Working in a Church

In the Spring of 2004 after a few twists of fate I found myself starting working in a most unusual and rather eccentric Christian Church located in the heart of London’s busy West end. It would provide for me a good context for developing my skills and strengths. And also to evolve the message and the mission.

So I found myself employed as a verger working in perhaps one of the most controversial and progressive churches in the country, St James of Piccadilly London. It’s quite radical nature came about as a result of something of an experiment that was indirectly put into motion by the then Bishop of London in the early 80s. Back at that time the church was facing an uncertain future due to the steadily diminishing congregation which would at that have hovered at around a dozen or so senior citizens. Evidently Anglican Christianity had become les relevant to the locals of Mayfair and Soho, two London districts which circled the church in its very central location literally seconds away from Piccadilly Circus. It seemed the steady process of secularization, that has been particularly acute in European metropolitan centres, would force another church to close its doors. However the Bishop of London made a bold decision and gave an up and coming priest called Donald Reeves the mandate to do whatever he saw fit in order to revive the church and save it from closure. So began the ‘experiment’ in progressive Christianity called St James Church Piccadilly.

Reverend Reeves, an energetic and quite charismatic character set about the task with an open mind and very innovative spirit. He transformed a conservative outpost of the Church of England into a place which embraced a variety of spiritual and political perspectives. So all sorts of non Christian beliefs would find a home, platform, meeting place or venue at the church; anything from the various strands of the New Age, Sufism, Zen meditation and Gnostic Paganism to Freemason groups and Knights Hospitalers. A truly eclectic mix of a diverse variety of expressions of spirituality and religiousness. Also there was and still is a strong Inter Faith and Ecumenical emphasis at St James. Apart from the spiritual openess of the place there was also a firm embrace of various Ecological, Environmental and Left leaning Political causes. It is perhaps for this reason that the Prime Minister of the UK at the time, Margaret Thatcher, variously called Donald Reeves, the ‘Red Vicar’ and ‘A very dangerous man’. Also St James took up the cause of Women and openly homosexual priests at a time when it was much less accepted than currently is the case. Anyway Reverend Reeves definitely put st James back on the map. And in large part due to his charismatic preaching he managed to really boost the congregation and regular Sunday attendance from a hand full of people to crowds sometimes reaching the low hundreds; who would come from all over London to hear this quite radical preacher.

By the time I started working in the church the era of Donald Reeves was something of a Golden age to members of the congregation I would talk to and who would fondly recall memories of their ‘Red Vicar’. He was certainly much loved is not always admired. After he finished his tenure in the late 90s and he moved on to do peace work in the former Yugaslavia, working towards reconciliation between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Obviously a man who walked his talk. Anyway, the St James I can to be working in, though still quite radical, was far less eccentric than it had been in former times. A lot of the former extremes had become more contained and the regular attendance at the church had also somewhat diminished since the charismatic attractor had departed. Still it was a good place for me to be and where I felt quite at home.

Previously I had actually been a semi regular at the Church, years before in the early 90s, when a friend of mine would take me there. My friend’s Father was a New Age writer and also a director of the New Age organization called Alternatives that used the church on Mondays to host talks. Years later in early 2002 around the time I was starting public speaking I would help out a bit with the New Age Alternatives organization on Monday nights in order to hear the public talks that were still a regular feature. Anyway this time I severed my links to the Alternatives New Age organization after I started seeing a side to it that was rather self centred, crassly commercial and the anti-thesis of being anything spiritual. So I left in not exactly friendly terms. The funny thing is, I would find myself back at St James working there, but this time for the church itself, almost exactly a year to the day, after my having left the Alternatives organization. My employment at St James would later on give me further opportunity to study and learn more about the New Age. I had come back to work at St James quite randomly as I knew somebody who was already working there and whom I’d met in a completely different context, and who had telephoned me one day telling me about a vacancy and asking if I’d to like to come work at St James Church. I took up the offer.

