Judging by The Sunday Times of London, a reader might conclude that former Prime Minister Tony Blair was a smart man's Thomas More or Thomas Beckett. Blair, who is expected to convert to Catholicism, said in an interview that his Christianity "played a hugely important role" during his decade-long tenure, but he feared saying so lest he be known as a "nutter." As Dipesh Gadher reported,
In his most frank television interview about his religious beliefs, Blair confesses he would have found it difficult to do the job of prime minister had he not been able to draw on his faith.
The admission confirms why Alastair Campbell, then Blair's director of communications, was so wary of the prime minister mentioning religion. "We don't do God," he once said.
In a documentary to be broadcast on BBC1 next Sunday, Campbell now says of his former boss: "Well, he does do God -- in quite a big way."
In a tone of breathless wonderment, Gadher reports what he clearly views as a series of shocking revelations about the depth of Blair's faith. Wherever Blair was in the world on a Sunday, he insisted on going to church. When Blair sought to use the expression "God bless you" on the eve of war against Iraq, his aides, keen to quell Blair's religious fervor, urged him to leave out the offending phrase. Before retiring for the evening, Blair read the Bible.
The implication of Gadher's story is that in the case of Tony Blair, politics and religion, far from being decoupled, were intertwined. Presumably, if Blair was an agnostic or atheist, there would have been no story to report.
I do not know what the British press considers an acceptable form of piety in its public officials. Nonetheless, Gadher's story struck me as no more substantive than your local anchorman's wig or dry-blown hair.
To take the most important example, the story does not mention a single instance in which the former Prime Minister's faith affected public policy. Did Blair's faith shape his policies toward the poor or immigrants? Was Blair ever ready to stick his neck out for his Christian faith?
Certainly, and I know faithful GR readers have read this before from me, Blair did little to promote the Catholic Church's stands on cultural issues. During his tenure, Britain legalized human cloning and civil partnerships for homosexual couples; and continued to allow the killing of unborn infants up to their 24th week. Did Blair have a conflict between his personal and public beliefs? If so, what were they?
In short, Gadher fails to paint Blair's faith against a wider canvas. Maybe the Prime Minister's Christianity was "hugely important" to him -- in some, but not all, seasons.