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We offer daily services and a cultural programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate
We’re marking Black History Month with a very special concert series, offering a curated journey across genres, from classical and Latin music to spoken word.
Tuesday 27 October 7pm
World renowned choir The Sixteen perform some of the finest choral music of the Portuguese and English Renaissance.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word.
We offer hospitality to people going through homelessness and speak out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aim to be a place where you can belong. We have a unique history, and the beauty of our building is widely known. Our community commits to faith in action: social and environmental justice; creativity. and the arts
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
It costs £5,000 each day to keep the doors of St James’s open to all who already need us.
A reimagined St James’s realised. A redesigned garden, courtyard and new building capacity—all fully accessible— will provide beautiful spaces for all as well as improving our environmental performance.
Whether shooting a blockbuster TV series or creating a unique corporate event, every hire at St James’s helps our works within the community.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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The Revd Dr Ayla Lepine reflects on Maria De Vido’s Losing Identity, exploring themes of identity, dignity, migration and belonging through the lens of art, faith, the Eucharist and the story of Hagar.
In the side chapel at St James’s Piccadilly this autumn, a trio of red figures stand against a field of intense blue. Maria De Vido’s Losing Identity, on view until the end of October, gives us images of strong yet anonymous women from Ethiopia and Eritrea who have crossed the Mediterranean in overcrowded, unsafe boats. The red is courage and loss at once. The blue is the sea, which the artist paints as both a road toward hope and a witness to everything suffered along the way. As a powerful testament to the waters of Creation and the longing for home and freedom, this exhibition connects the rhythms of prayer and the Eucharist with the themes of the Season of Creation and Black History Month.
Listening, gazing, and being curious about this unique new commission for St James’s, I was surprised by its strong resonance with a statement made this past weekend. On 2 October, in the Consistory Hall in Rome, Pope Leo XIV spoke to artists and curators gathered by the Dicastery for Culture and Education. His address, focused on the dignity of and need for art in places of worship, especially in the age of AI and its unpredictable future, keeps returning to listening. He recalled this year’s Holy See pavilion at the Venice Biennale, whose motto, inspired by St Hildegard of Bingen, suggests that ‘the ear is the eye of the soul’. Art, he said, ‘receives the great questions of the human heart like an antenna; they come sometimes as a cry, more often as a whisper’.
De Vido’s women held by watery blue depth within the altarpiece at St James’s, give us space for the cry of the human heart at the centre of the broken-hearted and open-hearted Eucharist, Christ’s own presence in our fragile world. To see and experience these women’s stories with empathy and compassion, we’re invited to attend to what is not being said, and what draws each person from language into a different vision of love that inspires people of all faiths and none to work for and to imagine a better world. A blank face made by an artist can be a lament, posing urgent questions about identity and the infinite . Christian tradition has always insisted that the human person is irreducible: made in God’s image, known by name, never interchangeable. Quoting his own words at Lourdes a week earlier, the Pope reminded his listeners that a person has worth simply by existing, and is always greater than their fragility. Losing Identity invites each person, in every encounter across these days, to hold that conviction precisely where it is hardest to see: in people the world has decided not to look at closely.
This reminds me of the story of Hagar and her exile. Genesis offers a stark and horrifying narrative: the woman enslaved, pregnant and fleeing. She anticipates death – hers and her son’s – in the harsh wilderness. An angel finds her and asks where she has come from and where she is going. Hagar responds, boldly and prophetically. She has a conversation with God, and gives God a name: El Roi, the God who sees me. The faceless women in this painting are not unseen by God, and we can bear witness to them and with them, too. They are strong, they are cherished, they are mysterious. The question the painting puts to us, in a church that has long spoken out with refugees and people seeking asylum, is whether they are seen by us. Spend time with this altarpiece over the next few days, before it returns to the artist. These three women, surrounded by water, accompany our worship and are part of St James’s community in the heart of London. These women, as Maria De Vido does through her art, teach us to stand tall, to know infinite worth and dignity even in the core of chaos and struggle. As Black History Month begins, and as all Creation sings with the glory of God and the heart of Divine love, spend time with this altarpiece, and allow it to ask you about your identity, and about how to share God’s own love and compassion with a parish, a city, and a world in urgent need.
Losing Identity is in the side chapel at St James’s Piccadilly, 197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL, until the end of October. Entry is free during church opening hours.
