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Leaders of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination are speaking out against their church’s boycott of products made in Israeli settlements.

“We believe that this decision [to boycott] has damaged relationships that are vital to growing a just peace,” according to the website of United Against Boycott, which represents 47 leaders of the United Church of Canada. “We will work against the boycott campaign and the other policies including divestment and sanctions against Israel.”

Earlier this month, the church, which claims 2 million adherents, launched its Unsettling Goods campaign against three Israeli companies with factories in the West Bank: Keter Plastic Ltd., SodaStream and Ahava. Churchgoers were urged not to buy their products and to avoid retailers carrying them.

The Rev. John Joseph Mastandrea, spiritual leader of Toronto’s Metropolitan United Church and chair of Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto, wrote a letter to the church’s leader rejecting the call to boycott and saying it has “significantly damaged Christian-Jewish relations here in Canada, an inevitable consequence of the United Church lending its name to a movement that can only be characterized as anti-Israel.”

Mastandrea told the Canadian Jewish News that the boycott upset him so much he contemplated rescinding his ordination. — jta