The Archbishop of Canterbury has refused to meet with a prominent Palestinian pastor after he spoke alongside former leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn at a Palestine rally in London.
Munther Isaac, a Christian pastor from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, said he was disappointed to be told by Justin Welby’s aides that the leader of the Anglican Church would not meet with him if he shared the platform with Corbyn.
“It’s shameful. It’s not my type of Christianity not to be willing to meet another pastor because you don’t want to explain why you met him,” the Palestinian pastor said in an interview with the Guardian.
“This sums up the Church of England. They danced around positions, and ended up saying nothing. They lack the courage to say things.”
Isaac has been a prominent voice speaking out against Israel‘s bombardment of the Gaza Strip and has used his church sermons to highlight the suffering of the Palestinians.
Last week he spoke at a mass rally in London hosted by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign that also featured Corbyn on the platform.
Corbyn, a longtime pro-Palestine campaigner, has been accused of having allowed antisemitism to take root in the Labour Party during his tenure there and previously faced censure by Welby.
Speaking to the Guardian, Isaac said that many church leaders – akin to politicians – had a tendency to “say one thing, and then in public, they say another thing.
“It is so painful for us to see the Christian church turn a blind eye to what is happening, offering words of concern and compassion, but for so long they have been silent in the face of obvious war crimes,” he said.
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