Saturday 22 December 2007

Tony Blair Becomes a Catholic

After much speculation, Tony Blair has left the Anglican Church and become a Catholic. I was never that happy with having a overtly religious leader when I lived in Britain. At the time of the Gulf War we had the Muslim world declaring the they were doing God's Will and with God's help they would prevail and then we had Bush saying quoting the Bible and calling on God to bless the American troops in their 'Crusade'.
The fact that Blair was an active christian did not sit well with me as I don't like the idea of politicians taking guidance from religious teaching to decide policy. Blair admits he prayed to God about whether to send troops to Iraq. He didn't say what the answer was though. Maybe he parayed along the lines of, 'God if you DON'T want me to invade Iraq give me a sign'. If in fact his payers were answered then you have to wonder what God is playing at as he also told the Muslim's to resist until death since matyrdom is the quickest way into paradise.
We don't need religion to tell us what is right and wrong and I don't like the way religion is so easily used to give legitamacy to people basically being shitty to each other.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations for him! There are natural insights
into what is right or wrong which we don't need
religions for of course, such as that why we should
not kill each other. But religions can also answer
why we should not kill ourselves (unless you are
a spy who has been caught and will reveal critical
information after assumed torture and hurt your
country's war --- but that is a rather unusual
situation). For instance, that no matter how our
current situation is, we are loved and are called to
become a friend to God. Merry Christmas!