" (i.e., according to the Foundation, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and Sikhism). Blair said that while in office, he feared being exposed as a "nutter" if he had talked about his religious views. Former US president Bill Clinton attended the launch, describing Blair as "a good man as well as a great leader". In an interview with Time magazine, Blair said the Foundation was "how I want to spend the rest of my life". [2]

The foundation listed several goals: "The foundation provides the practical support required to help prevent religious prejudice, conflict and extremism. At school, university and professional level the foundation provides various education programmes. The foundation encouraged interfaith initiatives to tackle global poverty and conflict." [3]

The Foundation's basic premises, as listed in its initial mission statement, were that 1) faith is important to many, underpinning their systems of thought, their behaviour and the behaviour of many of the world's progressive movements, and that 2) the great religions share values of respect, justice and compassion. But the statement also recognised that faith can be divisive, too; this is viewed by the Foundation as being based on distortions of faith rather than being intrinsic to it.

The aim of the Foundation was to use the tools of modern communication to "educate, inform and develop understanding" about various faiths, and the relationships between them. It aimed to do this in such a way as to address global poverty and conflict. [4]

The Foundation had several projects: Faith and Globalisation Initiative, Face to Faith (later Generation Global), Faiths Act (an activist group), and Faith Shorts (for short religious films).

Faith and Globalisation Initiative

Faith and Globalisation Initiative launched in Yale University in September 2008 was an attempt to build a "global conversation" between an "elite group" of universities. As part of this attempt, Blair was to be the Howland Distinguished Fellow at Yale and was one of the professors for the course. [5]

Face to Faith

Face to Faith was a programme for schoolchildren (12–17 years) which allowed via videoconferencing international interaction where cross-faith discussions may take place. The proclaimed aim was to break down religious and cultural differences and thereby reduce conflict. [6]

Faiths Act initiative

Faiths Act was a project of the Foundation described as an attempt to build a global movement to both "inspire and mobilise" those who believe, in a faith, to address the Millennium Development Goals. The project focused on deaths from malaria. [7]

Faith Shorts film project

The project known as Faith Shorts was announced in March 2010 for short-length movies which increase "understanding between religions". [8] [9] Awards were presented for the films rated highest. [8]

Directors, executives and advisors

Angela Salt was the executive director of the foundation, [10] which was registered as charity in the UK with Tony Blair as its Patron. The trustees were Robert Clinton, Robert Coke and Jeremy Sinclair. The Foundation was also registered as a charity in the US with the following directors: Alfred E. Smith IV, Linda LeSourd Lader, Ruth Turner, Timothy C. Collins and Tony Blair. Ruth Turner, formerly Director of Government Relations within Tony Blair's Prime Ministerial office, was the first Chief Executive. [11]

International Religious Advisory Council

The Foundation had an International Religious Advisory Council [12] made up of members of what the Foundation considered to be the six major religions. Its role was to advise Tony Blair on the work of the Foundation. Its members were:

Buddhism

Christianity

Hinduism

Judaism

Islam

Sikhism

Funding

A major contributor was Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk through his Victor Pinchuk Foundation. [14] [15]

Criticism

Hugh O'Shaughnessy in The Guardian stated that the Foundation "inspires ridicule". He noted that Professor Michel Schooyans of the Catholic University of Leuven and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences "accused Blair and his wife of supporting a messianic US plan for world domination." [16] The criticism's focus was that the Foundation's approach amounted to reducing the religions to the same, predetermined common denominator. This meant "stripping them of their identity". Schooyans arguing that "(t)his project threatens to set us back to an age in which political power was ascribed the mission of promoting a religious confession, or of changing it. In the case of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, this is also a matter of promoting one and only one religious confession, which a universal, global political power would impose on the entire world." [16]

The director of the Muslim charity Forward Thinking, Huda Jawad was reported by the BBC as raising doubts about levels of support from many Muslims for the Foundation, given Blair's foreign-policy record. [17]

On 2 April 2009, sceptic and secularist Richard Dawkins mocked the Foundation in a spoof letter, published in the New Statesman . In it, Dawkins ridiculed the idea that faith is not a divisive force, and attacked religion's record on promoting dialogue and equality. [18]

