At various times in his career as one of the most radical clerics in the Church of England, Donald Reeves, who has died aged 90, was called a very dangerous man by Margaret Thatcher and a dishy vicar by Jilly Cooper. The Rector of St James’s Church, Piccadilly, in the heart of the West End of London for 18 years between 1980 and 1998, he was a leading member of a cohort of progressive and socially engaged Anglican priests that crested in London in the 1970s and 80s.
A significant figure in initiatives for ecumenism and reconciliation between faiths, in the late 90s Reeves set up a charity, Soul of Europe, which worked particularly in the Balkans after the Bosnian war. If the creation of that body was partly a result of his frustration with the passivity of the Church of England, it was also a living out of his Christian principles.
