Jew hatred is back in the pulpit at the Church of England

In May 2022, the Church of England stood before Britain’s Jewish community and repented.

Eight hundred years after the Synod of Oxford imposed discriminatory restrictions on England’s Jews, eventually leading to their expulsion in 1290, a service of repentance was held at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. Of course, there was no Church of England in 1222, but it accepted its inheritance of English Christianity’s long history of anti-Jewish theology and persecution.

Then Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby described the service as an opportunity to “remember, repent and rebuild”. He prayed that Christians would reject contemporary forms of anti-Judaism and antisemitism.

Four years later, the Church has reverted to type.

On Monday, 13 July, the General Synod voted overwhelmingly for a motion calling upon the Church to stand in solidarity with Palestinian Christians and to “hear” the Kairos II declarations as expressions of Palestinian lived experience.

The motion passed in all three houses. 25 bishops voted in favour. None voted against. 115 clergy supported the motion. 20 opposed it. Among the laity, 113 voted for, with 27 against.

The original motion called on the Church to “receive” the Kairos declarations. Following protests, including from Britain’s Jewish leadership, the word “receive” was replaced with “hear”. A deft display of semantic gymnastics.

The Synod was fully aware of the nature of the document. The Chief Rabbi publicly warned against it. The Board of Deputies circulated a detailed briefing setting out its antisemitic content. The Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged those concerns during the debate. Yet the General Synod knowingly voted to embrace a document steeped in Jew hatred.

What is Kairos II?

Its full title is A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide. It was issued on 14 November 2025 by Kairos Palestine, a Palestinian Christian activist movement that describes itself as a Palestinian Christian ecumenical initiative. It follows the original Kairos Palestine document published in 2009. Its authors present themselves as Palestinian Christian clergy and laypeople drawn from different church traditions. The Synod chose to treat its political theology as the “lived experience of Palestinian Christians”, granting one highly ideological group the authority to speak for an entire Christian community. Which it most certainly does not.

Kairos II declares that Palestinians are living through “genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement”, all of which are highly inflammatory and contested accusations. It describes Israel’s war in Gaza as “the continuation of the Zionist project to seize all of Palestine, emptied of its Palestinian people”. It calls Zionism a system of apartheid, settler colonialism and arrogant Jewish supremacy. The description could have been written by Hamas itself.

The document does not attack Israeli government policy. The target is Zionism and the very existence of the Jewish state. The national movement of the Jewish people is presented not as a response to centuries of persecution, statelessness and mass murder, and the return of an indigenous people to its historical homeland, but as an inherently racist colonial enterprise.

Kairos II maintains that the massacre and atrocities of 7 October were “born out of decades of injustice, oppression and displacement”. It invokes “the right of a people under occupation to resist their occupier and oppressor”. It adds that this context “does not justify the killing or capture of civilians or war crimes”. An all too familiar approach. Pay lip service to the mass slaughter of Jews, then explain why its victims brought it upon themselves.

The document calls upon churches to pressure governments to isolate Israel, impose sanctions, boycott it and ban arms exports. It calls for legal action against Israeli leaders and demands reparations for what it calls genocide, the Nakba and settler colonialism.

It calls upon churches to distinguish between “dialogue with Jews and dialogue with Zionism”, to “boycott dialogue with Zionist voices” it accuses of supporting “occupation, apartheid and the genocide of the Palestinian people”. Instead, it calls upon churches to amplify what it describes as “prophetic Jewish voices” that confront Zionism.

Bottom line, Jews can participate in Christian-Jewish dialogue, provided they reject Zionism and renounce their support for a Jewish state. Only, around 90% of British Jews support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. In other words, they are Zionists. So, the Church of England is happy to embrace a document which excludes 90% of Jews in the UK.

That is not interfaith engagement. Quite the opposite. The elimination of Israel is not stated in crude language. It is expressed through theology, euphemism and the language of liberation.

The Synod knew what it was doing

In the detailed briefing the Board of Deputies provided to Synod members, the Board made a distinction the Church was apparently determined to avoid. Criticism of Israeli policy is not antisemitic. However, erasing Jewish history, denying Jewish indigeneity and treating Jewish national self-determination as uniquely illegitimate, is blatantly antisemitic. It warned that the document essentially creates a divide between good and bad Jews. Jews the Church considered morally acceptable – the small minority – and those whose voices should be excluded, the vast majority.

