We are a centre for reflection, culture, and renewal inspired by Saint Helier.
Rooted in Jersey’s heritage, the Helier Centre explores the deeper and higher questions shaping our time — reopening the island’s spiritual and cultural foundations to spark new thinking for today’s world.
The Helier Centre seeks to open gentle spaces of refuge, creativity, and learning — blending community, culture, and spirituality - where islanders and visitors alike can explore what it means to live well in an age of change.
In partnership with Jersey Heritage, the Diocese of Salisbury, and a growing network of local and international collaborators, the Centre hosts a rich programme of retreats, symposiums, exhibitions, and educational initiatives. Its work is shaped by seven foundational values:
Culture
Education
Spirituality
Reconciliation
Ecology
Adventure & Wellbeing
International Community
The Helier Centre responds to a wider cultural moment — a time marked by disconnection and a search for meaning. It offers a meeting place where ancient wisdom and contemporary insight come together; where dialogue replaces division; and where the renewal of the human spirit meets the renewal of the island’s landscape.
Through this work, we aim to reawaken Jersey’s deep spiritual heritage and reimagine its role as a beacon of reflection, creativity, and peace in a complex world.
Saint Helier, watcher of waves, protector of the unseen, we honour your presence in the ripple, the silence, the sacrifice. And we, the daughters and sons of old soil, still listen for the wind before words.
MAZVITA MUTWA WAMWARI
SYMPOSIUM
The death and funeral of Charlie Kirk, the marches in London led by Tommy Robinson, and rhetoric from increasingly authoritarian political leaders all have in common a fusion between religion and nationalist fervour. As public life grows more polarized, conversations which take a deeper look at the stories being told about religion and power have never been more urgent. We are making space to ask what kind of stories we want to live by — and what it means to seek truth beyond ideology.
Our first Symposium, “Exploring Christian Nationalism,” consisted of three public events across two days.
The Symposium sessions were being led by two highly distinguished thinkers and practitioners in this field:
Dr. Stephen Backhouse — a world expert in Political Philosophy and in the work of Søren Kierkegaard - the Danish Philosopher whose critique of Christendom in the 19th Century resounds louder than ever in the present climate.
Dr. Bob Ekblad — An ordained Presbyterian pastor and co-director of Tierra Nueva in Burlington, Washington - an outreach ministry to the marginalised, undocumented and incarcerated - known for his writing and Bible teaching.
