The Church of England is a past master of the well-meaning faux pas. On Monday, its General Synod waded full-on into the Middle Eastern mire, when it voted to “hear” (in other words, not seriously to disagree with) a document called Kairos II Palestine.
Shouldn’t the Synod accept that it is none of its constitutional duty to pontificate on matters worldly?
Ostensibly a cry for help from Christians in the Holy Land, this paper makes no secret of its starting-points. It talks, for instance, of “dismantling oppressive, racist systems” and the connected “genocidal war in Gaza”; about the need to extirpate “Zionist theology”; and of “creative resistance embodied in the popular Palestinian movements confronting occupation, settlement expansion, settler terrorism and apartheid.”
The Synod vote to receive it was overwhelming: Bishops 25-0 (five, to their credit, abstaining), Clergy 115-20 and Laity 113-27. The resolution also required church investors 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.”
This vote, which follows on from some incautiously partisan remarks dropped last month by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Bir Zeit about living with the realities of life under occupation, should worry any churchman concerned for the long-term health of the CofE.
It doesn’t matter whether Kairos II is a correct Palestinian J’accuse or (as pungently suggested by the Chief Rabbi) a gross travesty of Israel and the Jews. The official church should have taken steps to steer clear of it and the Middle Eastern mess lying behind it.
Why? Begin with practicalities, and forget the intellectual arguments in a stuffy meeting-hall in York. Taking sides on a loaded issue like this is not good for ecclesiastical life here, and certainly not good for bottoms on pews.
As a universal church, the Church of England is for everyone in England, of all social and political persuasions, and none: all are sinners and all need saving. In the light of this, the wise approach is for the official church to skirt gingerly round political powderkegs like Gaza and leave the strong views to individual bishops, clergy and worshippers.
With church attendance shaky at best, and the tide of faith a long way out, almost the worst thing is to create the impression in the faithful that there is some semi-official policy of support for (in effect) the progressive secular line in a matter of enormous social and political controversy, and thereby suggest, at least subliminally, that those who do not accept it are in some way out of line.
More to the point, there is a strong argument that the taking of positions like this (and this is by no means the first time the Synod has dived headfirst into secular controversy) is contrary to the way in which the Church ought to be governed.
For one thing, what marks off the Church of England is that it is spectacularly non-hierarchical. In complete contrast to the case of, say, the Catholic church, our parsons still have some degree of tenure and protection from being told by ecclesiastical bosses what they can and cannot think; and even we in the laity are reassured in the Articles of Religion that Holy Scripture, rather than the view of church dignitaries, contains all that is necessary for our salvation.
Granted, there is a need for some central church organisation: but it is highly arguable that it should be more a night-watchman state, guarding eccesiastical interests and seeing to it that we have churches to worship in and decent priests to man them, than a body taking it upon itself to pronounce officially on the problems of the day, whether at home or abroad.
It’s also worth thinking just why we have the Synod. As a matter of history, it dates from 1919 when it was becoming clear that leaving specific Church legislation in the hands of the King in parliament, however logical a result of the Henrician settlement, made little twentieth-century sense. The creation of the Church Assembly in that year, which morphed into the General Synod in 1970, amounted to a recognition that there was indeed something wrong in a secular parliament being the only body that could legislate on Church doctrine and organisation, and that we needed to separate the administration of matters sacred and profane.
But that argument cuts both ways. If Parliament limits itself to secular issues, accepting that it is inappropriate for it to dictate religion, shouldn’t the Synod accept conversely that it is none of its constitutional duty to pontificate on matters worldly? Members of Synod could do worse than remember that Jesus’s words in Matthew “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” left the emperor Tiberius entitled to his cut too, and concentrate on what really concerns the organisation of the Church.
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