Former prime minister builds network of Christian allies as he prepares to launch a religious ‘offensive’ in North America

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The Falling Away

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away•Strongs 646: apostasia, ap-os-tas-ee´-ah; feminine of the same as 647; defection from truth (properly, the state) (“apostasy”):—falling away, forsake. first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;”
—2 Thessalonians 2:3

Strong Delusion

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong•Strongs 1753: energeia, en-erg´-i-ah; from 1756; efficiency (“energy”):—operation, strong, (effectual) working. delusion•Strongs 4106: plane, plan´-ay; feminine of 4108 (as abstractly); objectively, fraudulence; subjectively, a straying from orthodoxy or piety:—deceit, to deceive, delusion, error.
•Strongs 4108: planos, plan´-os; of uncertain affinity; roving (as a tramp), i.e. (by implication) an impostor or misleader; –deceiver, seducing. , that they should believe a lie:”
—2Thessalonians 2:11

“The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?”
—Jeremiah 5:31

Tony Blair is preparing to launch a “faith offensive” across the United States over the next year, after building up relationships with a network of influential religious leaders and faith organisations.

With Afghanistan and Iraq casting a shadow over his popularity at home in Britain, Blair’s focus has increasingly shifted across the Atlantic, to where the nexus of faith and power is immutable and he is feted like a rock star.

According to the annual accounts of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes cohesion between the major faiths, the foundation is to develop a US arm that will pursue a host of faith-based projects. The accounts show that his foundation has an impressive – and, in at least one case, controversial – set of faith contacts. Sitting on some £4.5m in funds as of April last year, mostly gathered through donations, it is now well placed to make its voice heard.

The foundation’s advisory council of religious leaders includes Rick Warren, powerful founder of the California-based Saddleback church. It attracts congregations of nearly 20,000 and is reportedly one of the largest in the US. Warren, who has addressed the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been named one of the “15 world leaders who matter most” and one of the “100 most influential people in the world”.

His influence was confirmed in December 2008 when Barack Obama chose him to give the invocation at his presidential inauguration. But the decision angered many liberals, who see Warren as an opponent of gay rights and abortion on demand; a prominent alliance with Warren is likely to attract similar attacks on the former British prime minister.

Also on the council is David Coffey, president of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), a Virginia-based network of churches that spans the globe and is particularly active in the US.

Another initiative has been to team up with the Belinda Stronach Foundation in Toronto. Unknown in the UK, Stronach, daughter of a Canadian billionaire, is hugely influential in Canada where as a philanthropist, businesswoman and former politician she has served in both the Conservative and Liberal parties. Attractive and barely into her 40s, media commentators have dubbed her “bubba’s blonde”, a reference to her friendship with Bill Clinton.

According to the accounts, Blair intends to open an office in Toronto to develop the relationship.

His desire for North America to be the focus of his faith-based operations was confirmed by the decision to hold his foundation’s inaugural event in May 2008 in New York, for the “charity’s key partners and religious stakeholders”.

The accounts also shine a light on the close connections the foundation now enjoys with major political institutions in the US. “With the Washington-based Centre for Interfaith Action, the foundation supported a meeting of major international organisations active in faith-based approaches to combating malaria (plus the White House, World Bank, UN, World Health Organisation) to co-ordinate international efforts,” the accounts state.

That Blair, a charismatic politician driven by faith, should be at home across the Atlantic is no surprise to political analysts. “He comes across as confident and persuasive,” said Professor Shawn Bowler, of the University of California at Riverside. “He does not talk like a modern robo-candidate in the way so many US political figures do.” Unlike in the UK, Blair’s religious fervour is seen as a strength. “Blair is very open about his faith and that plays a lot better in the US than in Britain,” Bowler said.

But the overtly religious dimension has drawn criticism. “The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is a fundamentally flawed concept,” said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. “If religion is constantly at the fore, then the old suspicions and hatreds will continue to fester.”

Other North American faith-based initiatives endorsed by the foundation include the New York-based Global Nomads Group, which brings together young people through video conferences “to discuss the global issues that affect their lives”, and the Faiths Act Fellowship, which selects “30 young leaders aged 18-25, drawn from the different faiths from the US, UK and Canada, to embark on a 10-month journey of interfaith service”.

Blair’s status is such that he is now called on to sprinkle stardust at religious gatherings, such as a speech he delivered at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Even his autobiography, The Journey, for which he was paid a £4.6m advance, appears to be aimed at the US market. “Tony Blair is an extremely popular figure in North America,” said Sonny Mehta, his publisher. “His memoir is refreshing, both for its candour and vivid portrayal of political life.”

So embedded is he that Blair regularly crops up in Washington society diaries. Last September, the former Republican vice-president, Dick Cheney, was dining in the same restaurant. Blair got top billing in the gossip columns.