The work at the church involves a great diversity of roles and tasks. The formal job name of Verger derives from one of the historical roles played by someone who did the equivalent job in the paste. A Verger would in the past and also still in the present, lead various religious processions, i.e. a funeral procession, one of priests and other religious functionaries or perhaps a wedding procession. This is perhaps one of the more colorful aspects of the job. Anyway, the Verger leading some such procession would hold in front of him a Verging Stick or Rod. Apparent a Verger is so named because in times past when crowds were less self organizing, then the Verger sometimes had to use his Verging stick to beat people to the verges i.e. the sides of a path, in order that the religious procession may procede. Anyway, a Verger may been seen as a jack of all trades working in a religious context and this is especially true in St James.

So my work in St James church is varied. As one of a tight team of four Vergers at St James essentially we are the glue that keeps the place running 7 days a week, from Morning to late Evening and often later into the Night. On one level we perform caretaker duties, which includes locking, unlocking, basic maintainence on the place and also cleaning. This is one side of the job which I find humbling, in a positive way, but also character building. That of keeping the place in tidy working order, cleaning toilets, mopping up sick, also picking up hypodermic syringes and human excrement. All part of working in a busy West End church in the heart of London. Other miscellaneous duties would involve things like clerical and office work, handling money, going to the bank, putting up posters, answering the telephone and really eveything and anything that needed doing. So a rich variety of roles.

The job allows a lot of autonomy and independence which I like, also it requires a lot of responsibility which is useful for me to acquire a sense of. A good thing about the job is that a lot of the time involves doing quite menial tasks, my mind not completely taken up by work related duties, so this gives me space to think. I often find myself thinking of ways to explain my ideas to people or writing book or website passages in head, while standing about during some church ceremony say. Also because my mental faculties are not very taxed by the job, at the end of the working day I still have loads of energy left to work on the message and the mission.

A sometimes challenging and also character building part of the job is that apart from all the other tasks that we do, the Vergers at St James also double up as Security; having to deal with any troubles and misbehaviour that may occur in the church grounds. This includes dealing with the Homeless who are allowed to freedom within designated areas to sleep in the church when nothing else is going on or if people don’t mind homeless people sleeping through their ceremony or event. The homeless come in a wide variety and many are perfectly reasonable and friendly. There are the homeless mentally ill, homeless drug addicts and beggars along with transiently homeless who have perhaps just come out of prison or have been recently evicted from some hostel. In fact we were told by a social worker at a nearby homeless shelter that the people who we dealt with would often be those who were banned from all other places and therefore had nowhere else to go. Some of the younger homeless were not so different from the sort of people I lived with and befriended in my early 20s just after finishing University when I found myself living for a while in a North London Squat. Generally I could more often than not quite relate to the homeless, particularly the younger of them. They often had an colorful background and I would from time to time find myself interested in their lives and how they came to be homeless. I would sometimes think to myself that if fate had worked out slightly differently then perhaps I would have been one of them, sleeping on the same church pews.

I should also mention that in my dealings with the homeless the job would occassionally involve confrontation situations because one of my duties involves telling people, who are difficult at the best of times, who are coming down from drugs and who you’ve just woken up; to vacate the church and go out into the cold and wet in order that some musical concert or ceremony may take place without their prescence in the vicinity. With a friendly, firm and patient approach this part of the job is generally executed without aggravation or negative reaction. However I can recall numerous occasions when this has lead to direct confrontation, having to face people down and homeless geezers ranting and raving with loud indignation at being evicted from the relative comfort of a warm but hard wooden church pew out into the cold and even harder London streets. Yes, I can recall a number of tense and stressful situations with various homeless gentlemen threatening to kill me, beat me up, break all my fingers etc. or else declaring how they were going to burn down the church and do other unspeakable things. It’s true broken windows and other forms of vandalism were something of a regularity. Though this is probably the most difficult part of the job at the same time I can see that how over the years this aspect of the job has toughened me psychologically and even directly helped my public speaking by giving me a tougher skin.

