Faith and Globalization: Tony Blair Teaches at Yale

in Current Affairs, Politics, Religion, Yale | January 5th, 2010 5 Comments

After he left office in 2007, Tony Blair went across the pond and spent time teach­ing at Yale. Exit Prime Min­is­ter Blair. Enter Pro­fes­sor Blair. Dur­ing the 2008-09 aca­d­e­m­ic year, Blair and Miroslav Volf co-taught “Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion,” a course designed to help stu­dents under­stand the two inter­twined forces shap­ing our world. In some ways, reli­gion is the real focus here, and it is Blair’s argu­ment (above, for exam­ple) that “If you can­not under­stand the world of faith, whether you are in busi­ness, or in pub­lic affairs, or in pol­i­tics, then you actu­al­ly can­not under­stand the world.” The full course can be accessed on iTunes, and we have also added it to our large col­lec­tion of free cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, please vis­it Yale’s Faith and Glob­al­iza­tion web­site and also be sure to access Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive.

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Comments (5)
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  • Sami Saygin says:
    January 8, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    It is an inter­est­ing course to empha­size on the issue that we are resid­ing in a world where mem­bers of dif­fer­ent faiths and cul­tures live togeth­er. Also in this glob­alised world, the issue of the dif­fer­ent faiths and cul­tures become more impor­tant, because we, mem­bers of dif­fer­ent faiths and cul­tures, inter­act more fre­quent­ly and more close­ly with one anoth­er. So in this world, dia­log, under­stand­ing, and tol­er­ance among mem­bers of dif­fer­ent faiths and cul­tures is a nec­es­sary and oblig­a­tion to estab­lish a world where we, all human­i­ty, can live togeth­er in peace, love, and har­mo­ny.

    In estab­lish­ing this peace­ful world based on the uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed human virtues (like love, hum­ble­ness, sin­cer­i­ty, trust­wor­thi­ness, broth­er­hood, hard­work­ing, humil­i­ty etc.), the edu­ca­tion begin­ning from child­hood is very impor­tant and cru­cial.

    I can sug­gest more read­ing about inter­faith and cul­tur­al dia­log, and edu­ca­tion as fol­low:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/world/asia/04islam.html

    http://www.rambles.net/carroll_dialog07.html

    http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%BClen-Movement-Sociological-Analysis-Moderate/dp/1402098936

    http://fethullahgulenconference.org/houston/read.php?p=fethullah-gulen-vision-transcendent-education

    http://fethullahgulenconference.org/houston/read.php?p=fethullah-gulen-philosophy-of-education-activities-of-movement

    http://gulenconference.org.uk/userfiles/file/Proceedings/Prcd%20-%20Bruckmayr,%20P.pdf

    http://fethullahgulenconference.org/houston/read.php?p=fethullah-gulen-contribution-muslim-christian-dialogue-abrahamic-cooperation

    http://gulenconference.org.uk/userfiles/file/Proceedings/Prcd%20-%20Capes,%20DB%20(FP).pdf

    http://gulenconference.org.uk/userfiles/file/Proceedings/Prcd%20-%20Keles,%20O.pdf

    Reply
  • Joel Ekern says:
    January 10, 2010 at 11:19 pm

    The only prob­lem with this entire line of think­ing is that there is a spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance behind every­thing. To say that all faiths will “get along” some­day is sim­ply inac­cu­rate. Why? because there are spir­i­tu­al forces at work. Islam & Chris­tian­i­ty, for exam­ple, will nev­er co-exist peacefully.Why? Because there are spir­i­tu­al forces at war with each oth­er. Bib­li­cal­ly speak­ing, any­thing that is not of the Holy Spir­it is of an anti-christ spir­it. Jesus said that He came to tes­ti­fy to the truth. The rebel­lious hearts of men will always walk away from that Truth unless the Holy Spir­it changes their hearts & reveals the one true Son of God. This line of think­ing will sim­ply be at odds with any­thing else the world has to offer. This con­flict will push us towards the Rev­e­la­tion­al time peri­od of the Bible. Any polit­i­cal state­ments for us to “get along” are sim­ply irrel­e­vant — Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace.

    Reply
  • Sami Saygin says:
    January 14, 2010 at 7:34 am

    In the nature of any faith, there is absolute­ly no force or advo­ca­cy for vio­lence or any oth­er bru­tal action, but rather faiths empha­size on peace, love, tol­er­ance, for­give­ness and so many oth­er uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed human virtues.
    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, mem­bers of the dif­fer­ent faiths inter­pret their reli­gions accord­ing­ly their phys­i­cal and car­nal desires. That is why all the prob­lem arise. I believe that we as human­i­ty can achieve the peace, love, and hap­pi­ness among all human­i­ty through the dia­log and under­stand­ing with sin­cere inten­tion as the ulti­mate goal of all faiths.

    Reply
  • Joel Ekern says:
    January 16, 2010 at 4:38 am

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that line of think­ing if filled with holes. Why have faith in any­thing if we, as peo­ple, are the answer? The answer… human­i­ty, with its car­nal & phys­i­cal desires will some­how accom­plish… what exact­ly? A utopi­an soci­ety with­out God? To say that there is no force for vio­lence has no cred­i­ble evi­dence for what comes from the human heart. What exact­ly are car­nal desires? What is evil? When man gives a tol­er­a­bly, vague answer to these ques­tions, oth­er men will still con­tin­ue to seek a high­er pow­er for truth, good & evil, the mean­ing of life, etc. For­tu­nate­ly, the ONLY cred­i­bil­i­ty that Chris­tians have is that the Holy Spir­it is alive & that He moves. If faith was easy, it would­n’t be faith. this is why men & women lay down their lives dai­ly for the sake of the Gospel in non-vio­lent fash­ion all over the globe. The Holy Spir­it moves through their mar­tyr­dom as he did through Jesus Christ & the apos­tles. He is alive today!

    Reply
  • CB says:
    February 3, 2011 at 6:36 pm

    have you ever thought about to ask GODS view on glob­al­iza­tion after all HE S the one that cre­at­ed it and mankind .Or is it that man is try­ing to cre­ate GOD . SO IF GLOBALIZATION WAS TO WORK , YOU HAVE A MAP AT THE BEGINNING OF TIME , TO SHOW YOU WHY IT DIDN’T WORK THEN, AND WHY IT WONT WORK NOW! THE TOWER OF BABBLE IS A GOOD START OR YOU COULD GO BACK FARTHER THAN THAT SAY THE BEGINNING WHEN ADAM AND EVE SINNED AGAINST GODS COMMAND AND HIDE THEMSELVES BECAUSE THEY WERE DISOBEDINT TO GOD OR YOU COULD ASK JESUS WHY GLOBALIZATION WONT AFTER ALL HE DIED FOR ALL MANKIND GOD LOVES ALL MEN BUT ALL MEN DONT LOVE GOD

    Reply

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