Tony Blair has been talking about his Faith Foundation today. You can read Ruth Gledhill's report in the Times. We don't do God said Alastair Campbell famously. And now apparently Tony doesn't do politics claiming that many crises round the world have a religious root to them. But not being so crass as to propose political solutions to them. Nope time to fix the faith and the faithful. With lots of dialogue - this time with an educational programme. And of course he has nothing to say about the expenses scandal and the current crisis in the Labour party.
Now forgive me but isn't this flipping of an altogether more schizophrenic kind. Flipping a second home is one thing but when an individual as a chief executive can only implement secular solutions (like an invasion for example) and when private individuals are only allowed to promote religious ones (let's to faith schools) this seems a very 18th century way to try to solve 21st century problems. I'm sure Blair's conscience is clear about invading Iraq - although commentators tried to twist his words to suggest that he invaded Iraq because God told him to - not at all what he said. The privacy of faith based solutions just won't do. There are enough nation states out there being driven by explicitly religious agenda that we need to integrate the two worlds not flip from one to the other. A Buddhist or a Muslim state needs to learn to be a good global citizen just as a secular state does. It doesn't need to become a secular state in order to do so. And claiming a course of action - because I'm a Hindu, or a Jew won't do either. Politics is the achieving of practical solutions. How the value systems behind the politics adapt without compromising their essence is a matter for negotiation. But lets have an end to flipping. It makes for cynicism and suggests that the 2 realities cannot coexist and that one is less substantial than the other. Which keeps God with Santa and the Easter Bunny. Flipping needs to give way to rendering. What is Caesar's to Caesar. And what it God's to God.
