|
Tony Blair - a man to watch
From Prime Minister to multi-faith champion; since leaving office at Downing Street, Tony Blair has leapt onto the global religious stage with his Tony Blair Faith Foundation. If Prince Charles aims to be a multi-faith monarch, then TB would fit comfortably alongside.
by Watchman
Far from fading from view, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is working assiduously to enhance his credentials in the inter-faith and Muslim world.
The road he has travelled since his university days have included strong spiritual inputs from a variety of sources. And whilst raised within the (Protestant) Anglican Church he has now "converted" to Roman Catholicism and has had a personal audience with the Pope.
This latest development - contrary to Alastair Campbell's assertion that 'We don't do God' - follows on from reports of a copy of the Koran being his 'bedtime reading', and his admission since leaving office that the spiritual life is of great importance to him.
It has been reported that he plans to launch an international interfaith foundation this year on the back of consultations with the office of Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and representatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
A newspaper report reads: 'The Muslim Council of Britain has also given its support, as has Labour supporting Jewish business leader Sir Sigmund Sternberg.'
And to this he will be well able to bring his interest and involvement in "new age" spiritualities (see below).
Aside from his spiritual adventures he has carved a role for himself, and seeking to be seen as "honest broker" in the Middle East peace process; this as part of 'The Office of Tony Blair'.
Putting the various pieces together Mr. Blair stands at the intersection of the major world religions and their geo-political junctures. Political and religious ecumenism has found itself a new champion.
Who knows how it will all pan out, but the man who could bring a prospect of peace to a much-troubled international scene whilst uniting the monotheistic religions of the world in the process could find himself being welcomed with open arms by the general public, politicians and religionists alike.
Let's hope that Christian leaders know their Bibles, and understand where all this could be heading...
Watch this space.
|
|
============
Tony Blair and wife Cherie perform chant ritual to lizards/pyramid In Mexico
by Lorne Gunter of The Edmonton Journal
January 2002
In August 2001, during a family holiday on the Mexican Riviera, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, went through a "rebirthing ritual." According to a report in the Dec. 15 edition of the Times of London, the Blairs stayed at the very swanky Maroma Hotel near Cancun, where rooms fetch as much as CAN$1,800 a night. While there, they underwent the hybrid New Age/Mayan ceremony.
Dressed only in bathing suits, Britain's first couple stood outside a brick pyramid on the hotel's grounds and bowed toward each point of the compass while chanting to each of the four winds. The spiritual leader of the ceremony encouraged them "to feel at one with Mother Earth," the Times reported, and to "experience inner feelings and visions."
The Blairs then moved around the outside of the pyramid, one façade at a time, praying first to the Mayan symbols of the sun and baby lizards, signifying spring and childhood. They then prayed to another wall, on which a bird was painted, representing adolescence, summer and freedom. On a third was a crab for maturity and autumn, and finally a serpent for winter and transformation.
Moving inside, Tony and Cherie immersed themselves in the herb-infused mist of a Mayan steam bath to sweat the physical and spiritual impurities from their bodies and to "balance their energy flow." Mayan holy songs were incanted as they meditated and attempted to conjure up visions of animals in the steamy air. The celebrant explained the meaning of each of their hallucinations. Before emerging from the pyramid, the Blairs were instructed to give voice to their hopes and fears (they said a prayer for world peace), and then undergo a "rebirth." This involved smearing one another with papaya and watermelon, then with mud from the Mayan jungle outside, the Times explained.
Finally, while exiting the womb-door of the pyramid, "the Blairs were told to scream out loud to signify the pain" of birth. They then walked hand-in-hand to the beach for a dip in the Caribbean. I'm sorry. I know we live in a non-judgmental age in which no one's spiritual practices and beliefs are to be pronounced better or worse than those of any other (more on this in a minute), but this is just downright flaky. It is not just the antithesis of Christianity, but antipodal to the beliefs of all the world's major monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam as well.
It's just kooky. Any visions or spiritual ecstasy the Blairs experienced were psychosomatic, created by their own brains from their imaginations because of their need to say they saw something. Mrs. Blair is said to be a devotee of all sorts of similar (and similarly goofy) alternative therapies and spiritualisms. She is said to wear a "bio-electric shield" pendant filled with "magic crystals" to absorb the negative radiation of cellphones and computer terminals. She studies with a New Age guru and officially opened a holistic medical centre in November.
