THE General Synod has renewed its call for a just peace in Ukraine, after a debate to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, which fell on Saturday.
The motion, which was carried almost unanimously on Tuesday at the top of a five-day meeting in Westminster, referred to the “ongoing suffering and terror” experienced by Ukrainians two years into the war, and called on churches and politicians to work for an end to the conflict and a restoration of the international order.
During the controversy, the motion was amended to incorporate an additional call to UK politicians to “affirm their continued support for Ukraine until such time as a just and lasting peace is secured”.
First to talk was the Archbishop of Canterbury, recently returned from his second visit to Ukraine (News, 23 February). He had also spoken, directly but remotely, with Patriarch Kirill. “But I’m not neutral on this,” he said. “Ukraine is paying for our security with blood.”
Ukrainians were defending the international order, he said, with Twenty first-century drones and First World War-era bayonets. The country felt sombre and apprehensive in comparison with when he first visited in 2022, but its people were equally determined to fight on, despite a shortage of supplies from the West.
War was a horror, Archbishop Welby said, but Christians must proceed to push their political leaders to offer money and weapons to Ukraine. “We need a just, independently agreed peace, not one other Czechoslovakia or a Munich.”
The motion was welcomed by the Synod, but several members warned that the language of the accompanying paper risked echoing Russian propaganda, which justified an unprovoked invasion.
A Royal Navy officer, Adam Kendry, said that nations corresponding to Ukraine weren’t pawns within the Russian sphere of influence, and that the Church must not allow its desire for peace to muddy the waters of its wholehearted defence of Ukraine and the principles of self-determination. He ended his rousing speech with the cry: “Slava Ukraini [Glory to Ukraine] and Prince of Peace, thy Kingdom come!”
The Revd Tuomas Mäkipää, who leads the diocese in Europe’s chaplaincy in Helsinki, said that his compatriots lived every single day with the looming presence of a revanchist Russia just over the border. If a war got here, he can be called as much as fight, while his wife would flee with their children to safety. He, too, criticised the paper for entertaining the false Russian narrative that the country was being threatened by the West and fighting in self-defence.
The Revd Stephen Platt, who leads a Russian Orthodox Church parish in England, spoke of hope within the gloom. His congregation included each Russians and Ukrainians, and other people with relatives who were fighting and dying on each side. Yet there remained closeness and unity in Christ, he said.
Andrew Gray, who proposed the amendment which added the decision for political backing for Ukraine, spoke passionately about how victory against the Russian invasion was an imperative for the entire Western rules-based order.
The fate of the continent relied on Ukraine, he said — a rustic which he described as “Europe’s Calvary” It was, he said “a moment of tortured anguish where democracy and freedom hang upon a cross”. If the West’s resolve to face with Ukraine faltered, evil world wide can be emboldened, and more blood can be shed, he warned.
Several former and current military chaplains told members of a growing sense of hysteria among the many armed forces that the conflict might result in a wider European war, and urged the Church to hope for them, too.
Put to the vote, the motion as amended was carried by 254 votes to 3, with two recorded abstentions.