Between April 2008 and April 2009, the foundation raised more than 3.5 million pounds, and paid, according to the Daily Telegraph, six-figure salaries to its top officials. An implied criticism was that these pay scales were in line with much larger charitable organisations. However, the wages were also reported to be the result of external recommendations and a strategy of hiring a small number of capable senior staff to co-ordinate a variety of efforts. [19] [20]

A former editor of a Foundation website, Martin Bright, was critical of the organisation and its style. He mentioned the problems associated with the need to tiptoe around some of Tony Blair's business interests in Kazakhstan, Romania and the Gulf, his advising of the new government of Egypt being "a nightmare", the organisation's use of "ritzy offices in a West End tower block", the employment of five people in a communications department "whose sole aim seemed to be to say as little as possible" and the use of unpaid interns. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cherie Blair</span> British barrister (born 1954)

Cherie, Lady Blair, also known professionally as Cherie Booth, is an English barrister and writer. She is the spouse of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humanists UK</span> Charitable organisation promoting secular humanism

Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs" in the United Kingdom by campaigning on issues relating to humanism, secularism, and human rights. It seeks to act as a representative body for non-religious people in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interfaith dialogue</span> Positive interaction of different religious people

Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Templeton Prize</span> International award for affirming lifes spiritual dimension

The Templeton Prize is an annual award granted to a living person, in the estimation of the judges, "whose exemplary achievements advance Sir John Templeton's philanthropic vision: harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind's place and purpose within it." It was established, funded and administered by John Templeton starting in 1972. It is now co-funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, and Templeton World Charity Foundation, and administered by the John Templeton Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Pinchuk</span> Ukrainian politician and oligarch (born 1960)

Victor Mykhailovych Pinchuk is a Ukrainian businessman and oligarch. As of January 2016, Forbes magazine ranked him as 1,250th on the list of wealthiest people in the world, with a fortune of US$1.44 billion.

Make Poverty History were organizations in a number of countries, which focused on issues relating to 8th Millennium Development Goal such as aid, trade and justice. They generally formed a coalition of aid and development agencies which worked together to raise awareness of global poverty and achieve policy change by governments. The movement has existed in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. The various national campaigns were part of the international Global Call to Action Against Poverty campaign.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Blair</span> Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007

Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997 and held various shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994. Blair was Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007, and was special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East from 2007 to 2015. He is the second-longest-serving prime minister in post-war British history after Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving Labour politician to have held the office, and the first and only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.

Ruth Turner was formerly Director of Government Relations within Tony Blair's Downing Street office.

Theos is a Christian religion and society think tank researching the relationship between religion, politics and society in the contemporary world. Theos aims to impact opinion around issues of faith and belief in society through research, publications, media engagement, podcasts, animated videos, and events such as debates, seminars and lectures. Theos is headquartered in the United Kingdom in Westminster, London.

Martin Derek Bright is a British journalist. He worked for the BBC World Service and The Guardian before becoming The Observer's education correspondent and then home affairs editor. From 2005 to 2009, he was the political editor of New Statesman. He had a blog for The Spectator, and was The Jewish Chronicle's political editor from September 2009 to March 2013. In 2014 he took a position at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, but resigned after five months over a lack of editorial autonomy.

Ismail Khudr Al-Shatti is among the prominent personalities in Kuwaiti and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) politics. He currently serves as the head of advisory committee for the Kuwaiti prime minister. He is a former Kuwaiti Ministry of Communications and a former Kuwaiti deputy prime minister

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Global Warming Policy Foundation</span> Climate change denial lobby group in the United Kingdom

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom whose aims are to challenge what it calls "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming. The GWPF, and some of its prominent members individually, have been characterised as practising and promoting climate change denial.

The Revd Nadim Nassar is a Syrian-British Anglican priest, who is the Executive Director and Founder of the Awareness Foundation. He established the Awareness Foundation in 2003 with Bishop Michael Marshall in response to the growing need to study the Christian faith in the context of the 21st century.

Coexist House is a charity for interfaith dialogue based at Inner Temple in London, England.

