The Lion sermon is an annual sermon preached on 16 October at 13:00 at St Katharine Cree in the City of London. The sermon has traditionally been preached on the theme of 'challenges to the Christian faith'.
The sermon commemorates the memory of Sir John Gayer, Lord Mayor of London in the 17th century. Gayer was faced with a lion in the Syrian desert, prayed for mercy, and the lion left without harming him. In gratitude Gayer endowed St Katharine Cree with a fund to preach a sermon in memory of this event, gave money to charities, and bought a font for the church inscribed with his coat of arms.
In 2013,Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was the first woman in 371 years to give The Lion Sermon. She named three pillars of Liberty as Dignity, Equality and Fairness.