Religious Advisory Council
Tony Blair Faith Foundation
The Foundation has an International Religious Advisory Council to give advice and help to Tony Blair on the Foundation’s work and plans.
The Council is composed of individuals from each of the six faiths with which the Foundation initially intends to work. The members are either religious leaders or significant scholars. They will often be nationally or internationally known but the most important thing is the expertise and wisdom each can bring to bear from his or her individual experience.
Council members keep the Foundation attentive to the religious nuances and implications of the Foundation’s work. In addition to responding to specific requests for advice they are of course welcome to offer views whenever they think fit and to suggest new areas in which the Foundation might work. Council members help to keep the Foundation focused and creative as well as sensitive to the traditions of each of the six faiths and alert to developments within them.
Members are drawn from many parts of the world, in order to represent a range of perspectives from within each of the faiths and a variety of social, political and geographical contexts.
Finally, to allow for a wide-ranging and flexible contribution from the Council, it has no formal, legal responsibilities. The Foundation does of course have a board of trustees who discharge the traditional responsibilities required of the trustees of any charitable organisation.
Members of the Council are:
- Dr Ismail Khudr AL-Shatti, Advisor in Diwan of HH the Prime Minister of Kuwait and former President of the Gulf Institute for Futures and Strategic Studies
- HE Dr Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina
- The Right Reverend and Right Honourable Richard Chartres, Lord Bishop of London
- The Reverend David Coffey, President of the Baptist World Alliance
- The Reverend Joel Edwards, General Director of the Evangelical Alliance
- Professor Jagtar Singh Grewal, former Chairman of the India Institute of Advanced Study and former Vice-Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University
- Roshi Joan Halifax, Abbot of the Upaya Zen Center
- Right Reverend Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Bishop of Kaduna
- Anantanand Rambachan, Professor and Chair of the Religion Department at St. Olaf College, Minnesota
- Rabbi David Rosen, Chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations
- Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
- The Reverend Rick Warren, Founding and Senior Pastor of Saddleback Church
In addition, HE Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, will join the Advisory Council once he has retired as Archbishop.
From time to time, other people will be asked to join the Council.
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