With a call for the creation of a new coalition to harness the moral leadership of people of faith to do good; and to show the relevance of faith to the challenges of the modern world, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, this week launched his Faith Foundation.

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation has three aims: to promote faith as a force for good, improve awareness between religions, and tackle poverty and war. The interfaith project will attempt to foster religious harmony in the Britain, the Middle East and elsewhere across the world.

Mr Blair, who converted to Roman Catholicism last year, said one of the foundation's goals was to counter extremism in all six leading religions.
 
He has argued that faith has to be rescued from those who would use it to divide and those determined to write it off as an irrelevance. By stressing the values of respect, justice and compassion, which the great religions hold in common, he believes that faith can help unite the world and shape its direction for the better.

Writing about his journey in philanthropy for the June issue of the Philanthropy UK Newsletter, Blair says, “I’d say that in philanthropy, unlike politics most of the time, you can genuinely welcome others alongside you. Ultimately in politics you have to set up hard choices between yourself and your opponents. In the charitable world, whilst I know there are sometimes deep differences about the best way forward, more often than not there will be the warmest of welcomes for anyone wanting to contribute to a common endeavour.”

In the first three years of Blair’s Faith Foundation, priority will be given to encouraging inter-faith initiatives to tackle global poverty and to improve understanding of the great religions through education at every level.

• Philanthropy UK’s June 2008 Newsletter will be published later this month. Click here to subscribe.