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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.
Book tickets for Black History Month, Tue 8 Oct, 7.30pm, conversation with Revd Dr Ayla Lepine about history, racial justice today and the complexity and challenge of St James’s parish history.
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
Directions on Google Maps
Kate Finlay reflects on her mother’s transformative experience attending her first Pride march, emphasising the importance of love, acceptance, and inclusivity within religious communities.
Last year my mother went to her first Pride march. She came to Pride in London and joined us at SJP, while on a visit from San Francisco.
She has always loved me, but still I was nervous on how the day would go. While there is so much more nuance and beauty in her than I can do justice, she’s never been particularly vocal in support of LGBTQ+ rights. Despite my being gay, we’ve mostly avoided the topic, both personal and political. And in silence, where do we go? With uncertainty and swiss cheese love that cuts around parts of our truest self, we hide and fracture. We stub our toes in the night on the things we try to tiptoe around.
After a few hours handing out cake, my mom went out to join the priests along the parade route on Piccadilly, who held a simple message: you are loved, every part of you. Person after person hugged the clergy and shared their stories of alienation and broken promises, some with tears in their eyes. She watched the sparkling crowds pass by, and told me later that Pride wasn’t what she expected or heard about at all. The conversations we have about each other without each other rarely match the reality of what we see when we share our worlds. By the end of the day, she turned to me and asked, “can I borrow your rainbow flag and wave it for a while?”
I can’t say what, on the spectrum of amusement to revelation, each marcher saw in us that day, but what I can say is my own experience: that it was a rainbow on a poster on Piccadilly that brought me to St James’s. That it was my first time at church in a long time. That it felt new to find a community where queerness and faith and so much more, are not in opposition but lived out in harmony.
During Pride month, we can feel oversaturated by rainbows, making messages of inclusion seem obvious, even redundant. Except that they aren’t, especially in places of worship across the world. Is this the hill that the church, quite literally, wants to die on? A recent poll by PIRR found 47% of people who left their religion did so due to the way LGBTQ+ individuals have been treated. In the footprint of the unspeakable things that have been done and are still being done to queer people in the name of God, in the absence of remorse and reconciliation, we deny all the ability to hold with integrity values of hospitality, belonging, and love. Inclusion should start with the church, not end with it.
In the Eucharistic prayer this past Sunday, we heard that communion is “love made visible, love made whole”. God’s love and sacrifice incarnate, and through it, the restoration of all love is and can be.
And this is my wish for Pride, and for the church: that queer people may see love made visible, and experience love made whole. Love in all its texture, for us in all our texture. Love for ourselves, for our community, for those we choose to love, for the mystery and beauty of our creation, fearful and wonderful and fabulous all at once.
In my first Pride as LGBTQ+ Coordinator, I am deeply excited about what the Pride of St James’s group has to offer this year. I’m particularly looking forward to our film event on the 30th, co-hosted by the International Group, featuring a series of short films that explore themes of asylum, migration, and identity. And to our conversation on the 23rd with Fr Jarel Robinson-Brown, author of “Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer”, which if you haven’t read, I highly recommend adding to your June book list.
We will also have opportunities to share food and build community, both on the 20th at a lovely Pride of St James’s dinner at Lucy’s flat, and on Pride Sunday (30th of June) after the service with a bring and share lunch organized by Debbie.
And of course, on Pride Saturday on the 29th of June, we will celebrate. We’ll host a party in the courtyard facing the parade, including a drag DJ set from our own lovely Barbara, face painting, arts & crafts, and more. SJP also has a spot in the march, and I do hope you will walk with us. Please come, join the conversation, and help create space for people to know they don’t have to close off any part of themselves. That love is where we start, and where we go together.
