After doing National Service in the British Education Corps – this was at the time of the Korean War – he presented himself as a student at the Hartley Victoria College in Manchester, as a candidate for the Methodist ministry.
He was a specialist in the history of modern-day Christian missions to India and wrote biographical studies on influential missionary-scholars such as A.G. Hogg[2] and John Nicol Farquhar.
[4] He also analysed the life and career of Karl Ludvig Reichelt, the founder of the Tao Fong Shan Christian Center in Hong Kong and a prominent missionary figure with Chinese Buddhists.
[5] He composed a major study of the life and intellectual thought of the Swedish Lutheran Bishop, ecumenical theologian and scholar of comparative religion Nathan Soderblom.
[6] In all of these studies Sharpe brought to bear an incisive sense of history, and also sought to illuminate the critical issues of inter-religious dialogue.
[7] In this work he demonstrated how romantic interpretations of the Gita developed in the western world, and charted how Christian missionaries to India often misunderstood the text.
[9] According to John Roxborogh, Sharpe was a model scholar whose work was marked by " clarity and precision in writing, a joyous curiosity, an ability to be fair, a religious sensibility and a capacity for surprise.
Sharpe's analysis exposed the symbols and myths surrounding Singh's life and ministry constructed by certain evangelical and liberal writers.