The primate and all Canadian Anglicans should write to government officials calling for a full and immediate arms embargo on Israel, General Synod said in a resolution it passed June 29, along with a second resolution expressing “support for those in the Land of the Holy One.”
Resolution C012 requested Archbishop Shane Parker, installed as primate of the Anglican Church of Canada later that day, to publicly write to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand calling on the Canadian government to “uphold their moral responsibilities” and impose a full, immediate arms embargo on Israel. It also encouraged all Canadian Anglicans to regularly write to and/or call their elected representatives asking them to work towards such an embargo.
Finn Keesmaat-Walsh, youth member for the diocese of Toronto, said 97 people had been killed in Gaza since the previous morning, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Keesmaat-Walsh, who uses “they/them” pronouns, moved the motion, they said, “holding these 97 siblings of ours and all who have died as a result of this genocide in Gaza in my heart.”
In September 2024, then-foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly announced that Canadian-made weapons would be prohibited from entering the Gaza Strip, including through the United States, Keesmaat-Walsh said. On March 26, however, Project Ploughshares—the peace research institute of the Canadian Council of Churches, of which the Anglican Church of Canada is a member—reported that Ottawa had approved a contract on Sept. 26 for the export of artillery propellants to the Israeli military through the U.S.
Quebec-based weapons manufacturer General Dynamics received the contract to produce CAD$78.8 million worth of artillery propellants for the U.S. Department of Defense that would be supplied to Israel. The propellants are a specific type of explosive fuel required to launch 155-mm artillery shells, which Israel has used heavily against Palestinians in Gaza, Keesmaat-Walsh said.
“If we stop providing this product, Israel will lose its source,” they said. Keesmaat-Walsh recalled the words of Jesus to his disciples that the two greatest commandments in the law were, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
“We have a duty to uphold these two commandments and this [resolution] is a very important way that we can do that,” Keesmaat-Walsh said.
Charlotte Hardy, youth member for the diocese of Kootenay who had spoken to General Synod in 2023 about her experience as part of a youth pilgrimage to the Holy Land, seconded the motion. “Our siblings in the Land of the Holy One need our prayers, but they also need our actions,” Hardy said.
“It’s our duty as Christians to uphold our baptismal covenant and strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every living being, as well as safeguard the integrity of God’s creation and respect, sustain and renew the life on earth,” she said. “The arms embargo will not only save the lives of God’s people, but it will also allow the earth to recover from the bombardment from which it’s dying. Let us stand in solidarity with all of God’s creation.”
Gary Russell, lay member for the diocese of Rupert’s Land, spoke in favour of the motion, which he put within a larger context of colonialism and anti-colonialism that included the colonization of North America. Russell recalled visiting a pro-Palestine encampment in 2024 at the University of Winnipeg along Portage Avenue. “Sixty years ago I was marching down that street, protesting the Vietnam War, and I’m still here,” Russell said. “It’s all part of the colonial project, which we need to oppose.”
Andrea Mann, director of Global Relations, also backed the motion, which she said “expresses the intent and imperative of our current commitments of solidarity and advocacy toward just peace in Palestine and Israel” as stated in Resolution A160, which General Synod passed in 2023.
Resolution C012, Mann said, continued the church’s call for an end to all arms transfers to Israel, which then-acting primate Archbishop Anne Germond first made in an Oct. 4, 2024 open letter. Both Germond and National Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, she said, had since “reiterated this call in seven increasingly robust letters to the prime minister and to the minister of foreign affairs as recently as 13 days ago on June 16, calling for a complete arms embargo on Israel.”
“I speak in favour of this resolution for the urgent call it places upon all of us to demand our government to do all they can, all we can, to end the genocide of Gazans and the armed separate destruction of the Palestinian people and lands of the West Bank,” Mann said.
Archdeacon Noel Wygiera, clergy member for the diocese of Calgary, spoke strongly in support of the motion and addressed anxieties that such statements could be viewed as antisemitic.
