Hatred of Jews and proscription of Palestine Action
From the Rt Revd Dr Peter Selby
Madam, — As Canon Angela Tilby writes (Comment, 18 July), the evidence of a rising tide of anti-Semitism should concern us all, not least individual Christians and their churches in the light of Christianity’s centuries-long history of effectively promoting it.
But, as Rabbi Julia Neuberger says in her book on the subject, such increases regularly accompany intensifying times of violence in the Middle East.
So, it is a pity that Canon Tilby devotes the last part of her column to generalised attacks on “so many of [her] Christian friends [who] have chosen to adopt an uncritical pro-Palestinian stance” and who fail to recognise that Palestine Action has recently been proscribed as a terrorist organisation, and that it “and its supporters” are “infected with a hatred of Jews”.
Canon Tilby’s friends can, no doubt, speak for themselves. Those of us who support Palestine Action’s claim that the use of anti-terrorism legislation to proscribe it is an unwarranted attack on what is certainly civil disobedience and criminal damage, but not terrorism, like that of Islamic State, will be astonished at her accusation of Jew-hatred.
The sad reality is that, while, as she says, the chant “from the River to the Sea” holds menace to Jews when uttered in the Palestinian cause, it also expresses the ambition being violently pursued by West Bank settlers with the support of their government and on stated biblical grounds to drive all Palestinians from their lands.
We should all, like Canon Tilby and Baroness Neuberger, encourage the vital distinction between criticism of the Israeli government and blaming Jews; but some of what we’re seeing on the West Bank and in Gaza and the rhetoric that accompanies it isn’t making holding to that distinction any easier.
PETER SELBY
57 Girton Road
London SE26 5DJ
From the Revd Richard Adams
Madam, — Canon Angela Tilby seems to have strayed into the same confused position as many of the people she condemns for anti-Semitism: a conflation of “Jewish” and “State of Israel”.
She implies that those who support Palestine are anti-Semitic, when, of course, many of them are not. I support the right of Palestinians not to be harassed, randomly shot, bombed, and deprived of housing, water, and food by anyone (in this instance, the State of Israel). I also support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish homeland and to defend itself. But that nation has no more right to claim “from the river to the sea” than has any Palestinian group, and it certainly has no right to bomb civilians, fail to protect them from harassment, tear up their farmland, and bulldoze their homes, in the name of self-defence.
Canon Tilby also accuses Christian supporters of Palestinian rights of being uncritical, on the grounds that they should pay more heed to the Government’s proscription of Palestine Action. This is absurd. A government ruling doesn’t make supporters of Palestine wrong. Many Christian advocates of Palestinian rights have been to Israel/Palestine and seen the way things are, and are rightly horrified at the plight of Palestinians.
Five pages before her column is a first-hand graphic description of that situation from the Archbishop in Jerusalem. We should not consider curtailing support for Palestinians because of the Government’s proscription of a protest group.
It is also worth noting government tactics here: when the legislation was brought to Parliament, Palestine Action was deliberately grouped with two foreign extremist organisations that pose an indubitable security threat. This meant that, under parliamentary procedure, there was no way to vote against proscribing one organisation and in favour of proscribing the others.
The Government’s decision to group Palestine Action — a domestic civil-disobedience protest group — together with two overseas neo-Nazi organisations was a cowardly way of forcing MPs’ hands, as no MP could have sensibly voted against proscribing the other two organisations.
So, now we have almost daily arrests under terrorism laws, of people simply holding placards. Terrorists? The Government should be ashamed; and the rest of us need to continue to campaign for simple protests to be regulated by normal law, not anti-terrorism measures.
RICHARD ADAMS
Tros y Mor, Llangoed, Beaumaris
Anglesey LL58 8SB
From Mrs Catherine Fish
Madam, — What a polarising message Canon Angela Tilby is sending. As an active member of Friends of Standing Together — Jews and Palestinians working courageously for peace against the odds — I disagree. Many Jews are broken-hearted at the actions of the Israeli government, and I stand with them in their grief.
