The former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Lord Blair of Boughton, delivered the 2010 Theos Annual Lecture in central London last night.
In a highly personal speech, in which he reflected on the nature of his own religious faith, Lord Blair acknowledged that religion could be a source of intolerance and violence in the world but said that it was principally a force for good - and should be at the basis of a decent society.
"All religions have, as their core belief, the need for love, for respect for others, for tolerance," Lord Blair said.
A practising Anglican, he noted that "The greatest achievements and ambitions of human social history, such as the abolition of slavery and the provision of universal education or free health care for all have had their origins in religious impulse." However, he admitted that "This is not the image of religion in this past century or this past decade."
"The horrors of clerical child abuse and the arguments over homosexuality... are obscuring the basic decency that comes from the commandments to peace contained in all religions, a commandment which in the Christian church, for instance, requires each member of a congregation at every service to greet his or her neighbours with the words 'Peace be with you,'" he said.
Speaking about religiously inspired violence, Lord Blair argued that it was born out of a certainty of being in the right. "The ordinary believers of all faiths need to reemphasise their rejection of this certainty," he said.
Lord Blair added that people of all faiths should move "beyond arguments between and within different religions and recover their confidence in the beneficial nature of religion per se."
Concluding his lecture, Lord Blair said "We should be aware of the horrors which organised religions have inflicted on the world, we should respect the views of others without faith but be unapologetically confident that, now, in our society, the religious impulse provides goodness in a manner unequalled by any other aspect of our communal life."
Lord Blair, who was made a cross-bench life peer in Gordon Brown's Dissolution Honours List earlier this year, held the top policing job in the country from 2004 until his resignation in 2008. After only five months in the role of Commissioner, the London bombings of 7 July took place.
The 2010 Theos Annual Lecture was chaired by the writer and broadcaster John Humphrys. It took place at One Birdcage Walk and was attended by MPs, peers, academics, business people and religious leaders.
To read the lecture in full, click here.
To listen to the event audio, click here.
