Word: faithful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Blair now wants to tap into the global links that have been built between development activists and people of faith. "Faith," he says, "can be a civilizing force in globalization," which will doubtless be the theme of the course on the topic that he will be teaching at Yale this fall. His foundation will seek to partner with organizations to advance the U.N.'s eight Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000. Blair's first target is malaria, which kills around 850,000 children each year; many of these deaths could be easily avoided by prophylactic bedding. "If you got churches...
...Blair says he converted to catholicism to fully share his family's faith. But he plainly enjoys being part of a worldwide community with shared values, traditions and rituals. And why not? In a sense, the Catholic Church has long embodied the attributes of globalization that now engage Blair. Long before there were multinational companies, long before there were global NGOs like M?decins Sans Fronti?res, long before there were international organizations like the U.N., there were religions-communities of faith with a global reach, whose adherents tramped from one end of the earth to the other, saving souls...
...past decade, however, this old connection between religion and globalization has been augmented in a surprising way. Faith-based groups and social activists, two communities that long treated each other with distrust, thinking themselves poles apart politically, have come together to tackle issues of global poverty and health. For once, you can date precisely when a movement took off: it was in June 1999 at the G-8 summit of industrial democracies, in Cologne, Germany. I vividly remember arriving in town, expecting debate to be dominated by a rehash of the Kosovo war, which had ended that week. But Cologne...
...legacy of the "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq-both of which Blair is deeply associated with-have soured the environment for anything that looks even remotely like Western Christian proselytizing. That is why the 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. But Blair's history as a partner of Bush-and hence the skepticism with which his good faith is held-means he has high hurdles to leap if he is to turn his fine words into action...
...senses, however, that it is not just relations among faiths that Blair wants to influence. It is also the relationship between those who rejoice in their faith and those who think religion is something quaint, the stuff of history books. And here Blair's religious agenda intersects another of his concerns: the growing distance between U.S. and European attitudes toward the world...