GLOBAL MISSION

May 2008: Launches the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in New York.

September 2008: Opens a three-year programme at Yale exploring the role of faith in the modern era.

October 2008: Supports Face to Faith programme, a pilot project for schools in the US, Canada and India.

December 2008: Teams up with the Belinda Stronach Foundation in Toronto.

February 2009: Speaks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

March 2009: Helps to open a Baptist World Alliance centre in Jordan.

August 2009: Takes part in launch of the Faiths Act Fellowship, bringing together young leaders from different beliefs in the US, UK and Canada.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
—Genesis 1:1

Jesus Said

“But from the beginning of the creation God ………….”
—Mark 10:6

Strong Delusion

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:”
—2Thessalonians 2:11

Laodicea

“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
—Revelation 3:17

T’S not just the nature of dark matter that’s a mystery – even its abundance is inexplicable. But if our universe is just one of many possible universes, at least this conundrum can be explained.

The total amount of dark matter – the unseen stuff thought to make up most of the mass of the universe – is five to six times that of normal matter. This difference sounds pretty significant, but it could have been much greater, because the two types of matter probably formed via radically different processes shortly after the big bang. The fact that the ratio is so conducive to a life-bearing universe “looks like a tremendous coincidence”, says Raphael Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ben Freivogel, also at UCB, wondered if the ratio can be explained using the anthropic principle which, loosely stated, says that the properties of the universe must be suitable for the emergence of life, otherwise we wouldn’t be here asking questions about it. In order to avoid questions about how these properties became so finely tuned, the anthropic principle is combined with the idea that our universe is part of a multiverse, in which each universe has randomly determined properties.

Freivogel focused on one of the favoured candidate-particles for dark matter, the axion. Axions have the right characteristics to be dark matter, but for one problem: a certain property called its “misalignment angle”, which would have affected the amount of dark matter produced in the early universe. If this property is randomly determined, in most cases it would result in a severe overabundance of dark matter, leading to a universe without the large-scale structure of clusters of galaxies. To result in our universe, it has to be just the right value.

In a multiverse, each universe will have a random value for the axion’s misalignment angle, giving some universes the right amount of dark matter needed to give rise to galaxies, stars, planets and life as we know it.

Freivogel combined the cosmological models of large-scale structure formation with the physics of axions to predict the most likely value for the ratio of dark matter to normal matter that would allow observers like us to emerge. He assumed that the number of observers in a universe is proportional to the number of galaxies within it.

In Freivogel’s model, changing the ratio of matter type impacts the formation of galaxies, and hence observers; for example, too little dark matter would prevent the formation of galaxies and stars. His calculations show that of all the observers that might exist across the many universes, most would live in a universe with the dark matter abundance found in ours. In other words, we would be less likely to be here if our abundance of dark matter were different

Strong Delusion

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:”
—2Thessalonians 2:11

Laodicea

“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
—Revelation 3:17

The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, has urged churches to use hits by bands such as U2 and the Beatles in their services.
In a book backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, he argues that pop music writers can convey deep theological concepts in a way that is more accessible to the younger generation.

The Archbishop of Canterbury
Hundreds of evangelical churches have already turned to guitar-based songs instead of traditional hymns, but the bishop suggests that clergy still need to be more creative in appealing to non-churchgoers.
Artists highlighted for exploring Christian themes in their music include Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and John Lennon, who famously claimed the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
“For many people the language of the Bible has become inaccessible and yet pop song writers can make a connection with people because their language is fresh,” he said.
“They are able to open our imagination to a way of thinking about God that we’ve become deaf to in church language.
“The Bible is an amazing collection of books that we’ve allowed to become banal. For many people it is a closed book and asking them to read it is a lost cause, which is a tragedy.
Bishop Baines said that music is influential in challenging people to think of some of life’s big questions.
“Songs get more into the soul than simply reading an ancient book,” he added. “I hope that they would be awoken to God and it would lead them to want to read some of the stories in the Bible.”
The bishop said that churches should offer “a menu to people from different backgrounds” and should not be afraid of criticism.
“When Mozart was around people called it trivial pop music, but few would do that now,” he said.
“The Wesleys took pop and folk tunes and put a Christian story to the music. We must be more creative and adventurous.”
In the book, called Finding Faith and described by Dr Williams as “profound and challenging”, he reveals the impact that pop songs have had on his Christian belief.
“I have read the Bible through many times and I have enjoyed art all over the world… But it was a simple song from [Bruce] Cockburn’s early period that gave me the words to hang all this together and provide me with a vocabulary for connecting the bigness of the universe with the smallness of men in a language of worship.”
In another passage, the bishop tells how the U2 song, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, helped define his faith.
“What I can’t quite understand is why it took a song by an Irish rock band to make me identify what I actually felt about being a Christian in a complicated world,” he said.
The BBC recently broadcast alternative versions of the Passion – the Easter story – and the Nativity using pop performers to dramatise the biblical events with lyrics from bands such as Oasis and The Smiths.
Phil Andrew, vicar of St Mary’s Reigate, Surrey, said he used pop songs from bands such as Coldplay in his evening services to stimulate discussion.
“The lyrics of pop tunes often vocalise the questions people are asking today and help people find a way into the message of the Bible,” he said.
“The Bible tells a great story, but it is not as accessible as it used to be for a generation that hasn’t been brought up with it.”
But mixing popular culture with religious teaching has upset some traditionalists, who are also likely to be bemused by the bishop’s comments.
Fr Geoffrey Kirk, national secretary of the Anglo-Catholic group Forward in Faith, said that it was important to maintain a high quality of worship.
“If God intended us to have pop music heard, would he have given us Mozart? Most happy clappy worship songs contain no doctrine and are empty of content,” he said.

