His Grace is a Disgrace

On 21 February 2024, the Guardian reported that ‘The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, cancelled plans to meet the Bethlehem-based Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac, saying he could not meet him if he shared a platform with the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at a pro-Palestinian rally, the pastor has said.  Isaac, the pastor of the Christmas Evangelical Lutheran church in Bethlehem, who has been highly critical of Israel in Gaza, saw his Christmas sermon go viral when he said if Jesus Christ was born today it would have been under the rubble.  He spoke at a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign rally at the weekend where Corbyn was also a speaker after being invited by the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot’.

The Guardian sought comments from Lambeth Palace about Pastor Isaac’s report of the cancellation, but ‘Lambeth Palace said it did not comment on private meetings.’

His Grace, the archbishop is said to be concerned about the huge increase in antisemitism in the UK since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the Guardian reports that ‘it is believed he feared it would have caused huge problems for the Jewish community’ if he met with Isaac, the latter having shared a platform with Jeremy Corbyn.  Surely, even His Grace won’t go so far as to suggest that Corbyn is responsible for that huge increase in antisemitism, any more than he could be held responsible for the similar increase in Islamophobia and attacks on Muslims, their property and places of worship?

No, His Grace is carrying a flag for Netanyahu, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Keir Starmer.

Why on earth should the possibility of the Jewish community being offended that Welby, in his capacity not just as any Christian leader, but a leader of the world-wide communion of the Church of England, the Established Church, met with a pastor from Bethlehem, at this time, who shared a platform with Jeremy Corbyn, cause His Grace to effectively censure Pastor Isaac?  Where does His Grace’s responsibility as a Christian leader, independent of Judaism, end and his solidarity with the Zionist lobby within British Judaism take centre stage? Who is Welby to determine that Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador, should ‘No Platform’ Jeremy Corbyn and deny him the opportunity to stand and speak in solidarity with the Palestinian people?  Why should Welby’s concern about the Jewish community taking offence or feeling hurt prevent him from engaging with a pastor whose daily experience is of the Christian community in Gaza being annihilated and of the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, including children, of any faith?

One can infer from His Grace’s position that he is most likely not allowing for the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn is as concerned about the huge increase in antisemitism since last October as he is and as ‘the Jewish community’ is.  He certainly presents no evidence to the contrary.

And who and where is that assumed homogenous and undifferentiated Jewish community?

Since 2019, Welby nailed his colours to the mast as far as Jeremy Corbyn is concerned.  In fact, I used to be a voluntary consultant to and member of the Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns, a committee of the council of the archbishops of Canterbury and York. I resigned in 2019 in protest at Welby’s support for the Chief Rabbi’s demonization of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party under his leadership.  As I wrote at the time:

‘The Chief Rabbi is effectively telling the nation that combating racism and anti-Semitism will not be safe in Jeremy Corbyn’s hands, so on 12 December, people should think carefully about what they do in the ballot box and let their conscience lead them, because if Corbyn has failed to do his duty by the Jewish community and to get that right, he surely cannot be trusted to get anything else right.  The media on the other hand reacts to the Chief Rabbi as if he were the Pope, speaking for all British Jews as the Pope would for all Roman Catholics.  Secular Jews and those who do not hold with the views of Jews for Labour are considered not to matter.  For his part, Justin Welby weighs in behind the Chief Rabbi and preaches to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party: ‘Voicing words that commit to a stand against anti-Semitism requires a corresponding effort in visible action’.  He went on to say that political parties ‘must make it an absolute priority to offer positive reassurance’ to the Jewish community.

We are going into an election with the Immigration Act of 2016 still in place and with black and Asian elders impacted by the government’s ‘hostile environment’ still dying, in unlawful detention, or waiting for compensation for being wrongly targeted by the government; with people who as young black men were harassed and criminalised by the police 40 years ago under the ‘Sus’ law being told now that they must leave the UK because they have a criminal record and have therefore forfeited their right to remain.  What ‘positive reassurance’ is the Archbishop of Canterbury insisting that political parties give the many thousands rendered vulnerable by the government’s ‘hostile’ environment?  No one section of the population of this nation has a monopoly on oppression, pain and hurt’.

What has His Grace done to persuade Keir Starmer to act in response to the report on racism in Labour which he commissioned Martin Forde KC to produce? Where are the pledges that Starmer and Labour will take immediate and comprehensive action to root out racism in the party?

