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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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As newly elected governments across the world roll out their policies for the next four years, there is near universal agreement on the top priority: economic growth. But there are increasing challenges to this broad consensus. In part 2 of this two-part reflection for the Season of Creation, Penelope looks at some solutions.
Part 2. Are there better ways than economic growth to enable human and planetary flourishing?
Are new technologies the answer? Not really. Technologies such as carbon capture, blue hydrogen, new nuclear power or bioenergy all require equipment and energy, thereby increasing fossil-fuel infrastructure, mining and pollution in the short to medium term1. In fact, we already have 95% of the technologies we need to meet global energy need: wind, water and solar (‘green growth’). The problem with green technologies has been the time it has taken to bring them up to speed. Although interest in low-emissions fuels is now growing fast from a low base, investment in fuel supply continues to remain largely dominated by fossil fuels2. Only a drastic reduction in the generation of both energy and waste will secure a liveable and affordable future3
Moving beyond Growth. This offers more hope. In Europe, an increasing number of organizations and movements are dedicated to overcoming our addiction to growth in GDP, working together through networks such as the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. A recent ‘Beyond Growth’ conference at the European Parliament attracted more than 2,500 participants in person and 2,000 online. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that governments must move swiftly and urgently towards the goal of sustainable well-being within planetary boundaries. The leader of Generation Climate Europe, a coalition of climate and environmental networks across the bloc, concluded the event with a call to join the “movement of movements” to create a new economy based on sustainable prosperity, justice and sufficiency. Both speakers received standing ovations.
Principles and policies to turn things around are starting to gain wider audiences. In a letter part-authored by the celebrated economist Kate Raworth and signed by 400 leading economists, scientists, policymakers and activists, it is argued that Europe can only survive and thrive if we completely change the goals and rules of the economic game. In a post-growth economy, the current focus on quantitative growth would be replaced by the aim of thriving in a regenerative and distributive economy that delivers qualitative wellbeing by meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet as elaborated in the framework of Raworth’s now famous Doughnut Economics 3.
New ways of thinking. The rethinking of economics from first principles allows specific propositions to be integrated into coherent programmes. The EU and the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo) group have begun to implement measures of sustainable well-being and policies to achieve them. There are many versions of such policies, but starting points in four areas have been identified, for each of which specific policy and legislative proposals are suggested:
A renewed spiritual vision. People in the so-called ‘developed’ nations who now enjoy more-than-comfortable lifestyles understandably fear that such transformations will entail losses. It is true that the necessary measures will be deep and far-reaching. Fundamental change is profoundly unsettling and difficult to contemplate. Our life-style habits have a powerful hold on us. Inertia and apathy are well served by the human tendency to avoid imagined pain when things seem to be going well enough. But the real and absolute loss of personal and societal well-being will come to everyone if we continue down the business-as-usual (or too little too late) path.
How can we remind ourselves that our species has shown remarkable capacities to adapt to change when it becomes unavoidable? And that we are often astonished by the benefits that unwelcome change can bring. Many observers have commented that in wartime or lockdown people experienced greater social cohesion, an appreciation of the value of community, the joy of spending time in the natural world and breathing cleaner air, a newfound realisation of what is really important in life. Sufficiency policies that focus on a reduction in work-time pressures and provide opportunities for the fulfilment of our unpractised creativity could all increase everyone’s wellbeing as well as protect the biodiversity and ecosystems on which we all depend. Ultimately our individual happiness rests on the health and well-being of the larger earth ecosystem and the common good. Surely our task is to work with the grain of Creation in the belief that in its intricate beauty, diversity and unity, the universe is the material manifestation of God and we are a part of it, not apart from it? If we can embrace the metanoia that is open to us, it may not be too late to restore our relationship with God, the earth and our fellow beings on the planet we share. May we yet experience the unimaginable joy of being co-creators in bringing about God’s promise of the renewal of the earth?
