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We offer daily services and a creative programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
We are delighted to announce that from 6 Jan until early Apr 2025, work will take place to reinstate the church’s South Door onto Jermyn Street, part of Sir Christopher Wren’s original design.
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 aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
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.
The work of St James’s, it costs us £5,000 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us.
New walkways, a restored courtyard and re-landscaped gardens will provide fully accessible, beautiful spaces for everyone to enjoy as well as improving our environmental performance.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Lucy Winkett reflects on the profound meaning of Advent and Christmas, emphasising the universal message of hope, love, and light found in the O Antiphons and the birth of Christ as a gift for all humanity.
In the last few days of Advent, before the festival of Christmas, we say or sing in the church services, a series of ancient responses that address the coming Jesus by a number of different titles. From 17th December until 23rd, our daily prayers are infused with what have become known as the ‘O’ antiphons; O Sapientia – (O Wisdom), O Adonai – (O Lord)), O Radix Jesse – (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David – (O Key of David), O Oriens – (O Dayspring), O Rex Gentium – (O King of the Nations), O Emmanuel – (O God with us). And more than at any other time of year, the church’s prayers seem out of kilter with the world. Especially given the geographical location of St James’s, right in the middle of London, the streets that surround the church have been shouting ‘Christmas’ since October. But inside the church’s liturgies, daily prayer is full of the stark warnings of the prophets, we wear not celebratory gold but penitential purple and we contemplate the end times. In this context, the O antiphons are both beautiful and evocative, the most imaginative of ways to describe the coming birth of God in the world. We are saying that God is wisdom, is our rootedness both in the earth and in history, that God ‘unlocks’ the justice and peace that is possible when humanity fulfils our vocation to live according to the word of God. We are saying that God is as faithful as the dawning light, ever present, ever luminous; that God is the universal and eternal presence that underpins even the warring politics of the nations. And we are saying, shockingly, that the creator of the universe who holds the stars apart, is, in essence, love who is always with us. A rich and imaginative collection of ways to address the mysterious God who is always, even when ‘in the beginning’, beyond words.
I have found myself saying in a number of different carol events, services and concerts that ‘Christmas is not just for Christians’. I don’t think I’ve really said it this way before – and I’ve been curious to know what I mean as I’ve found myself saying it….. I don’t just mean that it is a cultural festival that people from other faiths find themselves joining in, although I was in conversation recently with two Muslim and one Sikh colleague, all of whom celebrate Christmas in their homes. This is a lovely thing in itself. But there is something deeper here that the O antiphons help us to find our way to.
Politically, Advent has been, in the past, a time when Christianity and Judaism have found themselves at odds. Despite in church services, listening to the Hebrew prophets, Christian teaching has historically wanted to separate out the ones who wait for the Messiah and the ones who think he’s already arrived. This has manifested itself variously over the centuries in an unthinking anti-Judaism and Christian anti-Semitism that is shameful. Advent is a time to ensure that the voices of the Hebrew prophets in our liturgies are heard on their own terms. Nowadays, it is much more likely, thank God, that both Christmas and Hanukkah are celebrated as interconnected festivals, celebrating the presence of God as light in the darkness.
But it’s not just the interfaith invitation of Christmas that I’ve been reflecting on this year. It’s to make sure that we Christians don’t mistake the penultimate for the ultimate, if I can put it like that. It’s in our Scriptures, written by St Paul, that Christ is born afresh in communities who come together to pray and act in the world according to the love and justice of God. As beautiful as our music is, or shared meals on Mondays or Christmas Day, or the poignancy of meeting at midnight to pray on Christmas Eve; as beautiful as all this is, it is all pointing to a deeper reality, a more beautiful truth, a more luminous hope – which is that God is with us. Intimately, ultimately, for ever.
Of course this is hard to remember in these last days of Advent; in a scandal-ridden church, praying for a world at war, an unequal city, an unjust economic system and a suffering planet. Of course this is hard to see. It’s almost impossible. But the birth of a thin-skinned child, who also inspired the fierce worship of those who saw from the beginning what this could mean, this birth of God will never grow old as we that are left grow old. Christmas is for every human being, interdependent with the creation that is brought together on that night. Christmas marks the birth of love, the resilience of hope, the determination of a mother and some night workers and some mysterious star gazers, who insist that your life and my life is beautiful because of this birth.
I hope that the strength of this light will prevail in what are very tough days for so many, and that we at St James’s can play our small part in letting this light shine. For every person, without exception, who crosses our path.
