Church of England Under Fire Over Kairos II Decision
The European Coalition for Israel calls on the Church of England to distance itself from Kairos II after the General Synod voted to hear and study the Palestinian-Christian text that accuses Israel of genocide and apartheid.
From Brussels, the European Coalition for Israel called upon the Church of England on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, to distance itself from Kairos II, a Palestinian-Christian document that accuses Israel of genocide, apartheid, and colonialism. The General Synod decided on Monday, July 13, 2026, in York that the church must hear and study the text. That decision was not a formal acceptance of all its wording, but ECI fears that the church is nevertheless granting authority to it and thereby legitimizing harmful allegations against Israel and Jews.
Synod Opts for Listening and Studying
The final motion of the General Synod speaks of hearing Kairos II as an expression of Palestinian Christian experiences and of further study within the Church of England. The original wording regarding the receipt of the documents was amended during the proceedings. Continuing dialogue with Jewish and Islamic voices was also included. The synod therefore did not endorse the accusations of genocide and apartheid as church doctrine.
The European Coalition for Israel considers this demarcation insufficient and argues that inclusion in an official motion nevertheless lends the controversial text extra legitimacy. The criticism followed warnings from British Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, and other Anglican voices. Mirvis warned that Kairos II could harm the carefully built relations between Jews and Christians. After the vote, he called the decision shameful and stated that Kairos II harms the cause of peace. Dame Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury since March 2026, spoke out in favor of involvement with the Palestinian Christian documents during the synod meeting.
Why Kairos II Evokes So Much Resistance
Kairos II officially bears the title A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide. The Palestinian Christian Ecumenical Initiative drafted the text and launched it on November 14, 2025, in Bethlehem. Global Kairos for Justice gave it unconditional support. The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches referred to it approvingly in November 2025, while the Central Committee of that organization advocated for targeted sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes against Israel in June 2025.
The text calls Israel a colonial, settler-formed, and exclusionary state. Palestinians are described as the indigenous population of the territory. The authors reject the description of the situation as a conflict and speak of colonialism and apartheid. They criticize the Abraham Accords and call on churches to distinguish between dialogue with Jews and dialogue with Zionists. Churches are asked to boycott dialogue with Zionist voices that, according to the authors, support occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
Kairos II also calls for the international isolation of Israel, sanctions, boycotts, and a ban on arms exports. Regarding the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023, the text acknowledges that reference to the historical context does not justify the killing or imprisonment of civilians or war crimes. At the same time, Kairos II rejects Israel's appeal to self-defense and raises the question of how a colonizer can defend itself against people who have been colonized by it and driven from their land. This reasoning is one of the points on which Jewish leaders and the ECI express heavy criticism.
ECI Speaks of Modern Blood Fairy Tales
ECI founder Tomas Sandell calls Kairos II a contemporary variant of ancient Christian accusations against Jews. He argues that the text calls into question the legitimacy of the State of Israel, despite the Jewish people's more than three-thousand-year-old bond with the land and the international recognition which, according to him, dates back to the San Remo Conference in 1920. Sandell finds it historically ironic that Israel, which he believes protects Jews where international institutions and churches failed during the Holocaust, is now itself being accused of genocide.
He compares the function of Kairos II to that of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because, in his view, the text makes old ideas about Jewish conspiracy and guilt usable in a new form. That is an assessment by ECI; Kairos II itself condemns antisemitism and racism, but according to its own text, rejects equating anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Warning Against Growing Antisemitism
ECI speaks of the heaviest wave of antisemitism in Great Britain in recent memory. The organization links this to Islamist extremists and radical left-wing activists. ECI calls this cooperation a red-green alliance and refers to the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. ECI views that meeting as the starting point of an international campaign to isolate Israel through accusations of apartheid and genocide, legal proceedings, and boycotts. The first Kairos text from 2009 is said to have subsequently spread this approach within Christian circles.
According to the organization, the roots of the European Coalition for Israel lie in the same period. The process that led to its establishment began in September 2001. The coalition was officially launched in the European Parliament in Brussels in 2003 and has since focused on combating antisemitism, with particular attention to Christian forms of it. ECI counts on 25 years of commitment to coexistence and critical self-assessment, starting from the preparatory process.
Previous Warning from Justin Welby
During an ECI symposium in Berlin in 2022, eighty years after the Wannsee Conference, then-Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warned of a new outbreak of antisemitism. Four years later, his successor Sarah Mullally supported a synod motion that allows for involvement in Kairos II, despite objections from the Chief Rabbi and other Jewish representatives.
ECI also points to a meeting at the United Nations in Geneva in February 2026, organized jointly with the World Jewish Congress. There, Sandell called on faith leaders to first critically examine their own religious traditions rather than merely accusing others. For ECI, this attitude means that Christian institutions must clearly speak out against passages that deny or undermine Jewish history in the Land of Israel.
2022 Apologies Back Under Discussion
The Church of England apologized in 2022 for nearly a thousand years of Christian antisemitism. Sandell believes that those apologies lose their meaning when the church gives an official platform to a text that, according to ECI, packages old prejudices in contemporary political language. His call is therefore unequivocal: the church must reject the antisemitic elements that ECI sees in Kairos II, even when it wants to hear Palestinian Christian voices.