Although I have never personally experienced serious mishappenstance in my dealings with the homeless I know that in the past sometime before I stated working at the church, there was a serious incident where one of the vergers was assaulted by a homeless guy and badly beaten around the head. I actually knew the ex-verger in question from my time of semi-regular attendance at Alternatives on monday night at the church. A likeable enough chap with some eccentricities to his behaviour and personality. Sometime after I started working at St James I was causually chatting to a nice lady who was a long time member of the congregation and who also did volunteer work for the church sitting at the receptive desk a few hours a week. Anyway in one of our often rambling conversations we came to discuss some of the adventures of the some of the ex-employees of the church. She mentioned the Verger who was assualted by some drunken homeless guy and who after the incident was never quite the same. Hearing her observation and insight left me feeling slightly chilled as a result. My future dealings with the homeless would be motivated with even more due care and attention, and a wariness deriving from a better recognition of the fact that I was regularly dealing with potentially dangerous people who were constantly in and out of prison for offences such as grevious bodily harm, which I knew for a fact.

A totally different role that the job involves relates to all the ceremonial and liturgical stuff that goes on in a busy working church. I’ve already mentioned the more formal role of leading religious processions but relating to any religious event there is a lot of setting up and clearing away. This includes rearranging bits of furniture, lecterns, alters and the like. Also setting up and sound checking microphones and generally making sure everything runs smoothly. Then of course there is the main Sunday services and myriad details that need to be attended to in order to make everybody happy. Once religious events are underway then a significant part of the job involves hovering about in a black cassock, which is a long ankle length robe, and generally making the place look more formally religious by dressing up in this sort of garb. Apart from the main Sunday service, throughout the year there will be a number of Memorial services, Weddings, Baptisms and the occasional Funeral. I can see now in retrospect that by working in this sort of context and seeing these major currents of other people’s lives, has given me a lot of oppurtunity for reflection and thinking about like. Perhaps given me more of a sense of life is all about for most people. I remember the numerous Memorial services that I witnessed as part of the job and thinking about the people being remembered, the sort of people they were judging by the remembrances of the close friends and relatives. Also comparing what sort of people they were to the number of people who actually came to their memorial service and the quality of the crowd. You’d see a pattern that the people who pulled a good crowd for their memorials were generally generous, selfless, and with a good sense of humour. The sort of people who lived for others.Otherwise attendance wouldn’t be as good. I was sometimes think about what would happen after I died and how people would remember me. Would anyone even bother to arrange a memorial for me and how many people if anybody would come to fondly reflect on my life and legacy. Indeed working full time in a busy church really provides a good context for as well as the stimulus for thinking about the larger questions in life and seeing ones own life from a larger perspective.

An useful aspect of the job is that involves a lot of social interaction and so has over the years really helped me to sharpen my human interation skills, which in turn has been helpful in making me a more natural sounding public speaker I believe. So a typical day will involve dealing with a diverse spectrum of people, anything from beggars, tourists and tradesmen to spiritual types, retirees and children. Also five days a week, in the front court yard of the church is an Arts and Craft market selling all sorts of items from all round the World. The market traders are a hard working bunch, very multi-ethnic, working class and unpretentious. The culture out there in the court yard was something of a contrast to that which existed inside the church and really adds a pleasant and interesting dimension to the job. I found I could strongly relate to the traders, many of whom were like my Parents and the sort of people I grew up with. I came to discover I had great affinity for their lives and sympathy for their concerns. Although there was a full time market manager, my job would often involve collecting the market rent which gave me the opportunity to become really familiar with all the traders and their backgrounds.

Something of particular interest to me was that many of the traders were Muslim. More than that, there was an enormous diversity of all the different strains of Islam represented. Different sorts of Sunni from all over the World, i.e. Albania, Egypt, Algeria, Palestine, Pakistan etc. and some Shiites who came from India originally. In numerous discussions with these traders I was able to get an idea of some of the attitudes and beliefs which were held by them. For instance I could see at first hand at first hand some of the enmity that existed between the Sunni and Shia. I seem to recall that was generally little or no interaction between some of the Sunni and the Shia traders. Also through numerous casual interactions I could get more of a sense of what a sample of typical Muslims actually thought about things, say relating to the World, how they see Islam and also issues relating to Isreal and America. This really augmented my book study about Islam and which my social interations would further stimulate in the first place.

