CONGREGATIONS are being urged pray for peace in the Middle East this Sunday, in an initiative supported by aid agencies, including Christian Aid, Tearfund, and CAFOD.
“The gravity of the situation demands a united Christian witness for peace, justice, and reconciliation,” a spokesperson for the campaign, which involves Anglican, RC, and Methodist organisations, as well as Quakers, said this week.
Churches are invited to use a prayer by the Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Most Revd Hosam Naoum (Podcast, 17 July), which is published on the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland website.
Next Thursday, an interfaith “Red Lines for Gaza” vigil will be held outside the Palace of Westminster, and a similar event has been scheduled for the previous day in Cardiff.
“The war in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine is not some remote conflict that doesn’t concern us. It is an outrage of our generation,” the Bishop of Kingston, in the diocese of Southwark, Dr Martin Gainsborough, said this week, after making a week-long visit to Israel and Palestine.
While he was there, six Israelis were killed in a shooting in occupied East Jerusalem, the IDF launched retaliatory raids on the West Bank villages from which the gunmen reportedly came, and Israel launched air strikes on Doha, targeting Hamas negotiators. Missiles fired from Yemen in retaliation.
“And yet, for all the awfulness of war and the indignities and cruelty of occupation, we frequently encountered signs, both in the churches of the diocese we visited and in wider civil society, that life and hope have not been extinguished, that people are seeking to build up, not destroy, and are choosing kindness and care over hate. It was impressive, moving, and deeply inspiring,” Dr Gainsborough writes on the Church Times website this week.
He visited churches and institutions of the diocese of Jerusalem, including churches, schools, and health clinics in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. He was accompanied by the Dean of St George’s College, the Very Revd Canon Richard Sewell, and the co-founder of Christians for Palestine, the Revd Helen Burnett.
Ms Burnett, who is also a climate activist, said on her return to the UK that there was a “vacuum of moral leadership that the Church could step into if it had the courage.”
Statements and appeals to governments had some use, she suggested, but action was also needed. She called on the Church to take bolder steps. As a stalwart of street demonstrations, she was able to “take greetings and solidarity from people on the streets”, and said that this was appreciated by the people she met.
A group of clerics, including five from the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, protested at New Zealand government offices in Wellington this week, calling for sanctions on Israel.
The Bishop of Wellington, the Most Revd Justin Duckworth, said that he and the Assistant Bishop, the Rt Revd Anashuya Fletcher, stood “in solemn solidarity” with the protesting clergy, who had “taken a courageous and principled stand in calling for sanctions against Israel in the hope that our government will take stronger diplomatic action”.
Bishop Fletcher said: “We cannot be silent when innocent lives are being destroyed.”
Also on Tuesday, Pope Leo XIV spoke to the parish priest of the Holy Family, Gaza City, Fr Gabriel Romanelli. Vatican News reported that Fr Romanelli told the Pope that the RC parish was continuing to shelter around 450 people.
An Israeli tank fired on the church in July, killing three people and leaving ten, including Fr Romanelli, injured (News, 17 July).