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Praying with Obama and Blair

Tony Blair and Barack Obama have been together at the US National Prayer Breakfast. A little unfortunate that Blair appears to have upstaged Gordon Brown in meeting the new president, but representation was not of course the point of the occasion, despite The Times headline:

Blair beats Brown to Obama meeting and reveals true depth of his faith

Notwithstanding the possible upset to political protocol, Blair's words were key as he called for religious faith to be restored "to its rightful place as a guide to our world". His words were inspiring:

Text of Tony Blair's Speech to National Prayer Breakfast

After talking about some of his experiences in the Holy Land he continues:

.... Today, religion is under attack from without and from within. From within, it is corroded by extremists who use their faith as a means of excluding the other. I am what I am in opposition to you. If you do not believe as I believe, you are a lesser human being.

From without, religious faith is assailed by an increasingly aggressive secularism, which derides faith as contrary to reason and defines faith by conflict. Thus do the extreme believers and the aggressive non-believers come together in unholy alliance.

And yet, faith will not be so easily cast. For billions of people, faith motivates, galvanises, compels and inspires, not to exclude but to embrace; not to provoke conflict but to try to do good.

Douglas Johnston on Diplomacy and Religion in the 21st century

Recording / transcript of talk by Douglas Johnston. Johnston is president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. He's the co-editor of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft.

( Some great music as well!  A recording here  and details of All tracks are shown here:  )

Presenter Krista Tippett:  My guest this hour is a military and diplomatic strategist, Douglas Johnston. Instead of approaching religion as a problem in global crises, he's modeling a new kind of diplomacy. In places like Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan, he is successfully engaging religious leaders and passions to combat the causes, not just the symptoms, of violent religious extremism.

Since the Iraq Study Group report in December, a growing chorus of voices has called for a new diplomatic and cultural engagement with Muslim nations, especially Iran. But there is one critical ingredient to the success of such efforts in the world we inhabit now, Douglas Johnston says, and the U.S. does not know how to discuss it globally and inter-religiously.

Link: Diplomacy and Religion in the 21st Century [Speaking of Faith® from American Public Media].

The greatest threat in the post-Cold War world, says Douglas Johnston, is the prospective marriage of religious extremism with weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. spends most of its time, resources, and weapons fighting the symptoms of this threat, not the cause. The diplomacy of the future, he is showing, must engage religion as part of the strategic solution to global conflicts.