“I want to stand up and say that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, antisemitic about this motion—that we are friends both to the people of Palestine and the people of Israel,” Wygiera said. “That is our call. And because we are friends of Israel, good friends sometimes have to say to their friends, ‘No, you’ve gone too far,’ because that is part of friendship. It’s about being honest with one another.”
Palestine and the Middle East ‘living through their Gethsemane, their scourging and their crucifixion’
General Synod also passed Resolution C011, which extended its support to the Episcopal diocese of Jerusalem and St. George’s College Jerusalem, a school for continuing education run by the diocese, in response to an invitation from Archbishop Hosam Naoum for Anglicans to intercede on behalf of the diocese and college, “that we might collectively be strengthened to embody the role of peacemakers.” The resolution directed the Partners in Mission Coordinating Committee to connect with all the church’s operations and partners, such as Alongside Hope and the Companions of Jerusalem, to “engage, equip and invite Dioceses to engage intentional processes of study, intercession and action for pathways of peace.”
Resolution C011 further encouraged all dioceses to extend words and expressions of support to the Episcopal diocese of Jerusalem and Naoum, and to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. It encouraged all parishes to voice their concern by actively including prayers for the Middle East, and Palestine in particular, in their Sunday intercessions and study programs.
Bishop of Central Newfoundland John Watton moved the motion for C011. “We live in a time where society has been conditioned to normalize each crisis that descends upon us,” Watton said, listing COVID-19, climate change, famine, genocide and war as examples.
Watton described encountering a wedding that was taking place in the same hotel in which he was staying for General Synod, during which he saw a Palestinian flag and wept. “I felt we were standing in the middle of a group of Palestinian people who had family and friends living in Gaza and the West Bank,” Watton said. On June 28, he noted, tens of thousands of people had held mass protests in Tel Aviv calling for a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza and the return of Israeli hostages. “Many of them are settlers who are saying to their own government, ‘It’s enough,’” Watton said. “Many of these people are saying it is time to humanize the people who are suffering instead of dismissing them as statistics.”
C011, Watton said, recognized the connection that many Canadian Anglicans have to the history and lives of people in the region. “The voices of the Land of the Holy One and our own context across our country have asked us to learn with open hearts and minds and in new ways about the people who are there; to advocate publicly and before government bodies for justice and peace; to keep them in remembrance and intercession, and for us to know how important it is to those people to know that we remember them,” he said.
During discussion, Parker recounted a text conversation with Naoum earlier that day, in which Parker said he would be wearing a Jerusalem stole to his installation as the 15th primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, telling his Palestinian counterpart, “Know that it is for you and your people.
“Hosam responded, ‘Jerusalem loves you and embraces you with prayers,’” Parker said. “He then said, ‘I wish I was there for you,’ and I said, ‘You are.’ This motion will give significant substance to that exchange.”
Russell said he was encouraged by the motion’s inclusion of St. George’s College, which he said should be a prominent part of the church’s efforts to stay in touch with the diocese of Jerusalem.
Canon Nicola Skinner, clergy delegate for the diocese of Toronto, seconded the motion. She referred to the previous day’s gospel passage in which Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane amid silence and darkness before his crucifixion, anticipating—in the words of the First Nations Version of the Bible—“this bitter road of pain and sorrow.” Jesus returns to his disciples to find them sleeping.
“This motion just very simply calls us as a synod to not be silent, to not sleep while our relations, our family in Palestine, in the diocese of Jerusalem, in the Middle East are living through their Gethsemane, their scourging and their crucifixion,” Skinner said. “Women and children are being killed every day simply lining up to get food.”
Resolution C011, she said, offered concrete, practical ways for the Anglican Church of Canada to keep speaking up for people in the Land of the Holy One, to support them through prayer and encouragement, to assist in ministries and hospitals of the diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East, and to use all the tools at the church’s disposal to advocate for peace and reconciliation.
“The Palestinian peoples are walking a very bitter road of pain and sorrow … I urge us all not to be silent, not to be scared to speak up, not to be asleep whilst people in the Land of the Holy One are asking us to simply support them and let them know how deeply we here in Canada care for them,” Skinner said.
