On Monday morning, July 13, at its General Synod in York, the Church of England carried a motion from the Diocese of Carlisle to “respond to the call of Palestinian Christians to stand in solidarity with them” — and to hear the Kairos Palestine documents, including A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide (known as Kairos Palestine II), the November 2025 statement in which Palestinian Christians describe living in “a time of genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement unfolding before the eyes of the world.”[1, 3, 6] The motion carried in all three houses: 253 to 47 overall — and among the bishops, 25 to 0.[1]
The Synod did more than listen. The same motion calls on Church investors “to implement and demonstrate a leading approach to responsible investment relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” to review their investment policies “in the light of the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 on the illegality of the occupation of Palestinian territory” — and asks the Church Commissioners and Pensions Board to report back on their progress.[1] A national church put its own money under the question.
The Synod was precise about what it did. An amendment changed the motion’s word “receive” to “hear” — hearing the documents “as heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians.” Archbishop Mullally told Synod that to hear them “does not mean we agree with everything in these documents – but it does mean that we listen with compassion, and stand in solidarity with them amidst the many injustices they face.”[1, 2] The motion still explicitly encourages “the Church of England at all levels to engage with those documents.”[1]
Palestinian Christians heard it for what it was. Munther Isaac, the Palestinian Christian pastor in the occupied West Bank, called the decision “a very positive sign and an important step forward,” adding: “In this regard, the Church is simply being true to its calling: to engage seriously with what is happening in the world, with what its own members are wrestling with and speaking about, and with what its Palestinian Christian siblings are calling for.”[4] The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine welcomed the vote, noting that the participation of the Church’s bishops in the House of Lords “gives the decision additional moral and ecclesiastical weight in discussions on justice and peace.”[5]
The reaction told its own story
Within about forty-eight hours of the vote, “A Christian Declaration against Kairos II” was live — organized by Regan King, pastor of The Angel Church in Islington, in partnership with ICEJ UK and Christian Action Against Antisemitism, with signatories including ICEJ president Juergen Buehler and Ian Paul, the Church of England minister who had spoken against the motion on the Synod floor.[9, 10, 11, 12] It states: “It is our conviction that Kairos II is not in the interests of Palestinian Christians and only serves to hinder the cause of peace…” By July 19 it carried more than 2,600 signatures.[9]
Four days after the vote, CUFI UK — the British branch of Christians United for Israel — published a statement titled “The Church of England has turned against Israel and Christian Zionists.” It says acceptance of the Kairos documents “reflects the influence within the Church of England of replacement theology,” objects that the documents “claim that Palestinian Christians and Palestinian Muslims serve the same God” — “This is heresy” — and puts its demand this way: “Those who supported this motion must repent of promoting ungodly and unbiblical teachings, just as they must repent of turning their backs on Israel. This must happen before it is too late for the Church of England, because God will not forget this historic injustice against His people or the slanderous documents that target both Christians and Jews.”[8]
What set this off? Among other passages, Kairos II’s own words about the theology CUFI represents: “Christian Zionism must therefore be named for what it is: a theological distortion and a moral corruption,” whose ideology, after every invitation to repentance is exhausted, must “be rejected and boycotted.”[6] CUFI UK’s statement ends: “For Zion’s sake, we will not remain silent.”[8] We report both sides’ words as they wrote them — and note only this: one side asked a church to listen to Christians describing their own destruction. The other demanded the bishops repent for listening.
Three weeks, two national churches
On June 30, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) named the genocide and voted unanimously to divest from Palantir and GE Aerospace. On July 13, the Church of England stood in solidarity with Palestinian Christians, committed to hear them at every level of the church, and put its investment policies under review against the world court’s 2024 advisory opinion on the occupation. Neither body stopped loving the church to do it — each became more fully itself. To every congregation and denomination still weighing its voice, especially in America, where the largest churches have yet to speak: the wall is moving, and there is room beside those already standing.