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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.
Thur 24 Oct 6.30pm
Fact, fiction, faith: AI in an uncertain world – a conversation with Jocelyn Burnham, and Dr Shauna Concannon.
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. This is a place for everyone who’s wondering about life’s big questions and striving for a better world.
We host a year-round cultural programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word, drawing on St James’s rich cultural history including artists, writers and musicians Mary Beale, Mary Delany, William Blake, Ottobah Cugoano and Leopold Stokowski.
We try to put our faith into action by educating ourselves and speaking out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, earth and racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
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.
It costs us £3,500 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us
Your donation will help us restore our garden in Piccadilly as part of The Wren Project, making it possible for us to welcome over 300,000 people from all faiths and walks of life seeking tranquillity and inspiration each year.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Jonathan Sutton, a member of Young St James’s, reflects on birds in nature and faith.
This summer, I spent several weeks in Minnesota, gathering plant data for research. The site covers many different habitats, with expanses of grassland punctuated by patches of oak woodland, and ancient glacial lakes wound up with rush-ridden wetland. I was mostly working between the grasslands and the lab, collecting leaves and roots for analysis. It’s necessary to leave the field before noon to avoid the hottest part of the day, and I was grateful for the air-conditioned lab in the afternoon when weighing and sorting. The wildness of the continental climate was on full display, with violent thunderstorms and even a small tornado tearing down trees across the reserve.
While I was there, I was lucky enough to have a chance to explore and satisfy some of the cravings of my latest hobby: bird watching. Before I went, I wasn’t very familiar with the birds of the American Midwest, and this made every sighting a special joy, as I scrambled through my notes to identify each grey-brown flycatcher. When I returned home with several journal pages full of sketches and sightings, it was easy to feel satisfied with a trip into Nature, far from the greyness of London.
Modern high-speed travel chops the world up into lots of non-overlapping pieces. I stepped out of the Minnesota sun into a dark metal tube and—after dozing for nine hours—arrived into a drizzly London morning. There was nothing connecting “there” with “here”. No fuzzy edges: just light, then darkness, then light. The flick of a switch. But of course that’s not how it is. There is one natural world that we live in, and I am just as much a part of it in my bedroom in the city as I was under the trees of Cedar Creek.
Birds are common in London too. In just five minutes watching from my window, I’ve seen birds from at least six species. You might be able to guess some of those straight away, and certainly if I listed them you wouldn’t be surprised by any. They all form part of the urban fauna of London: the little slice of nature where we worship. You will have seen all these birds across the city, but there is one that also appears inside our church building.
The bible and its religious tradition has great respect for the fierce love of birds for their young. Psalm 91 likens God’s protection to wings, protecting from a hunter’s snares. Jesus describes his love for the children of Jerusalem as that of “a hen [gathering] up her brood under her wings”. Christian art has long featured mother pelicans piercing their own breasts for the sake of their chicks. But I only know of one instance where God appeared bodily as a bird.
At the start of Jesus’s ministry, he was filled with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. In a rare point of agreement between all four Gospels, we are told that he saw a dove as he came up out of the water and heard God’s voice: “You are my son, my dear son! I’m delighted with you”. From that day, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit. “Dove” is a broad term and can be used to refer to any individual from the family Columbidae, but in these passages, it’s likely to refer to a rock dove: the bird better known to us (in its domesticated form) as the common pigeon.
The magnificent stained glass window and reredos (carved altarpiece) at St. James’s occupy nearly the entirety of the eastern wall. Christ is depicted (below) crucified and (above) risen in glory, with the altar below surrounded by carved fruits and flowers. The art in its entirety is heavy with symbolism and meaning, but next time you look up at it I encourage you to look in particular at the birds. Above Jesus’s head in both central depictions (and also in the carving below), is a bird. In one is a pelican, and in the other is a pigeon.
But why pigeons? And what in particular did Jesus see of God in that bird that settled on him after his baptism? Perhaps the secret lies in the words that God spoke to Jesus: “you are my dear son”.
The friends and family of Jesus in first-century Palestine knew pigeons better than we do. They were domesticated thousands of years earlier, with young pigeons used for food and for sacrifices in temples. Pigeons care deeply for their young. They won’t leave the eggs – even when sparrows pull feathers from their bodies as they sit. They can be fierce when seeing off predators, and tender as they feed and shelter the uncertain chicks. When Jesus caught a glimpse of that pigeon as he looked into heaven, perhaps he felt that too. Because this love is the same love that God has for Jesus, and through him for all of Her children.
Today, people don’t see pigeons as Jesus saw them. They are often the targets of violence by individuals or groups, and are regularly poisoned and trapped. Bird spikes are placed on windowsills, ledges, stairs. We seem determined to eradicate reminders of the natural world from our towns. And these birds are part of nature. The weathered cliffs of their ancestors are replaced by concrete and steel: but this is our doing, not theirs. The high-protein seeds and nuts that their ancestors foraged from the ground are replaced by fragments of fast-food: but this is our doing, not theirs. The trees and shrubs their ancestors dodged acrobatically are replaced by lampposts and cars: but these birds have still persisted in this new world we have created.
Whether in the expansive landscapes of Minnesota or the city streets of London, nature always reveals divine truths. So the next time I see a pigeon in London (I won’t have to wait long), I’ll be thankful for nature in the heart of our polluted cities. And think of this bird’s steadfast love for her chicks, seeing in that love God’s love for me, as Jesus did.
