The contested text describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack as a “genocide” and states that Israel is a “colonial enterprise built on racism.”
The Church of England on Monday voted to engage with a controversial Palestinian Christian document that accuses Israel of genocide and describes the Jewish state as “a colonial enterprise built on racism,” defying pleas by Britain’s chief rabbi to reject it.
The decision by the church’s governing body, known as the General Synod, which was strongly condemned by the umbrella organization of British Jewry and Britain’s chief rabbi, comes at a time of global antisemitism following the Oct. 7 Hamas–led attack on southern Israel.
The contested document, titled “Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide,” was written last year by Kairos Palestine, an ecumenical movement of Palestinian Christians, and describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack as a “genocide” and states that Israel is a “colonial enterprise built on racism.”
The 14-page text, known as Kairos II, was penned two years after the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and asserts that “occupation,” “apartheid” and “settler colonialism” are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also rejects Christian Zionism.
Britain’s chief rabbi said that it was “shameful” that the Church of England had recommended engaging with such a document, and called it “a sad day” for Jewish-Christian relations.
“This is a document full of falsehood, which openly rejects dialogue, uses extreme rhetoric to challenge the very existence of Israel and objects to existing peace agreements in the region,” Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis wrote on X.
“Though it poses as a route to understanding, Kairos II in fact functions as an egregious barrier to it, reducing one of the world’s most complex conflicts to a single, warped narrative, which can only harm the cause of peace,” he wrote.
A former Archbishop of Canterbury echoed the chief rabbi’s words, saying that the decision damaged interfaith relations.
“As Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Patron of the Council of Christians and Jews, the King could, through no fault of his own, find that the Church he represents is now committed to promoting a document that risks undermining decades of careful relationship building in the words of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis,” said Lord Carey.
Carey served as the spiritual leader of the Church of England from 1991 to 2002.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said that the motion passed was “highly problematic,” and that the falsehoods and distortions the document contained, including its erasure of Jewish identity and culture, are a prescription for more division.
“There is also a clear tension between the incendiary wording of the document and the Church’s expressed aim of tackling antisemitism,” said the British Jewish organization.
“This hateful document undermines the right of the world’s only Jewish state to exist, and seeks to justify the atrocities of October 7 by blaming Israel for causing it,” Israel’s Special Envoy to the Christian world Ambassador George Deek wrote on X. “At a time of unprecedented hatred against Jews, and after centuries in which Christian institutions contributed to the persecution of Jews, the Church has a special responsibility to exercise moral clarity. Instead, it has chosen to reward extremism, damage Christian-Jewish relations, and bring profound shame upon the Church of England.”
In a statement, European Coalition for Israel (ECI) Founding Director Tomas Sandell criticised the document for “echoing Christian blood libels of the past and calling into question the very legitimacy of the modern State of Israel, despite the more than 3,000-year connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel and its acknowledgement under international law dating back to the San Remo Peace Conference of 1920.”
“This is a tragic travesty of history,” Sandell said. “At the very moment when the State of Israel is doing what the international community and the church failed to do during the Holocaust, namely protect Jews from genocide, it is itself accused of committing one. The church must reject these modern blood libels, not endorse them.”
The Synod’s decision comes at a time when Britain is facing the worst epidemic of antisemitism in recent memory, fuelled chiefly by Islamic extremists and left-wing radicals.