Being a voice for the voiceless does not equate to having hatred for another group-as Canon Tilby suggests. Instead, those of us who are pro-Palestinian are trying to respond to the situation in love, that has become grief for the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
This is about loving our neighbour and giving a voice to the current voiceless, all of whom are created in the image of God. It is not about being by default anti-Semitic. Far from it.
CATHERINE FISH
Address supplied (Sheffield)
From the Revd Dr Luke Geoghegan
Madam, — Canon Angela Tilby expresses concern about “the excessive targeting of innocent civilians in Gaza” (Comment, 18 July), which prompted me to ponder what appropriate targeting of innocent civilians might look like.
LUKE GEOGHEGAN
16 Gravel Path
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire HP4 2EF
From Mr John Puxty
Madam, — One of the Old Testament readings set for Sunday 27 July is Genesis 18.20-32: Abraham pleading for God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if just a handful of righteous remain in those places. One is drawn to an awful comparison with Gaza today, where the innocent are far more than a handful — in fact, in the majority — and yet the destruction still goes on. . .
JOHN PUXTY (Reader)
32 Summerfields Way
Ilkeston DE7 9HF
Avoidance of questions about the Church Army
From the Revd Terry Drummond CA
Madam, — It is interesting to note that, while Matt Barlow, in his letter (11 July), writes in a positive vein regarding the future of the Church Army, he does not answer the questions raised by Philip Johanson (Letter, 4 July). He does not say why the trustees allowed the financial situation to deteriorate to such an extent that there will be little left of the Church Army.
Looking at the annual accounts of the Church Army on the Charity Commission website, I see that the trustees used £15.162 million from reserves over four years to finance deficits. Surely, action should have been taken sooner.
Mr Barlow writes positively about the future in the training of people called to be evangelists, “not just commissioned evangelists, but anyone with a sense of calling to mission and evangelism”, which seems to suggest that the Church Army will no longer be an Anglican mission agency. It would be interesting to know what the bishops he mentions think about that. He does not say how that training will be financed and who will employ these people at the end of their training.
As far as the board’s and leadership’s communication about the financial situation with regular updates is concerned, I must have been left off the circulation list.
With regard to the recent meetings mentioned by Mr Barlow: I attended one. My understanding was that there would be a discussion of the changes and an update on plans for the future. The meeting turned out to be an internal discussion of how to ensure mutual support within the Church Army community, and the relationship of commissioned members to the non-commissioned: a classic example of avoiding the key issues that have a more important long-term effect.
The real issues were avoided — as in Mr Barlow’s letter in response to Mr Johanson’s.
TERRY DRUMMOND
49 Throstle Nest Close
Otley LS21 2RR
Life after SJE Arts
From Michèle Smith
Madam, — In response to your story (News, 6 June), I would like to make it clear that SJE Arts was started by me in 2013, when I was Bursar of St Stephen’s House, using its own staffing to run it. It was a trading name for the musical and art activities taking place in the college and cloisters. Initially, it was set up to raise funds to cover the extensive repairs that were needed for the Grade I listed church, St John’s, and cloister.
From the outset, it was very successful and a profitable addition to college finances. Except in the Covid years, it always made a significant financial contribution to St Stephen’s House. It also provided a very useful example to the ordinands, once they were in their own parishes, of how a church can be opened up to a wider public and also help with raising funds. More than 700 concerts took place in the church, plus numerous recordings.
I, the director of SJE Arts, was not consulted about the plan to close SJE Arts. The many protests of musicians, audience members, and others involved with SJE Arts were dismissed by the Board/the Principal with a distinct lack of grace and understanding.
The College has not made attempts to find homes for some of the displaced regular concert programmes and groups that have been part of SJE Arts. It also wished to retain the SJE Arts name. The new piano series is, therefore, to be called International Piano Series, and the 2025/2026 season is being held at two venues in Oxford: St John’s College and the Jacqueline du Pré music building at St Hilda’s College.
MICHÈLE SMITH
Director, International Piano Series
Address supplied
Retired clergy’s work on housing estates
From Canon Andrew Davey
Madam, — In the recent Synod debate on clergy-pension levels, a speaker referred to some retired clergy as “being lost on some soulless new estate” (News, 18 July). To describe any community that comes within our parish system as soulless is reprehensible. Nowhere is soulless: the recent work on estate ministry and evangelism has highlighted the all-too-easy way in which such places are disparaged.
