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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
From Sun 6 to 27 April
Breastplate will be displayed behind the altar of the Side Chapel and lit from below so that it glows from within, thereby revealing its feather-filled fragility and the talismanic contents of its pockets.
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.
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
Directions on Google Maps
In 2023 the south-facing, sun-drenched curtilage of the church has become a new Grow Space featuring The Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash) growing on the railings. Many cultures have a version of this staple food combination, which sustainably provides carbohydrates, protein and vitamins/minerals.
Why
To explore sustainable futures by attuning to food-wisdom, including the long traditions of these islands, exposing how agricultural colonisation has excluded people from their lands and disrupted the web of life.
To tune into the wisdom of indigenous peoples, learning from those who celebrate the sacredness of the Earth and the kinship of all beings.
To see the Divine immanent in all things, underpinned by re-reading of sacred texts and theological insight.
Our new food and growing project on the sunny south side of the church launched on Sunday 19th March after the 11.00am Eucharist. Many people took home seeds to grow too.
The GROW BOX, formerly home to the Daily Bread wheat crop and a profusion of AFTERMATH ‘weeds’, has become a perennial polyculture featuring plants such as barley, flax, and Celtic bean that have grown in these islands, alongside plants such as sea buckthorn, dogrose and wild garlic that thrive in the wild, and species like cardoon that will be valuable in a hotter future. We’ve also sown The Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash), long grown by indigenous Americans. Join us to build partnerships and ecozoic culture through growing, online materials and events.
How can we begin to repair the damage done to our food system by industrial agriculture?
What will we grow and eat in the climate-changed future?
What wisdom will help us return to a gentler, more relational way of being with other species?
Visit our blog over the coming months as our garden grows and we explore the stories we tell ourselves.
The ‘Food the Ecozoic’ project is inspired by prophetic and revolutionary voices wherever we find them, especially indigenous peoples and plants who have long lived sustainably together in the places they find themselves, as an integral part of planet Earth.
Penelope Turton asks what Christians in rich countries should be doing about the climate crisis.
more
Diane Pacitti explores the historical revolutionary ideas of Gerrard Winstanley and the contemporary relevance of indigenous voices in addressing environmental crises.
Diane Pacciti introduces the radical vision of John Ball, the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, and the Diggers and Levellers communities in the 17th century.
Joan Ishibashi shares the importance of the Three Sisters in American farming and food – maize, beans and squash.
We celebrate St Francis as the saint who radically re-imagined our relationship with the earth and the cosmos.
In June, the Food For The Ecozoic Grow Box is finally taking off! The season has been a salutary reminder that agricultural/horticultural food production is not straightforward.
Deborah Colvin, Church Warden and Eco Team member, talks about St James’s new growing project ‘Food for the Ecozoic’.
Londoners, gather here and be still. The restless electricity of your minds needs to be earthed here, in this patch of soil glistening dark in the city’s concrete heart. With cupped hands receive your envelope of seed-lives; wonder at this green shoot. Both are your tiny passports to a time when Neolithic Londoners pressed bean-seeds Into earth they cleared from forest. These plant-lives connect you through time; connect you over continents to deft hands delving, wrinkled palms patting back the soil; a child’s fingers touching the miracle of a seedling; to hands both powerful and frail emerging earth-streaked anointed with the life-stuff which brings forth plant and bird, human and fly: you will receive a communion of hope you will know that through time and space we are kin.
Diane Pacitti, 2023
Come and join our online Ecozoic Book Group for what promises to be a season of lively ecumenical discussions! We will be exploring in more depth some of the themes raised by the ‘CHANGING OUR MINDS’ series of conversations with academics, theologians and indigenous thinkers from Northern America and Australia.
In this second series of online conversations exploring ways into an Ecozoic future, four wise and respected Australian elders share their experience, commitments and vision, inviting us to connect to Country.
As we head into an uncertain future, one thing we do know is that Europe is the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising at roughly twice the global average.
Join us for a four-part series of online conversations with indigenous thinkers, and contemporary theologians who are passionate about Earth Justice, to explore how we might go about CHANGING OUR MINDS.