Working in the church was very good generally for my ongoing study of religion. Apart from Christian related activities and sitting through hundreds and hundreds of separate little Bible readings, in the course of services, morning prayer and ceremonies, which really augmented my knowledge of the Bible; there would be a lot of events held in the church which related to other religions as well. I recall the to Lama of one of the four big Buddhist sects of Tibet came to the church to give a short talk and bless the devotees of the sect, who packed the church and queued up to greet their leader in person for brief moment. Then there are the regular Zen Buddhist meditations that occur in the Church. Anyway, all these sorts of events give me a great opportunity to talk religion with actually practitioners of different creeds and so has greatly helped to enhance my outlook on things. Generally I would find that working at the church would me a good context for meeting interesting religious people and contemplating religion.

Everyone is God at St James Piccadilly

Also of particular interest to me was how often I’d meet people at the church who were totally sympathetic and fully believing in the idea that everyone is God. At one point this even included two prominent people at the church. One of the part-time priests at the church, the Reverend Meg Johnson was fully into this more Gnostic side of Christianity. She once described to me a mystical experience of ‘oneness’ that she had which had turned her on to a more esoteric interpretation of Christian Scripture. She was also an admirer and something of an associate of the contemporary mystic and writer Tony Parsons. In many of her sermons she would often allude to mystical themes of oneness and the God within, with frequent quotations from the Gnostically oriented Gospel of John in the Bible and also occasional references to the very mystical Gospel of Thomas and even the Vedic Upanishads.

One of Reverend Johnson’s underlying aims, she told me, was to try and gently communicate these sorts of ideas to the wider Christian community and the World at large. Apart from her sermons and in large part towards this end she set up a discussion group that met once a month called ‘Awakening to God’. She did this in collaboration with another Gnostically oriented member of the St James congregation, who at the time was also the Chair of the Parochial Church Council(PCC). So for a time there was a significant Gnostic and exellent heretical prescence at St James, and with which I could totally relate. I remember sitting in for a short while during one or two of these meetings, which consisted of about 20 or so people who were drawn mainly from the Sunday congregation with a handful of others who had come to know about the meetings from the posters which advertised them placed on the street billboards outside the church. They were always held on a Sunday shortly after the main service so always clashed with one of the busiest times for me. Anyway, when I briefly attended one of these meetings, I gained an insight into how a progressive Christian audience might react to the idea that everyone is God when the Gnostic Chair of the St James PCC and Reverend Johnsons collaborator narrated a short parable which came very close to saying directly, to the participants attending, the idea that ‘Everyone is God’. He told a story which he suggested at the outset, to the people gathered room, was an allegory for our relationship to God.

The story in very brief outline went something like this. There was a land where there was a king and his subjects. The king died so another king came along. Then that king also died but this time round another king could not be found. There was a period of kinglessness. Then at last the problem was solved and everyone became their own king and all was right again in the kingdom.

After the story was told there seemed to be a brief moment of stunned silience. Looking around at the faces of most the people in the room I could see that the implication of the story wasn’t easily digested. There was a sense of incomprehension and puzzlement. Anyway, the narrator of the story seemed to sense the mood and fairly quickly moved the discussion on to a less challenging and directly gnostic approach to things. From this episode I gained a insight into the difficulties that might be involved in communicating these sorts of ideas to even a very open minded and consciously progressive Christian crowd. Nonetheless there was quite a few members of the St James congregation who were quite comfortable with Gnostic ideas and related ideas such as Reincarnation.

Other examples of people I met at the church who were fully believing in the idea that everyone is God included some of the traders who worked in the market. At one time there were several traders who had stalls in the church court yard market. One of them was an Ismaili Muslim and follower of the Aga Khan who sold glass ornaments. I fondly remember the Gnostic discussions we used to have and how we used to lend each other Gnostic books. Some of the texts he gave me to read really gave me an insight into Esoteric Shia Islam that I could never have easily gained otherwise. Some of these texts, which were extremely obscure, gave me a perspective on the life of Muhammad and early Islam that seemed so very real and also seemed me more actual than the idealized accounts that I would be told be most Muslims especially Fundamentalists. This sort of thing I definitely considered one of the major perks of working at St James church. I probably wouldn’t have met and made a connection with people like my Ismaili friend had I not been working there.

