In two eloquent and important speeches - the first was a month ago in London and the second just last week in New York - Tony Blair articulated why he is committing a good part of the rest of his life to being that figure.

The crux of Blair’s vision is contained in these few lines from his New York speech:

"Globalization is pushing people together. Interdependence is reality. Peaceful co-existence is essential. If faith becomes a countervailing force, pulling people apart, it becomes destructive and dangerous.

"If , by contrast, it becomes an instrument of peaceful co-existence, teaching people to live with difference, to treat diversity as a strength, to respect "the other", then Faith becomes an important part of making the 21st Century work. It enriches, it informs, it provides a common basis of values and belief for people to get along together."

When I met with Blair in Chicago a few months ago, I was struck by the depth of his commitment to the issue, the scope of his vision and the concrete plans for his institution, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Blair will teach a course on Faith and Globalization at Yale University. There are plans for educational material on the intersection of religious devotion and religious diversity, meant for distribution everywhere from corporations to teenagers (through web-based technologies). The Interfaith Youth Core is partnering with the Blair Faith Foundation (and Malaria No More) to bring faith communities together to end malaria in the next 5 – 10 years.

It is an ambitious agenda, but Blair has never thought small.

I was a graduate student at Oxford from 1998 to 2001, the early years of Blair’s Prime Ministership. It was an exuberant time to be in Britain. The culture was moving from “Rule Britannia” to “Cool Britannia”. London was getting a makeover. A peace process was underway in Northern Ireland. Multiculturalism was becoming the new norm.

Blair had a vision and he made it happen.

Visions in the world of interfaith cooperation are not new. At the dawn of the 20th Century, the Chicago Protestant leader Charles Bonney ended the first Parliament of the World’s Religions with these words: “From now on, the great religions of the world will no longer declare war on each other, but on the giant ills that afflict humankind.”

There was nobody colossal enough to realize that dream in the last century.

We may have found the guy to make it happen in this one.