The Church of England's General Synod adjourned its debate on a contentious motion from the Carlisle diocesan synod without reaching a decision. The motion, which called for solidarity with Palestinian Christians in what it termed non-violent resistance to the ongoing occupation, had been scheduled for the evening of 12 July.
Revised in May, the text went further. It invited the Synod to receive the Kairos Palestine documents, including the 2025 update known as Kairos Palestine II, as expressions of Palestinian Christian experience. It urged engagement with those papers, the provision of resources to promote understanding, a review of Church investment policies in light of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion from July 2024, and government action to secure lasting peace. The motion also spoke of lamenting the loss of both Israeli and Palestinian lives while rejecting antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility.
Yet the language deployed in the accompanying material raised immediate difficulties. References to events in Gaza as genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement aligned the motion with activist framing that has drawn sharp criticism. The Board of Deputies of British Jews circulated a briefing to Synod members that set out specific concerns: the document was one-sided, employed the term genocide, and carried the potential to damage Jewish-Christian relations.
Archbishop intervenes
During the debate the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke in support of certain amendments. He affirmed solidarity with Palestinian Christians and repeated the rejection of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility.
I am a pastor, not a politician. When I say the Palestinian people deserve their freedom, that is not a political statement, but a moral and spiritual one.The statement carried moral weight but left unresolved the question of how the Church distinguishes between legitimate concern for Christians in the Holy Land and the adoption of partisan terminology.
The Secretary General of the Church of England had earlier produced a paper that encouraged members to consult the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and official guidance on anti-Muslim hostility before entering the discussion. The paper stood as an institutional acknowledgement that the territory was contested.
Outside the chamber, separate protests by some UK Christians pressed the Church to go further: to recognise genocide in Gaza and endorse a boycott of Israel. These interventions underscored the pressure on Synod from activist quarters. The motion's emphasis on one narrative, drawn from Palestinian Christian voices, sat uneasily alongside the absence of equivalent weight given to Israeli Christian perspectives or the security realities cited by Jewish organisations.
