This week, the Church of England’s General Synod voted — 253 to 47, carried in all three houses — to hear the Kairos Palestine declarations as heartfelt expressions of Palestinian Christian experience, and to stand in solidarity with Palestinian Christians and all who seek a just and lasting peace. It is the first time the Synod has formally committed to engaging with the Kairos documents in this way, after years of the question being raised and set aside.
I won’t pretend this vote settles anything. But I will say what it means to me. This year marks fifty years since my grandfather, Bishop Faik Ibrahim Haddad, was installed as the first Palestinian Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem. He carried the weight of being a Palestinian Christian leader inside a global Communion that did not always know what to do with that fact — that did not always want to hear it. Half a century later, to see the Anglican world vote, however imperfectly, to hear rather than look away, is not nothing. It is not the whole of justice. But it is a door opened that was, for most of his ministry, closed.
We know this motion has been contested, and we know it will continue to be. That is the nature of truth-telling on this subject. PCiA’s task has never been to win an argument in a single vote — it is to make sure Palestinian Christian voices are actually in the room when these conversations happen, here in Australia as much as in York.
Which brings us to the Bearing Witness tour.
From 28 July to 3 August, PCiA — with the support of the National Council of Churches in Australia — is bringing two of those voices to Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, and Perth: Dr Lamma Mansour and Dr Yousef Al-Khoury, Dean of Bethlehem Bible College. This is the kind of hearing we’re asking of the wider Church — not a vote on a document, but Palestinian Christian theologians speaking for themselves, in our cities, to our parliamentarians, our congregations, and our neighbours. Click here to secure your tickets for the tour.This work isn’t free, and it isn’t finished. Advocacy, tour logistics, media outreach, and the ongoing policy work that sits behind every one of these moments all depend on PCiA’s ability to grow. If this newsletter has meant something to you — if you want Palestinian Christian voices heard in this country the way my grandfather worked to have them heard in his — please consider a gift to PCiA today. Every donation goes directly toward the advocacy and the tours that make these hearings possible.