Also in the market I remember three sisters from India who for a while ran a stall selling imported Indian clothing and various arts and craft produce. They were all followers of the Indian Guru Mataji who is perhaps most well known in London for her regular appearances held at the Royal Albert Hall. Years earlier I had actually attended one of these gatherings after picking up a flier advertising the event. I wasn’t all that impressed though her followers seemed like a pleasant crowd. From that encounter I wasn’t made fully aware that at the heart of her teaching was the idea that Everyone is God though she kept alluding to some secret and birth right. Anyway, after getting to know some of her followers as a result of them happening to work in the market at the church, I came to know what was behind her sect. It made me feel good that some of her followers, who happily and openly believed in the same sort things I believed, were a part of my work environment.

Another New Religious Movement called The School of Economic Science happened to use the church one night for a concert of theirs. This was an organization that I had read a lot about and would often be included in various books about New Religious Movements, Sects and Cults. The organization is familiar to most Londoners through the large Tube advertisements advertizing their 10 week philosophy courses, which are really a way of recruiting new members. Anyway, one night I was working at the church during a classical concert promoted by an organization called the Luca Trust, which had the stated aim of promoting leadership among young people. The concert was to be given by young people who were already involved with the Luca Trust. I recall that slightly before the concert the church concert manager and I noticed that all the young people involved in setting things up and manning the box office and publicity tables seemed ever so slightly odd. Their demeanor and manner was unsual I thought. They seemed very disciplined and less spontaeneous than your average teenager. Most events involving mainly young people at the church were ever so slightly more rowdy and just a bit more out of control than events made up of older people. However on this occasion things were the other way round. I didn’t think much of it at first.

In the course of the evening I got talking to one of the main representives of the Luca trust, a young gentleman who actually worked quite near by as a business consultant. The conversation rambled all over the place but then at some point we got talking about meditation and our respective religious beliefs. It was then I discovered that my new friend was fully into the idea that Everyone is God. We talked a lot about Indian Philosophy and Advaita Vedanta, which is the more formal term for these sorts of mystical beliefs. Eventually I would discovered that what was behind the Luka trust was actually the School of Economic Science and that presumably most of the young people who were at this event were members themselves and probably through their parents. I then went on to chat to some of the others involved with the event and was very happy and amazed that they had absolutely no difficulties with the idea that Everyone is God. Suddenly it felt great and inspiring to be working at this particular event and to be surrounded by so many like minded people. In retrospect and on reflection my guess is that one of the motivations behind this event relating to ‘leadership in young people’ is same as that behind the London Underground Tube posters advertizing their philosophy courses, i.e. a way of recruiting people to their ideas and cause. Something to which I’m not totally unsympathetic. This episode gave me a direct insight into how some Gnostic organizations go about promoting their truth. Also I contemplated that perhaps it was exactly the sort of young people who might have considered themselves leaders, who were more idealistic and who thought of themselves as being somewhat different from the rest, who would be particularly drawn towards this sort of philosophic outlook.

One other aspect of the many facets of what goes on at the church and which provided me the oppurtunity to meet many mystically inclined people, is the free counselling service which is provided on church grounds in a caravan. This very generous and highly regarded service is provided by a Psycho-Analysis and counselling school which has a heavy Jungian and Transpersonal leaning, and which therefore lends itself more towards a spiritual and mystical interpretations of self and self analysis. Also the school is closely affiliated to a Sufi mystical group with which it shares the same building and philosophical outlook. I have been told there is a degree of cross membership between the two organizations. The students at this School as part of their 3 year part time course do a 3 hour weekly session at the caravan, providing free counselling to anybody who knocks on the door or else makes an appointment. In this way the St James Church Caravan Counselling service provides its valuable help for people 7 days a week and all throughout the year. It has been an absolutely pleasure to have gotten to know many of trainee counsellors as a part of working at the church especially because many of them have a strong affinity for the mystical and gnostic, with a few of them that I’d met fully believing in the idea that Everyone is God. Many others would also be very receptive to Gnostic notions and already had interests in things such as Alchemy, Sufism, Kabbalah, the mystical side to Jungian Analysis and a more spiritual interpretation of what is Transpersonal Psychology. So while not immediately apparent, this Caravan Counselling Service adds yet another mystical and spiritual dimension to what goes on at St James.