The debate made much of the contribution of retired clergy to the Church’s liturgical life. The contribution made by retired clergy as community-builders and community organisers (often working under the local church’s radar) was sadly missed.
ANDREW DAVEY
The Vicarage
48 Old Road East
Milton-next-Gravesend DA12 1NR
Issues in the bin, please
From the Revd David Runcorn
Madam, — The withdrawal of Issues in Human Sexuality from the discernment process for ordinands (News, 18 July) is welcome and very long overdue. But its use needs to cease in all discernment processes in the Church. There are bishops who have been requiring candidates interviewing for ministry posts to assent to it — even after general agreement was reached that it was not an appropriate tool for discernment and needed replacing.
DAVID RUNCORN
25 Manor Road
Stratford upon Avon CV37 7EA
Rise of ‘Cosmo Cantuar:’
From Dr Geoffrey F. Chorley
Madam, — The Revd Peter Ridley (Letters, 18 July) is incorrect in stating that Cosmo Gordon Lang was translated to Canterbury from being a suffragan bishop. He was previously Archbishop of York. Nevertheless, Lang was indeed appointed to York after serving as Bishop of Stepney.
GEOFFREY CHORLEY
Hon. Senior Research Fellow in Theology
Liverpool Hope University
Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD
Thomas More itinerary
From Mr Leigh Hatts
Madam, — One can add another group to the many arriving at St Dunstan’s in Canterbury, where the head of St Thomas More is held (News, 18 July). St Dunstan’s has a resonance for walkers on the Pilgrims’ Way, besides being the last church before Canterbury’s gate and where penitent Henry II stopped to remove his shoes.
Many who start on the London leg of the pilgrim route pause behind Southwark Cathedral to recall the London Bridge gateway where the saint’s head was displayed before his daughter rescued it. Later, the route passes through Farningham, in Kent, where More’s grandson Antony Roper is commemorated in the church.
LEIGH HATTS
39 Dunsterville Way
London SE1 3RQ
Continuing argument for redistribution of funds
From Canon Stephen Fielding
Madam, — Your leader comment (18 July) on the distribution of church capital made some telling points. The Church Commissioners’ assets are, indeed, the result of highly successful investment management. Their distribution of income in the form of grants has been truly impressive. And, in the Synod debate, the First Church Estates Commissioner was right to say that a distribution of the Church’s capital in perpetuity of one per cent p.a. would be a massive disruption to the Church’s investment strategy and initiatives.
But here’s the crucial point: a distribution of one per cent per annum in perpetuity is not remotely necessary for the restoration of solvency in every diocese and cathedral. I estimate that such an annual distribution of capital need be made for only two to three years to provide the breathing space to enable dioceses to get back on an even keel, eliminating deficits and providing a residue of capital which would reverse the cuts in clergy numbers and the other measures that have so damaged parish life.
So, far from encouraging complacency or torpor, such a distribution would be a liberation and a springboard. It would materially improve clergy well-being. And it would leave the Commissioners’ investment strategy almost entirely untouched.
I very much hope that such a modest redistribution of capital can be part of the active agenda.
STEPHEN FIELDING
55 High Street
Much Hadham SG10 6BU
Confusion persists over Queen Anne’s Bounty
From Professor Richard Dale
Madam, — Mr Jonathan Guthrie (Letter, 18 July) is mistaken. My letter that he takes exception to (6 June) referred not to the Healing, Repair and Justice Fund, but to the Church Commissioners’ report on Queen Anne’s Bounty (benevolent fund) which underpins it. That report states at the outset that its purpose is to determine “whether [the fund] profited from transatlantic slavery”. The report goes on to calculate the fund’s total receipts/profits from what it describes as South Sea Company-related investments, consisting predominantly of South Sea Annuities (wrongly described throughout as South Sea Company Annuities and, even, at one point, as “investments in the South Sea Company”).
