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Introduction

Early Life

Stanley Bloomfield James was born on 9 December 1869, the oldest child of the Rev Daniel Bloomfield James, pastor of Congregational Church, Castle Green, Bristol, and Clara (nee Pulsford). He spent his childhood in Swansea and in the London suburbs of Wandsworth, Addiscombe and Wimbledon, where his father was minister of four different Congregational churches. James was educated at Whitgift School, Croydon and Aberystwyth University. Having rejected his father's wish that he too should enter the Congregational ministry, he took teaching jobs at several south-west London schools. In his Richmond lodgings, he became friends with the Chartist George Julian Harney (cross ref) and met Friedrich Engels.

Canada

When his younger brother, Norman Bloomfield James, emigrated to Canada in April 1893, Stanley decided to go with him. He wrote: “No convict on the point of being transported to Van Diemen’s Land could have felt more hopeless of the future than I. Faith was dead; ambition, too, had succumbed… It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the sense of desolation with which I set sail for the new world.” [Citation]

Stanley James arrived in Calgary and secured employment as cowboy and shepherd on the Jumping Pound ranch belonging to W.W. Stuart. In 1895 he wrote two farces which were performed in the local schoolhouse. He became regional correspondent for the Calgary Herald newspaper before being given the job of deputy editor in 1897. He produced a special Klondike Gold Rush supplement for the paper. But another investigation into the mining industry upset the editor and he was fired.

He walked the 130 miles south to Lethbridge and sold essential goods to navvies building the Crows Nest Pass Railway to make ends meet. He then worked as a navvy himself. With a friend he then rode the rails as a hobo the 2,000 miles to Toronto.

US Army

In 1898 James enrolled in the US army and fought in the Spanish-American War in Cuba and Puerto Rico. But he fell ill and was invalided out and recuperated in a New York military hospital, where he claims to have had a religious conversion. With his pay-off money, he bought his passage back to England, arriving in 1899.

Congregational minister

On his return, James found his father Daniel - now minister of Christ Church, Alwyne Road, Wimbledon – in poor health. He took over the running of the church and on 26 June 1900 Daniel died. He then met and fell in love with Buckinghamshire girl, Jessica Heley. They became engaged and were married at the Union Chapel, Burcott, Wing, on 1 October 1901.

James was appointed minister of the Congregational Church, Teignmouth, Devon, where he was to stay for the next five years. On 19 February 1903, he was ordained [citation to poster]. Attracted by his lively preaching and the debating, literary and drama clubs that James had started, a significant number of new congregants joined the ranks of the church. During that time Jessica had the first four of her seven children.

In 1906 he was offered the pastorship of Trinity Congregational Church, Walthamstow in north-east London where he was to stay for the next 10 years. A few months into his tenure, the Christian Commonwealth carried an article which stated: “The Rev Stanley B. James has made a place for himself in Walthamstow, and a very distinct place it is… the bold words which [he] has preached have made him the centre of a somewhat fierce controversy.”  In his sermons, James supported R.J. Campbell’s New Theology. He joined the Labour Party and his revolutionary interpretation of Christianity was interlaced with a passionate socialism, women’s emancipation and, after the outbreak of the First World War, pacifism. Traditional worshippers, however, objected to his radical views and left the church, to be replaced by younger radicals.

By December 1916 opposition to his radical brand of Christianity had reached such a level that the church deacons were forced to demand his resignation. With a small band of supporters, James, now a father of seven, set up a new church at Burghley Hall, Leytonstone, which combined the liturgy with left-wing politics, but the enterprise folded within months.

Working for Peace

James worked for various peace organisations for the next six years. At the No Conscription Fellowship he shared an office with the philosopher Bertrand Russell. He wrote in his autobiography: “I would draw the philosopher into conversation by putting some quite foolish question in philosophy which he would answer with perfect seriousness and courtesy, and at considerable length. I am afraid our routine work suffered not a little.”

At the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) (cross ref) James was appointed travelling speaker, addressing Labour Party meetings throughout England. In his autobiography he said that he attacked Quakers for being “elitist and too gentle” and he longed for meetings to be interrupted by a “sweaty, mud-stained and foul-mouthed soldier from the front. It would have been such a relief to have heard somebody swear with real feeling.” At the FoR he met and became friends with leading Labour MP, Fenner Brockway, and the proprietor of the pacifist periodical The Crusader, which he wrote for and later edited. Among his contributors were Conrad Noel, Captain Jack White, Sylvia Pankhurst, Jerome K Jerome and Muriel Lester, founder of the Voluntary Poverty Movement at Kingsley Hall, Bow, London.

James was appointed deputy minister of King’s Weigh House, Duke Street, London, where Dr William E Orchard was seeking to establish Free Catholicism, a form of worship that combined the best of Protestantism with the best of Catholicism.

Catholic Conversion

James’s growing regard for Catholicism led to his conversion to Rome on 2 July 1923 at St Dominic’s Priory Church, Haverstock Hill. He joined Jessica and their seven children at their smallholding in Four Marks, Hampshire, where they were to be for the next 18 years. He divided his working life between freelance journalism and working the land on their five-acre smallholding. Soon he was writing exclusively on religious matters for more than 20 Catholic journals. In a small garden shed and using an old manual typewriter, he turned himself into one of the leading Catholic writers in the English-speaking world.

He visited New York on a lecture tour in 1927 and Italy and Belgium while researching his book on the Catholic Action movement in 1937. He consolidated his friendship with G.K. Chesterton.

In 1941 James moved with his family to a cottage near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, where - again in a garden shed – he continued to write for Catholic journals. The same year, the editor of the Catholic Herald, Michael de la Bedoyere, offered him the deputy editorship which James accepted. In addition to subediting the weekly paper, James wrote regular columns and book reviews.

James’s family travelled from all parts of the globe to gather for their parents’ golden wedding anniversary in April 1951. In November of that year, after a short illness, James died from stomach cancer in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London. His obituary appeared in The Times and countless religious journals.

He is buried in the Catholic section of St Lawrence churchyard, Abbots Langley. The inscription on his grave reads: “Strong and content I travel the open road”, a quotation from one of the favourite poets of his youth, Walt Whitman.

Works

Poverty Gulch (novella) (1917)

The Men Who Dared (on pacifism) (1917)

The Adventures of a Spiritual Tramp (first autobiography) (1925)

The Evangelical Approach to Rome (1933)

Back to Langland (1935)

Franciscan Fables (1937)

Christ and the Workers (1938)

Becoming a Man (second autobiography) (1944)

In the Light of Day (1946)

Notes

References

Gallery

External Links

Further Re