Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The head of the Church of England called on the Christian community to acknowledge and fight the “horrendous” violence perpetrated against the Jewish community, the UK’s Jewish News reported Wednesday.

“Within the Christian community we need to stand against our own tendency, when exhibited over many centuries, to violence; violence against each other and above all violence against Jewish communities in horrendous and horrible ways going back well over a millennia,” said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

Speaking at the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ annual dinner in London, Welby called for the development of an “ideology” to counter the beliefs of those he called “radicals,” though the archbishop failed to elaborate on who those radicals are.

“If we don’t do that we leave all the good arguments in the hands of the radicals,” he said.

The archbishop also apologized for the actions of Church of England vicar Stephen Sizer, who in 2014 attended an antisemitic conference in Iran, where conspiracy theories such as Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks as well as the dominance of the “Zionist lobby” over the U.S. and the EU were presented.