The Church of England, which broke away from Rome in 1534 and had long been associated with the rulers of the British Isles, released God’s Unfailing Word, a comprehensive report which redefines how the Church views Zionism, Jews, and the relationship between Christianity and the Jewish faith.
When the Church backs away from encountering Jewish positions, wrote Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, it is “less than its true self.” He urged Christians to look back at history and recognize "our failures as Christians” and to move forward with “authenticity,” Algemeiner reported.
The report goes on to say that “Zionism" is “an important and legitimate aspect of Jewish identity,” and while it is not antisemitic to use the same yardstick used to measure other democracies to understand the State of Israel, “it is the case that some of the approaches and language used by pro-Palestinian advocates are indeed reminiscent of what could be called traditional antisemitism, including its Christian forms.”
The Church of England is the religion of roughly two-thirds of British citizens, and variations of it function in all parts of the English-speaking world. The Episcopal Church in the US, for example, was an Anglican Church that separated from the British one to avoid loyalty to the Monarchs of Great Britain.
Although the Church of England broke away from Roman Catholicism, it views itself as part of the universal Catholic Church and maintains a reformed understanding of it.
For example, it does not accept the authority of the Pope, it ordains women and it views the sacrament as symbolic.Jews were deported from the UK by royal decree in 1290 and were not allowed to live on the isles until 1655 when permission was granted by Oliver Cromwell, more than a century after the Church of England was formed.