Working in a Church and the Problems of the World

Something about working in a church, and in particular this one St James Piccadilly, was that it really opened my eyes to the problems of this World and in so many different ways. It also gave me a variety of different perspectives on all these various problems and issues that I might not otherwised have ever even considered. A church is a place where people go when they are troubled, greiving and/or need someone to share their problems with. So simply by working in this sort of environment I was constantly encountering peoples personal woes, worries, serious disappointments and upsets. I’ve already mentioned that a constant feature of the job is dealing with the homeless. When you got to know some of them better and the sort of problems they faced living on the streets then it was impossible not to feel sympathy. They described hard brutal lives of drug addiction, the constant threat of violence and sleeping on the streets with no future prospects and a complete sense of alienation from mainstream society. It would certainly put my own concerns and difficulties in perspective.

The problems of the world were constantly addressed in the prayers and intercessions made at all the various church services, where either one of the priests or a member of the church community would bring all the conflicts and strifes of the planet before God in pray and reflection. A small part of my job involves leading small morning prayer gatherings where at one point some improvisation is need where I have to think up things to prayer for. In a small but significant way over an extended period of time, participating in all these prayer and intercession sessions definitely orientates a person towards the concerns of the planet, the concerns of other people and the bigger issues. I learned that this is the real purpose and effect of prayer, that is not to make requests to God and expect immediate and effective action from the divine; but rather that prayer really involves an internal psychology process whereby people gear themselves towards becoming more engaged in the life and issues of the World. What it really does is to align people to what they believe to be the will and purpose of God and so to alter their attitudes and behaviour accordingly. I learned in this way prayer can be powerful.

One interesting feature of working at the church was that because of its location in Piccadilly central London, it happened to situated on the main road along which all the protest marches and demostrations held in London, would course through. The usual routine is that large demostrations and protests would start in Hyde Park, Speakers Corner, progressing from there to Westminister and the seat of Government. So a regular feature of working at the church would be to hear some loud commotion outside in the street and to see the sight of thousands of people protesting and bringing attention some issue. Over the years just about every issue and problem of the World would seem to be represented by the activists and participants exercising their right to make peaceful protest and demonstration. Examples would be Environmental or Ecologically related protests, Anti-War marches, protests by oppressed ethnic minorities from various parts of the World, marches against the use of Torture, Anti-Zionist demos, Religious groups asserting themselves, Womens rights, Human rights, Animal Rights, Gay Rights, Anti-corruption, Right Wing, Left Wing, any Wing and every issue seemed to be represented at one point or another; and which would march along Piccadilly right past the church. On these occasions if I could then I would always go outside into the street and see what was going on and what issue was being protested. It was good to see the people who made up the marches. It made the issues seem less abstract and gave it an immediately apparently human dimension to see the faces of some of the people who had taken up the cause. Sometimes I would have the opportunity to chat to some of the protesters but usually I was content just to watch things go by and absorb the atmosphere perhaps also some of the sentiments of the people involved.

Looking back on things, I believe that my working and being at the church really opened my eyes to the problems of the World and made them more immediate to me than they would otherwise have been. There was often a sense of being in a place where all the problems and concerns of the planet became washed up on the shores of St James Church, and I was like a beach comber picking up a bottle containing a note here and there in order to have a read. Then throwing the bottle back out to sea sometimes quite affected by the message and sometimes not at all. Either way, consciously and sub-consciousnessly, I can see in retrospect that my outlook was gradually and subtley transformed.

Working in a Church and the shaping of my Political and Religious outlook

Something which affected me quite significantly as a result of working in a church and in particular due to the peculiarities of St James, was that my Political and Religious outlook was definitely influenced. This was so in a variety of ways and due to number of factors. First of all, St James is for various reasons quite a politically controversial church. I’ve mentioned earlier at some point in this book the interest that the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took in the priest who ran the church in the much of the 80s and 90s. She labelled him the ‘Red Vicar’. More generally St James has quite a strong Left Wing Leaning. This has had an interesting effect on me because throughout most of my life leading up to my working at the church, I’ve tended towards the Right Wing or Centre Right on a lot of political issues. So what I believe has happened is that in the course of things my political leaning has probably become more balanced by my becoming much more sympathetic to a variety of Left Wing sentiments that I was exposed to while working in the church. I’ll talk more about this later on but first I’ll explore this political dimension of the church.

