Before the 21st century, the UK, while not philosemitic, was also not actively antisemitic. The British establishment types wouldn’t want their daughter to marry a Jew, but the murderous hostility to Jews that characterized so much of Europe was absent in the UK. That reflected the British Protestant belief that British history and faith were inextricably intertwined with the land of Israel.
However, with the UK’s Islamic-leftist turn, Britain is now a virulently antisemitic country, something reflected in the Church of England (“CofE”). Not that this is a surprise. The CofE long ago became a completely bankrupt institution, parting ways with the Bible and British history. It’s the Gospel according to the BCC. No wonder that it’s accepted the antisemitic trope that Israel is a genocidal nation that has no right to exist.
Here’s a really quick chronology of Jews in Britain:
Archeology indicates that the British Isles were trading with Bible-era Israel beginning in the Bronze Age.
The British long believed that Joseph of Arimathea, one of Jesus’s disciples, came to Glastonbury right after the Crucifixion, when Jesus’s followers were still firmly Jewish.
The first Jews to settle permanently in the British Isles arrived shortly after the Norman Conquest, at the behest of William the Conqueror. In the ensuing years, Britain reflected a trend seen in the rest of Europe: Monarchs borrowed from the Jews, protecting them when they needed money and then, when they couldn’t pay their debts, leading pogroms or banishing them. (See, the York Massacre.)
In 1290, Edward I banished all Jews from the Kingdom. What this meant was that the British were not exposed to Jews at all, eventually knowing them only through Shakespeare’s Shylock.
In 1655, Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews to return to England, based in significant part on his understanding of the connection between the Old Testament and the New, and the fact that the God he worshipped originated with the Jews.
After the British monarchy was returned to the throne, Jews had a similar legal status to other dissenting faiths (no entrance to academia, no government jobs, etc.), although they were always seen as the “other” and viewed with some distaste.
As rights for Christian religious dissenters expanded in England, so, too, did rights for Jews. By the 20th century, Jews had full civil rights, but if you read the mid-20th century women writers I like so much—e.g., Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy L. Sayers, D.E. Stevenson—the “othering” remained. However, as I’ve always said, you don’t have to like me; you just don’t get to kill me.
In 1917, when it was clear that Britain would take over part of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, acknowledging that Jews should be able to create a Jewish national state in the former Ottoman colony of Palestine. The lure of Arab oil after WWII caused the British to break this pledge.
Through it all, the CofE avoided the virulent antisemitism that other faiths (most notably Islam, of course) embraced.
But recently, Britain has changed. It’s graduated from soft socialism to hardcore communism, and it’s welcomed so many fanatical Muslims into its midst that the nation is no longer a tolerant, liberal nation. Instead, it’s a nasty, anti-Christian, antisemitic place. And in a way, there’s no nastier, more anti-Christian institution than the CofE.
Over the years, the CofE has:
- Ordained women as priests (which is unbiblical).
- Ended all limitations on women serving in the church hierarchy. The current Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the CofE) is Sarah Mullally, who sort of supports same-sex relationships (unbiblical), is sort of pro-choice (un-traditional-Christian), and is very pro-refugee (anti-British). (Amazingly, she is opposed to assisted suicide.)
- Approved of homosexuality as an acceptable behavior among the faithful.
- Authorized the church to bless homosexual unions.
- Allowed openly gay priests into the clergy.
- Became very supportive of so-called transgenderism.
- Went (and still goes) the extra mile for ecumenical relationships with Islam.
Given that the Church has allowed itself to be led by popular culture, rather than standing as a bulwark of firmly held Christian beliefs, it’s probably no surprise that only 10% of British people identify as members of the CofE, with only 1% attending church every week. Once it became the Church of the BBC, it ceased to have spiritual value.
But the CofE’s gospel according to the BBC continues. Most recently, it decided to take very seriously a poisonously antisemitic document, written in hardcore leftist babblespeak, accusing Israel of genocide (a claim belied by all available facts). Melanie Phillips explains that the document recycles “[e]very lie that’s been thrown at Israel over its war of self-defence in Gaza,” and does so using the standard tropes that describe Israel, not even as a country, but as a “colonial, settler, and exclusionary entity…”
Yet this is what the CofE, led by Mulally, treats as a serious document that, per Mulally, “reflects the pain and trauma of the Palestinian people.” There is no corollary sympathy for the pain and trauma of the Israeli people, who have been subject to decades of persecution that most recently culminated on October 7, 2023. Andrew Klavan calls antisemitism “the Devil’s flagpole,” for it is a sure sign that other evil is at play.
One of the key things a faith should stand for is values. And the CofE’s values are debased. They’re no longer tied to the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. It’s become the Church of Marx, which has alienated the British people, and now courts people—leftists and Muslims—who lust after its destruction.
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Image created using AI.