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Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, who has a son serving in the Israeli army, has warned the Church of England’s General Synod that it risks damaging Christian-Jewish relations if it proceeds with a motion encouraging engagement with A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide, a document published by Kairos Palestine, also known as Kairos II.
The General Synod, the Church’s legislative body, is due to consider the motion at its annual gathering in York. The motion does not ask the Church to endorse the document, but to receive and engage with it as part of its understanding of Palestinian Christian experience amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Kairos II was issued by Kairos Palestine – The Palestinian Christian Initiative on 14 November, 2025. The document says Palestinian Christians gathered “after prayer and reflection on the suffering of our people under occupation” and now declare: “We live now in a time of genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement unfolding before the eyes of the world.”
According to a report in the Telegraph, Mirvis described Kairos II as “deeply concerning” and said he hoped the synod “will see it for what it is,” implying that the Palestinian Christian initiative misrepresented the suffering of Palestinians by framing it in a way that, he argued, “can only harm the cause of peace”. He suggested that the document reduced what he called a complex political and historical reality to a “one-sided account”, downplayed Jewish historical experience and presented “political activism dressed up as theology”.
The document describes Israel as a “colonial, settler, and exclusionary entity” and says Palestinians are “the indigenous people of this land”. It calls on churches “to distinguish between dialogue with Jews and dialogue with Zionism”. It also says “The genocidal war on Gaza is the continuation of the Zionist project to seize all of Palestine, emptied of its Palestinian people.”
Kairos II also addresses the 7 October, 2023 attacks. While it says that “Mentioning the context does not justify the killing or capture of civilians, the violations of international law and norms, or war crimes,” it adds that the Hamas attack was “born out of decades of injustice, oppression and displacement since the Nakba of 1948, and more than sixteen years of an immoral, suffocating blockade on Gaza.”
The document rejects Israel’s claim of self-defence in Gaza, asking: “How can a colonizer defend itself against those it has colonized and expelled from their land?”
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, convenor of the Rabbinic Court of Great Britain, also urged the Church to withdraw the document. According to the Telegraph, he said: “Its use of highly questionable descriptions (such as Israel being colonial, when Jewish sovereignty dates back to biblical times) invalidates its authenticity.”
“By all means let synod debate the tragic events in the area, but using a much more balanced and realistic document. In the meantime this one should be withdrawn,” Romain added.
Rabbi Charley Baginsky, co-leader of the Movement for Progressive Judaism and a president of the Council of Christians and Jews, said the Church of England “has absolute prerogative to discuss the suffering of Palestinian Christians”, but questioned whether Kairos II provided “the right tools by which to have that discussion”.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism also attacked the document. A spokesman said: “This document is appalling, and it is shocking that the synod is even entertaining it.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said: “Any Church that wants a credible role in tackling prejudice here or advocating for peace in the Middle East should reject Kairos II.”
The Board described the document as “replete with historical distortions and false allegations that implicate Jews everywhere”, adding: “The document erases and distorts Jewish identity and Jewish historical experience, and risks real harm to Jews in the UK through its dissemination.”
The backlash comes after the Methodist Church formally accepted the Kairos II text and said study materials based on its contents should be prepared for the community.
The proposal before the Church of England came from a local diocese through the Church’s democratic process. The Venerable Stewart Fyfe, the Archdeacon of West Cumberland, who tabled the motion, said: “We’ve very carefully not used the words ‘genocide’ or ‘apartheid’, we’ve not made a judgment [on] that. We’re saying: ‘Let’s at least read these documents, let’s hear why they are saying this, and let’s seek an understanding”.
Fyfe went on to say that the motion asks the synod to “receive” the documents as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of the Palestinian church” and explained that it “obviously includes concern for the Jewish as well as Palestinian population”.
“It’s a very difficult and heartbreaking situation. We care about all the peoples of this land,”Fyfe added.
Kairos II says its appeal is directed not only to Palestinian Christians, but also to churches worldwide. It calls for “costly solidarity” and says: “Either we live together — or we perish together. Today it is Palestine. Tomorrow it will be other marginalized and oppressed peoples.”
The document also says: “We honor the growing number of Jewish voices that oppose the war and confront Zionism from moral, faith-based and human conviction.” It calls on churches to “stand with and amplify prophetic Jewish voices that call for justice and truth.”
The campaign against Kairos II comes amid growing concern over Israeli violence against Palestinian Christians and their holy sites.
Archbishop Atallah Hanna, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Sebastia, has warned of “escalating and systematic Israeli attacks against Christians in Jerusalem and across Palestine”. Separate figures from the Religious Freedom Data Centre have documented dozens of attacks on Christians, most of them in occupied Jerusalem.
The attempt by pro-Israel figures to silence debate in the church also follows earlier warnings from Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem Hossam Naoum about the shrinking Christian presence in Palestine. They warned that Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem often say: “In 15 years’ time, there’ll be none of us left.”