It has, however, been demonstrated by reference to relevant statutes (9 Geo 1 c 6 1723 and 6 Geo 11 c 28 1733) that these annuities had nothing to do with the South Sea Company, did not finance the Company, and certainly were not sold or issued by the Company, as now suggested by Dr Paul and Professor Drayton in their formal response to criticism. Nor do you have to be a historian to see the error: readers can view the online image of an annuity certificate (News, 11 July) that states clearly that the issuer is the named annuity company and not the (financially unrelated) South Sea Company.
By muddling up the South Sea Company with a separately incorporated annuities company, the Commissioners’ historical advisers are guilty of an egregious, but no doubt inadvertent error. By perpetuating this gaffe after it has been pointed out, they are guilty of something worse.
Finally, Mr Guthrie is perhaps a little sanctimonious in stating the obvious: namely, that the iniquity of the slave trade has nothing whatever to do with its profitability.
RICHARD DALE
Longfields, Whites Hill
Owslebury, Winchester SO21 1LT
Pronoun avoidance depersonalises the Holy Spirit
From the Revd Professor David R. Law
Madam, — In contrast to the Revd Dr Kevin Walton (Letter, 11 July), I am not sorry to prolong the discussion about the pneumatical pronoun in John 16.13-15; for there is an important theological point at stake here. The use of the masculine gender pronoun “ekeinos” makes clear that the Spirit is not an impersonal, abstract force, but a person, a view that is confirmed by the New Testament’s ascription to the Spirit of will (1 Corinthians 12.11) and feelings (Ephesians 4.30). This should not be taken to indicate that the Holy Spirit is male, of course; for God transcends gender.
Nevertheless, using non-gendered circumlocutions to avoid translating ekeinos as “he”, as does the SSRA translation recommended by the Revd Michael Hampson (Letter, 4 July), risks implicitly denying the personhood of the Holy Spirit. This sails dangerously close to the fourth-century heresy of Macedonianism or Pneumatomachianism (from the Greek for “fighters against the Spirit”), which considered the Holy Spirit to be merely a power (energeia) or an instrument of God and repudiated his (sic) full divinity and personhood.
It was to combat this heresy that the Council of Constantinople in 381 expanded the third clause of the creed formulated at Nicaea in 325 to leave no doubt as to the divine equality of the Spirit with the other Trinitarian Persons. We recite this creed every Sunday, thereby affirming our commitment to the full divinity and personhood of the Holy Spirit, who has the personal attributes of being “the Lord, the giver of life . . . who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets”.
Again, personhood is implied, for we address persons as Lord; it is persons who speak; and it is not impersonal forces, but persons who are worthy of worship. Far from being a commendable concession to modern gender sensibilities, then, Bible translations that avoid personal pronouns of the Holy Spirit are not only untrue to the Greek text of John 16.13-15, but are guilty of implicitly depersonalising the Third Person of the Trinity and (unintentionally, no doubt) lapsing into Pneumatomachianism.
DAVID R. LAW
Department of Religions and Theology
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
From the Revd Michael Hampson
Madam, — The General Synod, nearly 30 years ago now, expressed the Church of England’s mind on third-person pronouns for God in modern-language services. In the true spirit of the Elizabethan Settlement, the Synod enabled diverse views to be held together within a common liturgy by deciding to avoid third-person pronouns for God altogether. A prime example is the Sursum Corda response from which “him” was deleted.
The Revd Dr Kevin Walton (Letter, 11 July) notes the grammatical inconsistency in the Greek of John 16.13-14 regarding the Spirit, showing that the inherent limitation of describing the divine in human language is not unique to the current era.
The latest revisions of the NIV and NRSV both use default-male pronouns. In “Sunday Scriptures for Reading Aloud” (ssra.uk), we have lectionary texts that take the same conciliatory, Anglican approach as Common Worship: redrafting sentences and paragraphs to manage without third-person pronouns for God at all, aligning not only with the Synod’s decision, but also with the expectations of members of pronoun-sensitive Generation Z, now also — like the Synod’s decision — fast approaching 30.
MICHAEL HAMPSON
Station House, Arkholme
Carnforth LA6 1AZ
The Editor reserves the right to edit letters