The Synod voted for the motion anyway.

Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg described the decision as “highly problematic” and “a prescription for more division”. He identified the obvious contradiction between Kairos II’s incendiary language and the Church’s professed opposition to antisemitism.

This is not an isolated failure. The Church of England has form. Indeed, it admitted such in 2022.

In 2012, the General Synod backed the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, despite strong objections from the Board of Deputies, which accused it of promoting an inflammatory and partisan agenda and riding roughshod over the concerns of British Jews.

Then came the Stephen Sizer scandal.

For years, Jewish organisations warned the Church about a priest who circulated antisemitic conspiracy material, promoted sources connected to Holocaust deniers and shared an article suggesting Israel was responsible for the 11 September attacks.

The Church prevaricated. A formal complaint was lodged in 2018. In December 2022, a Church disciplinary tribunal found Sizer guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy and ruled that his promotion of claims linking Israel to 9/11 amounted to “antisemitic activity”. He was subsequently banned from ministry for 12 years, until December 2030. I expect at that point he will be welcomed back with open arms. Indeed, he is likely to feel more at home than ever.

This is the familiar pattern. Jewish organisations identify antisemitism when expressed through hostility towards Israel and Zionism. The Church dismisses the objections as political. Years later, once the damage has been done and responsibility can be safely buried beneath process, it acknowledges the truth. The Church is comfortable recognising historic antisemitism from centuries ago, but less comfortable and apparently unwilling to address Jew hatred in its ranks today.

Selective Outrage

The General Synod has debated divestment from companies linked to Israel. It has promoted activist programmes focused on Israel. Bishops have demanded sanctions and the suspension of trade agreements. Now it has elevated a document calling for Israel’s isolation, boycott and political dismantling.

Meanwhile, Christians are being persecuted for their faith, killed and driven from their homes across large parts of the Muslim world. Islamic terrorist organisations slaughter Christians in Nigeria. Christian converts are imprisoned in Iran. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are used to terrorise Christians and other religious minorities. Ancient Christian communities in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa have been devastated. Churches are bombed. Congregations are massacred. Priests are murdered.

What does The Church of England do? It offers prayer and expressions of concern. It issues the odd public statement and declarations of solidarity. It passes empty motions condemning Christian persecution. But there is nothing tangible. It does not act in any meaningful manner on behalf of its coreligionist brothers and sisters in their hour of need.

Against Israel, it campaigns. It calls for boycotts and divestment. Its bishops demand sanctions and trade embargoes. Its Synod promotes activist programmes and now votes to embrace engagement with a document calling for Israel’s isolation, punishment and ultimate dismantling as a Jewish state.

This is the height of hypocrisy, disingenuity an cowardice. In short, it’s a disgrace.

The Church’s sensitivity is also highly selective at home.

It rightly defends Muslims against hatred and supports Christian-Muslim dialogue. But that instinctive respect disappears when British Jews explain that a document attacks their history, identity and national rights.

Muslim sensitivities are treated as a matter of social responsibility. Jewish concerns are treated as obstacles to Palestinian solidarity. That is not principled interfaith engagement.

Repentance Without Consequence

The Church’s 2022 apology was supposed to mark a rejection of the Christian belief that the Church had the right to define Judaism for Jews. Apparently, that contrition had an expiry date.

Kairos II defines Jewish history as colonialism. It defines Zionism as racism. It defines Jewish sovereignty as supremacy. It instructs churches which Jews are worthy of dialogue and which should be boycotted.

The Church of England will condemn antisemitism in principle while legitimising and embracing it in practice.

It has not forgotten its history. It is simply more concerned with its future.

A declining institution desperate for relevance, it appears to believe its salvation lies in the modern, socially acceptable version of the oldest hatred, for which it apologised just four years ago.

No matter, the Church of England is finding its way back to Jew hatred. And, with no small irony, it believes that this time it is on the right side of history.

One wonders when the next apology will be forthcoming.

Gary Cohen is a writer and filmmaker. His substack can be found here: