Sam Shoemaker
Samuel Shoemaker was considered one of the best preachers of his era, whose sermons were syndicated for distribution by tape and radio networks for decades.
Sam Shoemaker helped start an Oxford Group chapter in Akron, Ohio,[5] where Dr. Bob Smith became involved.
[6] Two years later, in 1896, the young family moved to his late paternal grandfather's property, 'Burnside',[7] about 10 miles north of Baltimore at the entrance to the Green Spring Valley.
Shoemaker later became known for a slight southern inflection in his speech, which he attributed not to these relatives, but to his lifelong friend Hen Bodley, and to James (actually Richard Hugh Gwathney), a longtime family servant, who had been born in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
A fan of President Woodrow Wilson, Shoemaker became acquainted with the political controversies of the day, and after his sophomore year, circa 1914, traveled to Europe.
[12] At Princeton, Shoemaker had met Robert Speer, John Mott and Sherwood Eddy through the World Student Christian Federation.
Reverend John Gardner Murray, bishop of Maryland, Sam Shoemaker went to China to start a branch of the YMCA and teach business courses at the Princeton-in-China Program.
A follower of John Mott as well, and a leader of Penn State's YMCA group, Buchman advised Shoemaker to look inside himself, and to talk about his personal experiences.
However, by the time Shoemaker returned to Princeton, the movement's personal evangelism had begun to gather both friends and foes in England (where Buchman had started his First Century Christian Fellowship at Oxford and Cambridge) as well as America.
During his second year, Dr. Charles Lewis Slattery, rector of Grace Church, at Broadway and Tenth Street, appointed him as a part-time assistant.
[21] Between Egypt and India, in 1924, Shoemaker received a cable and letter from the vestry at Calvary Church (Manhattan), a then-dwindling but storied missionary congregation in a once-fashionable but changing neighborhood that wanted the energetic youth to become their rector.
[22][23] Bishop William T. Manning of New York approved of the First Century Christian Fellowship and Shoemaker's taking the helm at Calvary Church in the Gramercy Park neighborhood.
[24] At Calvary, where he became rector after a successful two-year trial term, Shoemaker constantly balanced both the institutional and sacramental aspects of the church's life, as well as his personal faith as influenced by Buchman and the First Century Christian Fellowship.
He held outdoor services in nearby Madison Square beginning in the summer of 1927, attracting new parishioners through music as well as his sermons, and began transforming the church school that winter term.
[25] For the next eleven years, Sam and his wife Helen managed to combine the diverse interests of Calvary Church with the life style and program of the First Century Christian Fellowship soon to be known as the Oxford Group.
Selling some church lots on 22nd Street to build a new seven-story Calvary House in place of the old rectory also caused controversy.
In 1927, after his two years trial as a rector, Shoemaker gradually set the United States headquarters of Frank Buchman's First Century Christian Fellowship soon to be named Oxford Group at Calvary House adjacent to the church.
"When therefore the Rector asked us to come to a special meeting of the vestry on June 15, and proposed to us that he be released for a six month sabbatical leave during which time he would devote himself entirely to the furtherance of this important work, (with the International Team of the Oxford Group) throughout America, we felt that this was a call which neither he nor we should disregard.
Shoemaker detached from Buchman and in the closing months of 1941, Calvarly Church's vestry formally asked Moral Re Armament to stop using Calvary House.
He became involved in radio preaching, and in 1946, Dr. Frank Goodman of the Federal Council of Churches offered Shoemaker a daily five-minute spot on station WJZ.
That proved successful, leading to a Sunday half hour broadcast on station WOR, and another half-hour program called "Faith in our Time".
Shoemaker had evangelized among young people and in the surrounding area of Pittsburgh, including setting up an Oxford Group meeting in Akron, Ohio circa 1930.
[32] While based in Pittsburgh, Shoemaker continued to tape his sermons as the "Episcopal Hour" (and during 1957-1958 the "Art of Living") for distribution by the National Council of the Churches of Christ.
Declining health caused Shoemaker to retire from Pittsburgh Calvary Church and return home to Burnside; however, he continued to broadcast Sunday sermons on the "Faith That Works" radio program from WBAL in Baltimore.
He died after a prolonged illness on the eve of All Saints Day 1963, and was buried after a service at St. Thomas Church in Owings Mills, Baltimore County.
Earlier Bill Wilson had been advised by Dr Silkworth to change his approach and tell the alcoholics they suffered from an illness, one that could kill them, and afterward apply the Oxford Practices.
The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Group and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else.
Praise be to God for it, and for the life of that fellow and all those who were with him in the beginnings of this incredible movement.The Manhattan Calvary Church Thursday evening sessions started in 1926 already alluded to, which were devoted to lay witnesses, provided models for subsequent Faith at Work programs.
Ralston did his witnessing to the people whose baggage he handled and later to groups that gathered for prayer in a car placed in a siding, on Track 13, at Grand Central.
In 1930, Irving Harris became the editor of the newly renamed The Evangel on a part-time basis and from that time until Sam Shoemaker's departure for Pittsburgh at the end of 1951, it reflected faithfully the life style and point of view of its leadership.
