Divine strength: Gordon Brown, in St Paul's Cathedral, talking about faith and the global economy. Gordon Brown today made an overtly religious call for a new world order based on the 'deep moral sense' shared by all faiths. Making the first speech by a serving Prime Minister at St Paul's Cathedral in London, Mr Brown quoted from scripture as he said people could come together to forge a new 'global society'. The world economy and society should be rebuilt around a Zulu word for hope - themba - which also stands for 'there must be an alternative', the Prime Minister suggested. It was an extraordinary break from his predecessor Tony Blair, whose spin doctor Alastair Campbell, famously declared that 'we don't do God'. At Westminster it was also seen as high risk for a Government mired in allegations of sleaze to put morality and faith at the centre of its political and economic message. Mr Brown, asked about his decision to discuss religion so openly, declared: 'I think politicians have got to be very careful that they don't turn out to try to be bishops. 'But what we do and what we say reflects the views that we have, the belief we hold, the faith we were brought up in and the faith we believe in.' Mr Brown, whose father was a minister in the Church of Scotland, is not a regular churchgoer, but aides said last night that he believed in God. The Prime Minister, on a platform with his Australian counterpart Kevin Rudd and the Bishop of London Richard Chartres, admitted unsupervised financial markets had 'crossed moral boundaries'. He said market forces should be replaced by those of the 'heart' because it was now clear they could 'become the enemy of the good society'. 'We can now see that markets cannot self-regulate but they can self destruct,' he added.
