The Church of England has betrayed British Jews – again
The Church of England has legitimised a radical, revisionist document that is steeped in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Last week, the General Synod voted overwhelmingly to ‘hear’ Kairos II. Parishes across England will therefore be encouraged to look at it, in the words of Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, as a ‘heartfelt expression of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians’.
Kairos II can only be described as an extreme document. Despite being supposedly written by Palestinian Christians, it reads like a press release from Hamas. It praises the ‘hundreds of thousands of martyrs’ who have been ‘left behind’ by the war in Gaza. It claims that ‘Zionists’ want to expel Palestinians from their land. And it describes Israel’s war with Hamas as the ‘continuation of the Zionist project to seize all of Palestine’. It even includes phrases such as ‘arrogant Jewish supremacy’. It is clear that it believes Israel should not exist.
To ‘hear’ a document is not the same as to endorse it as the official position of the church. And Mullally was careful to say that the vote did not mean that the church agreed with everything said in Kairos II. But let’s not get bogged down in semantics – by voting to ‘hear’ Kairos II, whatever that means in practice, the church has given air to anti-Semitism. There is no other way of looking at it.
Of course, this is not the first time the Christian church has lent credibility to lies about Jews. In 1144, the monk Thomas of Monmouth invented the story of William of Norwich, a boy supposedly murdered by Jews. There was no evidence, but that didn’t matter. The local Benedictine monks and the Bishop of Norwich eagerly adopted and amplified the lie. The first fully developed blood libel was born and spread across Europe, triggering waves of violence against Jewish communities.
In 1255, Lincoln produced its own version: Little Saint Hugh, a child allegedly tortured and killed by Jews in a grotesque ritual. Nineteen Jews were hanged on the strength of that fantasy. Church authorities and the English Crown promoted and institutionalised the myth, building a shrine in Lincoln Cathedral to draw pilgrims and cash. This institutional backing laid the foundations for the horrific myth that Jews ritualistically drain and consume the blood of Christian children – a lie that persisted through the centuries and was eventually weaponised by the Nazis.
These and other lies and conspiracy theories manufactured the permission for pogroms, expulsions and the mass murder of Jews globally. People believed them because trusted institutions – churches chief among them – told them they should.
Endorsing Kairos II without this history of anti-Semitism would have been bad enough. But given the Christian church’s record of Jew hatred, voting in favour of this document makes it significantly worse. It has lent authority to the modern blood libel that Israel is deliberately murdering Palestinians as part of a genocidal campaign. Kairos II also leans on a theology in which Jesus is refashioned as a Palestinian martyr – a modern update of the medieval ‘Christ killer’ myth. It even offers moral cover for the 7 October massacres by framing them inside a narrative of righteous resistance.
The church’s endorsement of Kairos II has left Britain’s Jewish community shattered. UK chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said: ‘It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood.’ He also warned that it risks undermining relations between Christians and Jews. Indeed, it already has.
Here is the double betrayal. The first victims are British Jews, watching an ancient institution rehabilitate a modernised version of the oldest lies in Christian anti-Semitism. The second victim is less discussed but no less wronged: Middle Eastern Christians. Kairos II places the blame for Christian suffering on Israel, while staying entirely silent on the reasons Christian populations have collapsed across the Palestinian territories. It is a silent exodus driven only partially by the conflict, but also by land-grabbing from Muslim clans, as well as extortion and Sharia-based discrimination under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. It says nothing about the Christians harassed out of Bethlehem and Gaza by their own neighbours. Instead, it pins the blame exclusively on the Jews.
With a few honourable exceptions, Synod chose to ignore the fact that one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab Christians hold full rights, worship freely and are growing rather than vanishing is Israel. That isn’t the case in the Palestinian territories, and legitimising this text does nothing to improve the lives or safety of Christians in the region.
History shows us that poisonous documents like Kairos II seldom remain theoretical. They outlive those who draw them up and can even end in bloodshed. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion – which gave rise to the belief that influential Jews rule the world – remains popular, particularly in Muslim countries in the Middle East. Let’s be under no illusion: by promoting Kairos II, at a time of unprecedented anti-Semitism and rising threats to British Jews, the church has chosen to fan the flames of prejudice.
The church didn’t have to choose. It could have stood with persecuted Christians in the Middle East by naming their actual, Islamist persecutors and taken a position more conducive to genuine peace in the Middle East. Instead, the church has reached for that trusty old hatchet: it’s all the fault of the Jews.
Limor Simhony Philpott is a writer, policy adviser and researcher.
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