From Time Magazine 1955
The Rev. Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker, 61, is a ruggedly handsome divine who thrives on Gilbert & Sullivan and finds the preacher's lot a challengingly happy one. Ever since his unlined face and gentle voice became a fixture in Pittsburgh's Calvary Episcopal Church three years ago, religion has been moving out of the Sunday-morning shadows and into the steel mills and executive suites. The casual young members of the "Golf Club crowd" have found themselves talking religion at cocktail parties and even turning out for Bible-study meetings with "Dr. Sam" at the H-Y-P (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) Club. Steelworkers have attended prayer meetings right in the factory.
This month Dr. Shoemaker and his friends launched a new movement—the "Pittsburgh Experiment." It is designed as a saturation campaign against "nonconductors" in Pittsburgh's business world, to be carried out through small task forces. Explains Shoemaker: "Today . . . the small group is both a sign and an instigator of spiritual awakening.''
Apart from Dr. Shoemaker, the experiment's prime mover is Admiral Ben Moreell, board chairman of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., longtime seven-day-a-week Christian and one of those responsible for bringing Dr. Sam from Manhattan's fashionable Calvary Church. Layman Moreell, who will serve as chairman of the Pittsburgh Experiment's board of trustees, announced that the campaign will be guided by a full-time executive director, the Rev. William H. Cohea Jr., graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and former pastor of the Daniels Park Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
More here-
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936613,00.html
2 comments:
Thanks for pulling this out of the Time archives. Dr. Shoemaker was a truly wonderful priest. The quote about God and steel in Pittsburgh is one that I remember from my youth.
I thank you, too. I was 19 when my family moved to Pittsburgh, within walking distance of Calvary. Dr. Shoemaker had the gift of making young people (others too, perhaps) think that their life choices were important and a way to serve Christ. Calvary Church sent his sermons to college students every week--I'd just transferred to Cornell and they helped the transition. I still have them. ---His wife, Helen, started the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer (so named by Bishop Pardue in 1958). They both believed in small group prayer (in addition, of course, to the liturgy); Helen said "my husband taught me to pray."
Post a Comment