ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which Christian experience has been mapped in a part of East London particularly characterized both by migration and by intense religious attention over the last century. At the Catholic Church of St Antony in Forest Gate every Tuesday evening, a congregation of around 100 join in a devotional ritual to the patron saint, part of a shared religious heritage. In this context St Antony is seen explicitly as the resort of travellers, an extension of his role in helping to find lost things. And Anglican churches in this part of London share their space St Bartholomew's with three theologically diverse groups, a Coptic church, a Jamaican Pentecostal church and until recently the gay/lesbian East London Metropolitan Community Church. Percy Alden, who had been the first warden of the Mansfield House University Settlement in Canning Town, had indeed suggested in 1904 that the ideal church for East London would be open seven days a week.
