Alpha Friends

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of his personal Christian faith, his work in the Middle East and his vision for his Faith Foundation at a church event attended by 1,200 people last month.

Mr Blair was interviewed by the Rev'd Nicky Gumbel, pioneer of the Alpha course, at Holy Trinity Brompton, London, as part of a series of interviews with prominent people run by the 3,000-member church, the largest Anglican congregation in the country.

Mr Blair spoke of how his faith came alive at university and the influence it had upon him both as prime minister and since, adding that he was convinced that vast numbers of young people in Britain today were searching for some spiritual input in their lives.

His comments included:

ON HIS PERSONAL FAITH
'If you have religious faith, it is in the end the most important thing in your life, so it is not an adjunct. It is at the core. So prayer and re-reading the bible I find really important. Every single time I learn something new...'

He spoke about the story of Jesus calming the storm and how he went back to it time and again in difficult times. He said, 'That's a passage I used to find alot of comfort in when things - as they often did - looked really grim. Then you would go back and draw comfort from it...'

'It was always difficult to talk about this when I was in office because it was very hard to get a sensible hearing on it...'

'Because I'm a Christian doesn't make me better. I think it may make me more aware of my own sinfulness... It doesn't make me a better person. People sometimes think when you say "I'm a Christian", you are saying "I'm superior to you".

THE CHALLENGE FOR CHRISTIANITY
'I think that all parts of organized Christianity face the same challenge... I think the danger for our faith today is that you get a quite aggressive secularism from without...'

'Tradition is a good thing to have but it mustn't be a dead hand. What we actually need to do is to be in a position where you can enthuse and get young people interested in it - talk to them in the right way and explain to them how we feel and so on. And the interesting thing is that when you do that it works.'

ON HIS FAITH FOUNDATION (which works with all the major faith communities to bring aid to the poorest in society):
 'We are supporting the United Nations in particular with the anti-malaria campaign. Malaria kills about a million people in sub-Saharan Africa a year. We know what prevents it. If we take the right measures with bed-nets and medicines and health workers, we can significantly reduce deaths. In the places we have done it we have reduced deaths by half...'

'The faith communities in the wealthy parts of society like ours can raise awareness and raise money and so on... But here's the other thing: in some of these remote parts of Africa there wont be a health clinic or a hospital for many miles so people can often not access health care - but every community has a church or a mosque. So the idea is to use the church and the mosque as the distribution centre for the bed-nets, the medicines and for the health workers to give advice. I think it is a great ambition for the Christian church. I think it would be wonderful if we could involve the world of Islam in it as well...

After the hour-long interview, Mr Blair received a sustained ovation from the 1,200-strong audience, who were almost all members of the congregation at Holy Trinity Brompton.

Nicky Gumbel has been Vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton since 2005. He has pioneered the Alpha course, a 15-session introduction to Christianity, which has grown from a single parish to 40,000 churches of all denominations in thelast 16 years.

For full video coverage of the interview at Holy Trinity Brompton, home of Alpha please visit HTB's website at http://www.htb.org.uk/media/media/all/all/iwpp/all 

Further information about Holy Trinity Brompton can be found at htb.org.uk; theAlpha course at  Alpha.org and Alphafriends.org; and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation at tonyblairfaithfoundation.org.

For any more information:
On Holy Trinity Brompton or the Alpha course:
Contact Mark Elsdon-Dew on 07799 260535 or 0207 052 0271
Or email communications@htb.org.uk

On the Tony Blair Faith Foundation:
Contact Ciaran Ward on 0207647 7774 or 07818 533 058