WHY is the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, so keen to criticise Israel but deafeningly silent on the mass slaughter of Christians by Islamists in Nigeria?
After he accused Israel of ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza, the Church of England’s second most senior cleric now faces the formidable intellect of Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis.
Sir Ephraim wrote on X after Archbishop Cottrell made the comments this week in an interview with the Church Times: ‘The Archbishop of York has spoken of the need to be “painfully honest” about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. But it is simply not possible to do that without faithfully seeking to understand more than one perspective. It saddens me greatly that his irresponsible approach, reaching for the incendiary and morally inverted accusation of “genocidal acts”, will serve only to foster yet more enmity and division. I will be writing to the Archbishop to set out my concerns in detail.’
Unfortunately for Archbishop Cottrell it is most unlikely that he will turn out to be the David to Sir Ephraim’s Goliath in this intellectual duel.
Sir Ephraim’s missive will likely prove as devastating intellectually to the archbishop’s leftist anecdotal meanderings as Israel’s exploding pagers were to Hezbollah terrorists militarily in 2024.
Is not the reason why Archbishop Cottrell is so focused on Israel rather than on the plight of Christians in Nigeria quite straightforward?
The globalist elite of which Archbishop Cottrell is an ecclesiastical representative cannot stand Israel because it believes in itself as a sovereign and independent nation and is prepared to defend itself.
The globalists are not very bothered about persecuted Christians, particularly when Islamists are doing the persecuting, because Christianity is the legacy religion of the West.
It takes a patriot rather than a globalist to stand up for persecuted Christians, as Simon Caldwell so ably chronicled on this site on November 3:
‘According to the Open Doors charity, Nigeria has moved from the seventh most dangerous country in 2022 to the top of the list in 2024 after 3,100 people were killed and 2,830 kidnapped in that year.
‘When the death toll is counted for 2025, it is highly likely that Nigeria’s Christians will again emerge as the world’s most persecuted people; one massacre has been followed by another. About 62,000 Christian civilians have been killed by Islamists since 2000, with numbers rocketing in the last decade thanks to high-grade weaponry arriving from countries destabilised in the so-called “Arab Spring”.
‘By and large the rest of the world has ignored this awful persecution but on Friday, US President Donald Trump did what Joe Biden had consistently refused to do and designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” because it engages in or tolerates “particularly severe violations of religious freedom”.’
President Trump had written on TruthSocial: ‘If the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may well go into that now disgraced country “guns-a-blazing” to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.
‘I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack it will be fast, vicious and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians! Warning: the Nigerian government better move fast!’
Caldwell concluded his piece: ‘In President Trump, they (Nigerian church leaders) have found a Western leader willing to listen to their concerns and honestly face up to the truth of the persecution and to do something about it. They must feel that at last, amid the darkness, a light has come on.’
Read it all at the Conservative Woman