Labour was trounced in the December 2019 elections and the Board of Deputies of British Jews not only claimed Corbyn’s scalp, but set about building upon their victory and extracting pledges from those aspiring to replace him as leader of the party.   Those pledges included:

• Provide no platform for those who have been suspended or expelled for antisemitism
• The full adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism “with all its examples and clauses and without any caveats”
• To engage with the Jewish community via its “main representative groups and not through fringe organisations” such as Jewish Voice for Labour

One can surmise that Welby’s decision to cancel Pastor Isaac may well have been in fulfillment of two of these pledges.  The Palestinian ambassador was not bound by the pledge to ‘provide no platform’, or by Starmer’s and the Board of Deputies ostracization of Jeremy Corbyn.  Welby, on the other hand, could show solidarity with the Board of Deputies and the Jewish community by refusing to meet with Isaac who had shared a platform with Corbyn. Isaac may well have been considered antisemitic as defined by the IHRA ‘with all its examples and clauses and without any caveats’, a definition that includes criticism of the actions of the state of Israel. Isaac had been consistent and forthright in his condemnation of Israel for the daily massacres in Gaza.

But as ever, context is important.  The context of the intended discussion between Welby and Isaac is the ongoing death and suffering of people in Gaza as a consequence of relentless and punitive military action by the Israeli state; the death of some 30,000 Palestinians, roughly half of whom are children and the displacement of 85% of the population.  Since this is the existential threat facing the people of Gaza daily, how does His Grace concern himself more with the huge problems his meeting with Pastor Isaac might cause the Jewish community, than with the pastoral, moral and material support he and the Church of England could extend to the pastor and the Christians he represents?

It is one thing for the Board of Deputies of British Jews to be running the Labour party by proxy with Starmer at the helm and in that capacity having their sights on what might be if Labour were to win the next election. It is surely quite another for Justin Welby to have them determine how he as a Christian prelate should respond to supporters of the people of Palestine?

Earlier this month, the General Synod of the Church of England called for a ceasefire and called on Israel to stop its relentless bombardment of Gaza.

In January 2023, the C of E announced that it was pledging a ‘social impact investment fund’ of £100m to compensate for its complicity in the international trade in enslaved Africans.  Justin Welby said in his Easter sermon, that ‘was the right thing to do because the Church of England had done actions that denied the reality of God’s universal power and love which it was meant to live’. He added: “Even in that old institution, the Church of England, we find the power of the living Christ….Every institution will respond to history in its own way, but in our case it is not something like postcolonial guilt; it is the presence of the risen Christ alive in the church.”

Welby did not address obvious questions such as: Was the risen Christ not alive in the church during the international trade in enslaved Africans, especially when indigenous people were being brutalised, or exterminated, for following their ancient spiritual traditions and made to ‘accept Christ’ on pain of death?  Why was ‘the power of the living Christ’ not discerned in the suffering and brutalisation of the enslaved, or in their spiritual beliefs, and when they were driven by that fundamental instinct for freedom with which all human beings are endowed, to try and escape bondage?  If we believe that the church is not a building or physical space for worshipping, however grand those places might be, but the embodiment of Christ in God’s people, why is the ‘presence of the risen Christ alive in the church’ not felt by those who are maimed, mauled, and killed in Gaza?  What might the risen Christ have said to Pastor Isaac through His Grace?  Did not Isaac have a right to an audience with His Grace in a spirit of Christian witness and solidarity? And in the given circumstances, should that consideration not have taken precedence over the archbishop’s concern about how hurt the Jewish community might feel about his decision to meet with Isaac?

Pastor Isaac, the people of Gaza and of the territories occupied by Israel had been subjected to the most dehumanising and barbaric treatment from a colonial, apartheid, terrorist state for years before the Hamas atrocities of 7 October.  Yet, Israel, the UK and the USA reacted to those atrocities as if Hamas invented evil itself and introduced manifestations of barbarism of which Israel itself could never be thought capable.  It is that same hubristic moral relativism that emboldens Israel in its weaponization of the Holocaust and its sense of invincibility, a sense reinforced by the complicity of the UK, USA and their allies and that justifies the demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn.

You do not have to be a Corbynista, or a Hamas supporter, to condemn what Netanyahu and the IDF have been doing in Gaza before and especially since October 7.  You only have to be human and to deplore evil.

In this regard, I cannot believe that I am the only one who feels that my intelligence is sorely insulted every time the BBC and other media utter the name ‘Hamas’, followed by the inscription ‘designated a terrorist organisation’, especially when they then go on to report genocidal acts on the part of the Israeli state.

It is an utter disgrace that His Grace chose to worship at the Jewish high altar of oppression at the top of the pyramid, rather than demonstrate spiritual and moral leadership and at the very least respect for the right of Jeremy Corbyn not to be gratuitously vilified and demonised.

Prelate or not, you cannot profess to ‘Stand Up for Jesus’ unless, in all things, you ‘Stand Up for Justice’.