Perhaps this political dimension that the church has, partly derives from the William Blake association that St James has. During his early years his family lived in Golden Square which is minutes from the church so he happened to be baptised in the famous Grinlin Gibbons baptismal font located in St James and to which Blake fans from all over the World come to pay homage. Also apparently as a small child he used to play on church grounds. The William Blake Society for a long time had a base at St James and once a year on Blake’s birthday a memorial lecture is held at the church in his honour. Anyway, his spirit certainly seems to permeate the church even if he himself had very little time for organised religion in his later life.

A lot of Left Wing causes or movements that are traditionally associated more with the Left, often hold events and meetings at the church. For instance certain Anti-War, Nuclear Disarmament, Fair Trade and Peace groups will quite often use the main church for some sort of gathering. Some of these can be quite controversial such as a Pro-Palestinian grouping which was advocating the boycotting of Isreali exports and which was made up largely of Left Wing Jewish people. Generally the sort of people involved with these kinds of events were rather nice and agreeble, more often than not highly intelligent and reasonable seeming. I would also generally find that the sort of people who took something of the opposite point of view, people perhaps quite like myself, would have a harder less empathetic edge to them. By coming into contact with different sorts of view points I would come to have a little more sympathy for with these sorts of Left Wing issues, certainly much more than I would have had by default.

Another way that the Left Wing association of St James is manifested is in the patronage of some of the people who use the church or come to give speeches. For instance one of the leading lights of the Britain’s Left Wing Tony Benn is something of a regular at the church often appearing to be the main speaker at some Anti-War protest or Nuclear dis-armament event. I remember as a teenager when I had quite a strong Right Wing perspective, how he used to irritate me slightly when I saw him on TV. With a little more maturity and knowledge of politics I came to respect Tony Benn as a man of great principles and integrity. I met him on several occasions chatting to him casually while setting up his microphones for him and doing his sound check. He had a tremendous personal warmth and seemed to show a real interest in me, asking me all about my background. Though he asked almost exactly the same questions everytime he spoke to me on those brief occasions, nonetheless I didn’t hold it against him. After all he was quite old and probably met thousands of people in the course of his many duties and appearance. He was somebody it was impossible not to like and quite charismatic too.

Another unusual political event of sorts with a very strong Centre Left leaning occurred during the Summer of 2006. The Labour Party leader and Prime Minister at the time Tony Blair came to the church along with all of the major figures in New Labour and most of his cabinet, in order to attend the wedding blessing of his press secretary and school friend Angie Hunter who had married the TV political commentator Adam Boulton. It was one of the most interesting days of working at the St James. I remember security was very tight with many police with large guns and MI5 personel hovering about. It was the one day when I really saw how politics was something that I was being made keenly aware of and drawn towards as a result of my working in this unusual place. The day was made all the more surreal by the fact that a large demonstration and protest march made against the Iraq War and also Isreali invasion of Southern Lebanon made its way past the church just as the ceremony was going on. The clamour outside was loud with the people inside the church doing their best not to be distracted or appear so. It was such a strange juxtaposition that I witnessed standing high up in gallery of the church where to my right or the Right, I could see Tony Blair and all his closest associates; and to my left or the Left, I could see a large Anti-War demo. This was definitely a powerful formative moment. I thought what would have happened if all the protesters outside knew who were sitting literally metres from where they were walking. Also I knew that the Isreali Ambassador was somewhere in attendence. I reflected on this as I watched the Middle Eastern contingent march past shouting loud slogans cued by one of the protesters who was using a hail speaker megaphone device. Here were two political currents that through fate were place side by side with each other. It was a good thing that they were not fully aware of each others prescence. There would surely have been a riot, I didn’t relish the idea of my job description including crowd control. Anyway from this experience I really got a strong sense of the pulse of the life of the World and the turmoil that was part of it. During and in the days following I really thought a lot about the World and about Politics. Events like this could often do so, in this particular case more so than usual. Also on reflection it was funny because I could sympathize with both camps and found I had some affinity for the protesters outside as well as some of the politicians sitting in the church. It made me realize that there was a side to me that was quite Left Wing after all and also is an example that Politics is never about right or wrong, but rather is usually the choice of the lesser evil.