Strong Delusion

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:”
—2Thessalonians 2:11

Laodicea

“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
—Revelation 3:17

“For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.”
2 Corinthians 11:4

Adulation of the Democratic nominee is building to a crescendo. Offering a prayer before a rally in Columbus, Ohio today, Cornal Garnett Henning, an AME bishop for parts of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, compared him to Moses and Martin Luther King in the same breath

He thanked God for having “given us a Moses and a Martin called Barack Obama” and asked the Almighty to “grant that we together this nation under God may have the will to bring about the change we need” and ensure that “those who cast their sacred vote will not be deprived this right”. The McCain campaign, you might remember, mocked Obama as a Moses figure in an ad entitled “the One” in August.

The candidate’s wife didn’t quite compare him to a prophet or a civil rights icon but her praise was a far cry from the days when she used to complain publicly about his smelly feet and snoring, wishing she lived with “Barack Obama the phenomenon” because “the Barack Obama who lives in my house, that guy’s not as impressive”.

In Columbus, it was all sweetness and light. “There’s this beautiful thing about my husband,” she said. “He thinks he can really do everything, he does, with his own power and will.”

She continued: “Barack has built one of the most powerful political organisations, recruiting folks from all different kinds of backgrounds. In addition to that, he has built one of the most powerful political fundraising machines that has raised millions and broken records, not just with big donations but with folks writing $5 cheques, $10, $20, $30 cheques.

“Barack has selected a phenomenal running mate in Joe Biden. Barack has helped unify a party that some said could not be unified. He’s participated in three national debates and has been outstanding in every single one of them.

“And to top it off, he has done it, if I might just brag a bit, with a level of grace and poise and honesty and respect and consistency.”

As I left the rally, there was a man chatting into his cell phone while selling clothing that offered a modified version of the national motto of the United States, substituting the candidate’s name in place of that of the Almighty. “In Obama We Trust”, proclaimed his t-shirts.

“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
—Revelation 3:17

There was a 4.5 per cent increase last year in so-called “high net worth individuals”, those with investable assets of more than $1m excluding primary residence, according to the 2008 wealth report compiled by Citi Private Bank and Knight Frank, published on Monday.

There was particularly strong growth of wealthy populations in the emerging economies of China and India, as well as those countries that have access to natural resources such as Kazakhstan.

Countries such as Brazil, Canada, Australia and Russia also each added more than 8,500 wealthy residents in 2007 on the back of the commodity boom.

The report says that the rate of growth of high net worth individuals has outpaced growth in both gross domestic product, and GDP per head, which it believes indicates that the rich are getting richer relative to their respective countries.

“This is not a perfect measure of relative wealth growth across income levels,” it says, “but there is an indication here that the plutonomy model retained its strength through 2007 and is in rude health.”

The US is still home to most of the world’s truly rich. High net worth individuals make up 1 per cent of the US population, with 3.1m people claiming to be dollar millionaires, and 460 to be billionaires.

Japan claims the next highest population of the wealthy, with 765,000 dollar millionaires, and then the UK, where there are 557,000.

The UK has seen the biggest increase in billionaires, however. Numbers rose by 40 per cent in 2007, from 35 to 49. China’s high net worth population grew by 14 per cent in 2007, and now number 373,000, almost as many as in Germany.

The report says there was little change in the investment activity of the very rich during the credit crunch in 2007, other than a shift away from structured finance. It says the very wealthy are “weathering the crunch” much better than insti tutional investors, owing to the diversity of their port folios.

More than 50 per cent invest in property, which has fuelled a rapid growth in luxury house prices across the world.

London retains its spot as the world’s most expensive place to live, followed by the tax exile haven Monaco and millionaires’ playground St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

There were the first signs of trouble in paradise last year, however, with prime property in certain areas in Ireland and the US showing a fall in price. The report’s authors warned that there were likely to be further falls this year as the economic slowdown caught up with the world’s super-rich.