Stockwell Day was deemed too dangerous to govern Canada by virtue of his fundamentalist Christian beliefs; why then is it any different to wonder if Tony Blair is too dangerous to govern Britain by virtue of his New Age spirituality?
|
Watchman, 08/01/2008
|
(page
1
2
3
4
5)
| |
|
Peter Carr (Guest) |
17/04/2008 17:56 |
"That may be so but that doesn't absolve us from any responsibility to try and change things which lead people away from God.
Jesus death on the cross was ordained by God but would any one of us want to be Judas?"
Absolutely, but wasn't the betrayal of Judas predicted in the OT?
|
| |
|
Peter Carr (Guest) |
17/04/2008 17:59 |
"Tony Blair is too dangerous to govern Britain" - strange thing to write since Gordon Brown has been doing it for most of the last year!"
Absolutely, and Tony who didn't 'do God' in office, didn't boast of having a moral compass! Gordon has on the other hand and seems to have misplaced it, at least when it comes to the human/animal embryo debate and a few other things!!!!
|
| |
|
Editor |
02/06/2008 11:36 |
The Times reports:- Mr Blair has focused on two key challenges: the reconciliation of faith with modernity; and the interfaith dialogue between the world's main religions.
Already, this dialogue is gathering pace: not only are academic and church bodies playing an ever more visible role in current debates on multiculturalism, extremism, identity and Britishness, but also in the wider world there have been potentially momentous initiatives to end historic schisms and enmities - the Vatican's overtures to Eastern Orthodoxy, the Pope's readiness to reassess Martin Luther and the call by 138 Muslim leaders for an institutional dialogue with Christianity.
Read on -
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3701700.ece
|
| |
|
Peter Carr (Guest) |
02/06/2008 14:05 |
Will the true church stand up please?!
|
| |
|
Donald Boyd |
03/06/2008 15:58 |
Some Christians think that Christianity and politics don't mix. It seems that Tony Blair doesn't agree.
"Will the true church stand up please?!" What prophetic word does the true Church have for world governments and for our Government in particular?
Anyone interested can join us at our monthly meetings: http://christianstogether.net/Publisher/Article.aspx?id=99332
|
| |
|
Peter Carr (Guest) |
03/06/2008 16:52 |
""Will the true church stand up please?!" What prophetic word does the true Church have for world governments and for our Government in particular?"
You'll find the answer in the Bible, Donald!
|
| |
|
Editor |
05/06/2008 12:17 |
"...why the [Tony Blair Faith] foundation stresses that it hopes to work with groups from six faiths: the Abrahamic trinity of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, together with Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs."
Read on and watch a video interview at Time Magazine's article "Tony Blair's leap of faith" (28 May 2008)-
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1810020-2,00.html
|
| |
|
Patrick (Guest) |
23/04/2014 12:06 |
I would define a Christian not by church membership but by belief and, critically, by the knowledge and intent to follow the basic precepts of a Christian philosophy. The most fundamental of these is love which itself manifests in a number of ways.
First there should be an absolute prohibition to cause harm to our fellow human beings and for this it is the absolute duty of all politicians who make a claim to be Christian to look to means other than war to settle disputes.
Secondly there must be a real and genuine compassion to all those people, wherever in the world they may be, who are suffering from extreme poverty. These are people who are deprived of food, clean water and adequate medical facilities. There are a number of references in The Bible where Jesus explains that the rich should be doing more to help. He counsels Matthew to sell all his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor.
We are encouraged to be greedy. Success seems to be measured by income levels and bank balances and yet, from my perspective, success should be measured by the amount by which we fulfil our absolute duty to help those in greater need than ourselves.
A true Christian cannot be wealthy while there are people on this earth in abject poverty because he is not following the most basic of the teachings of Jesus Christ. A man, after all, cannot follow two masters.
I would encourage everyone to refer to the words of Jesus Christ to understand the meaning of being Christian. Very few politicians are Christian. They merely hang onto the coat tails of a faith that they choose not to understand. Indeed there are far too many church leaders who are not Christian but simply cling onto the coat tails with a vice like grip hoping that this will give them everlasting redemption.
For what it's worth, in my view, Tony Blair completely fails every test and should never make the claim to be Christian.
|
| |
|
(Guest) |
23/04/2014 12:35 |
As with the very vast majority of 'believers' in Christendom, Tony Blair is a 'Christian', not on Christ's initiative and terms, but on the initiative of his own self preserving and self promoting terms.
|
| |
|
Simpleton (Guest) |
23/04/2014 21:36 |
Totally the same as David Cameron?
|
(page
1
2
3
4
5)
|
|
|
|
