Tony Blair and Religion

Joe Knippenberg has an interesting analysis of Britain’s Tony Blair’s approach to religion and politics. We’ve taken note of this as well. While Blair shares Bush’s (and Clinton’s) use of religion to gain the center of the political landscape, Knippenberg notices a fundamental difference between Blair and especially Bush:

While Bush, for example, speaks frequently about love as the emotion that takes us outside ourselvesâ€???we are enjoined to love one another as we love ourselvesâ€???Blair does not so much enter into the moral psychology of the individual. I am tempted to argue that Bush’s approach to community is “theological,” while Blair’s is “sociological.” And where Bush speaks of the “ownership society,” whose goal is to help individuals become self-reliant (but nonetheless loving), that sort of language seems to be absent from Blair’s lexicon.

Knippenberg also admires the intelligent way that all major British parties handle abortion – they leave it as a conscience decision, so that some Labor MPs have stated that they’d prefer greater restrictions on abortion than what they’d expect from the Tories.

Are our Canadian parties listening?

[Hat tip: No Left Turns]