Annika Elisabeth Small is a social entrepreneur focused on using digital technologies to address social challenges. Issues targeted include healthcare, social isolation, homelessness, domestic abuse and persistent poverty. Examples include online peer mentoring for those experiencing bullying, the first online clinical research trial, the iDEA programme for young digital entrepreneurs and new forms of micro-volunteering to help those experiencing loneliness are some examples. Small is the founder of CAST and former Chief Executive of Nominet Trust.

Faith literate describes the ability of an individual to become knowledgeable of other religions and faith other than the one a person believes in.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Janner-Klausner</span> British rabbi

Laura Naomi Janner-Klausner is a British rabbi and an inclusion and development coach who served as the inaugural Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism from 2011 until 2020. Janner-Klausner grew up in London before studying theology at the University of Cambridge and moving to Israel in 1985, living in Jerusalem for 15 years. She returned to Britain in 1999 and was ordained at Leo Baeck College, serving as rabbi at Alyth Synagogue until 2011. She has been serving as Rabbi at Bromley Reform Synagogue in south-east London since April 2022.

Kate Garvey is an English public relations executive and a former aide to British prime minister Tony Blair. She is a co-founder of Project Everyone, a communications and campaigning agency promoting the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Blair Institute for Global Change</span> Private non-profit organization

The Tony Blair Institute (TBI), commonly known by its trade name the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is a non-profit organisation set up by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The Inter Faith Network for the United Kingdom was a registered charity in the United Kingdom which had the objects "to advance public knowledge and mutual understanding of the teachings, traditions and practices of the different faith communities in Britain including an awareness both of their distinctive features and their common ground and to promote good relations between persons of different faiths". Since 2001, the Inter Faith Network was funded in several millions of pounds by the British government.

References

  1. ↑ "Blair does God in interview to launch inter-faith foundation", guardian.co.uk, 30 May 2008, webpage: Guar30. Retrieved 8 March 2012.
  2. ↑ "BBC News Blair launches faith foundation", bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
  3. ↑ "Charity overview".
  4. ↑ "Tony Blair Faith Foundation: Mission statement", Tonyblairfaithfoundation.org. Retrieved July 2010.
  5. ↑ "Tony Blair to teach Yale course on faith and globalization". Yale Bulletin and Calendar. 21 March 2008. Archived from the original on 18 April 2009.
  6. ↑ http://www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/page/about-face-to-faith The Tony Blair Faith Foundation: Face to Faith (Accessed March 2012)
  7. ↑ "Faiths Act", FaithsAct.org. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  8. 1 2 "Tony Blair announces faith film awards | Film", guardian.co.uk, 22 March 2010, webpage: Guar2. Retrieved 8 March 2012.
  9. ↑ "Tony Blair announces faith film awards", IMDb.com, 22 March 2010, webpage: IM3. Retrieved 8 March 2012.
  10. ↑ "Leadership".
  11. ↑ "Who we are". Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Archived from the original on 23 January 2012.
  12. ↑ "The Tony Blair Faith Foundation: Religious Advisory Council". Archived from the original on 6 March 2009. Retrieved 26 August 2009.
  13. ↑ Secretariat of the Anglican Communion at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/structures/secretariat/staff.aspx.
  14. ↑ Robert Mendick, Edward Malnick (10 February 2013). "Revealed: Tony Blair and the oligarch bankrolling his charity". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  15. ↑ Owen Bowcott, Shaun Walker (22 January 2016). "Ukrainian oligarchs settle mine dispute worth billions out of court". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  16. 1 2 Hugh O'Shaughnessy (13 May 2009). "Tony Blair's Faith Foundation inspires ridicule". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  17. ↑ "Tony Blair's faith in new mission", by Christopher Landau, BBC, 13 April 2009.
  18. ↑ "The Tony Blair Foundation". 2 April 2009.
  19. ↑ "Tony Blair's faith charity pays six figure salaries to top officials", Robert Mendick, The Telegraph, 13 February 2010. Retrieved 8 March 2012.
  20. ↑ Tim Walker (1 February 2012). "Tony Blair shows how faith can bring millions to charity". Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
  21. ↑ Rowena Mason (3 August 2014). "Tony Blair lambasted by former employee over role in own charity". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.