IN FACT, Tony Blair most certainly did do God. His Faith Foundation is now, in retirement, promoting respect and understanding about the world’s major religions. It was just his spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, who didn’t want to talk about it.

By contrast, Stephen Green, in his just published book “Good Value: Reflections on Money , Morality and an Uncertain World” most certainly does.

The manifest failure of market fundamentalism, he argues, calls for an urgent rebalancing of the world’s economy. Twenty first century capitalism needs a renewed morality to underpin it, with trust restored and a moral dimension at its heart.

Strong stuff. And in this edition, our own chair here at Corporate Citizenship, David Logan, takes the argument further. Western multinationals need to learn from Islam, he argues, if they want to do business successfully in the Muslim world, rediscovering their own values and learning how to live them out “in societies unified by a common faith”.

Also in this edition, we bring you our usual bumper crop of inspiring action by CSR practitioners from around the world. Responding to their own companies’ individual situations, each is in some way trying to rebuild the trust in the free market that Stephen Green rightly identifies as a critical.

Why then, with such a blizzard of activity, does the rather cruel metaphor ‘moving the deckchairs on the Titanic’ come to mind? Simply because, however well-meaning, these individual initiatives are happening in a vacuum. We lack a clear and coherent framework for a ‘new capitalism’, fit for the challenges we face, with redrawn roles and responsibilities for government, business, NGOs and individual consumers.

Stephen Green and others offer a values-based approach, drawing heavily on religious roots. An uncomfortable thought for the many CSR practitioners who, like Alastair Campbell, don’t want to do God.