Samuel Moor Shoemaker III DD, STD (December 27, 1893 – October 31, 1963)"Rev. Dr. Samuel Shoemaker Dies; Pittsburgh Episcopal Canon, 69", New York Times, November 2, 1963. Note: Shoemaker's death date is often incorrectly cited as January 31; e.g., David Hein & Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr. (2004), The Episcopalians, p. 295, 2004, Church Publishing. was an American priest in the Episcopal Church and a founding influence of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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. He founded Faith At Work magazine in 1926. He served as the rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City from 1925 to 1952. He was the head of the United States headquarters of the Oxford Group (founded by Frank Buchman, who had a deep influence on him) and later of the Moral Re-Armament which the Oxford Group became in 1938, from circa 1927 until circa 1941. From 1952 to 1962, he served as the rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He retired in 1962 and died the following year. Sam Shoemaker's interdenominational focus and the Oxford Group were significant influences for the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) who met through the Oxford Group. Bill Wilson attended Oxford Group meetings at Calvary Church from late 1934 to circa 1939. Sam Shoemaker helped start an Oxford Group chapter in Akron, Ohio,Mel B., "New Wine: The Spiritual Roots of the Twelve Step Miracle," pp. 64-69, 1991, Hazelden, where Dr. Bob Smith became involved.
Serious disagreements with Oxford Group founder Frank Buchman led Shoemaker to separate from Buchman in 1941 after he had detached from the early AA for a while, before working with AA again later on.
Shoemaker's contributions and service to Alcoholics Anonymous had a worldwide effect. The program that Bill W. codified, in conjunction with Shoemaker, is used in almost every country around the world to not only treat alcoholism but also help relatives of alcoholics (Al-Anon/Alateen), and treat people suffering with other addictions such as drug addiction (Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Pills Anonymous, etc.), sex and love addiction (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) etc.
Early life Shoemaker was born in a rented house on Read Street in Baltimore, Maryland on December 27, 1893, to Samuel Moor Shoemaker Jr. (later chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland) and Nellie Whitridge (later president of the Women's Auxiliary of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland), who had met at Emmanuel Church in Baltimore, where his uncle was rector.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), page 14.
Two years later, in 1896, the young family moved to his late paternal grandfather's property, 'Burnside', about 10 miles north of Baltimore at the entrance to the Green Spring Valley. In 1898, his father turned Burnside into a dairy farm, with a prize herd of Guernsey cattle, though his grandfather had preferred Jerseys.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), page 5. Sam Shoemaker was well aware of his privileged upbringing: Mennonites, some Schumachers had moved from Germany, Holland and Switzerland hundreds of years earlier, converted to Quakerism under the influence of William Penn's missionaries and Anglicised their surname as they moved to Germantown, which became a Philadelphia neighborhood. One of his ancestors of the same name had twice served as Philadelphia's mayor, and his paternal grandfather (who died in 1884 and for whom both Sam's father and young Sam were named), although born in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, made his fortune organizing the Great Western Express transportation line between Philadelphia and Baltimore.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 10-11 His paternal grandmother, the Victorian matriarch who raised him as an Episcopalian, was Augusta Chambers Eccleston, of Chestertown, Maryland, daughter of Maryland Court of Appeals Judge John Bowers Eccleston (1794–1860) and sister of the Rev. John H. E. Eccleston, whose Emmanuel Episcopal Church was decorated with flowers from the family's greenhouses. A more distant John C. Eccleston (1828–1912) served as a priest in Richmond County, New York. Sam's maternal grandfather, John Augustus Whitridge, had a fleet of clipper ships, although he died when Sam was 13. 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.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), page 6.
In 1908, when Sam was 14, he was sent to St. George's School, Rhode Island, an Episcopal boarding school founded and run by the Rev. John Byron Diman, who later converted to Roman Catholicism and founded the Portsmouth Priory near the school. Sam, homesick, initially did not feel comfortable among the "Yankees." He also did not consider himself a good student, but did hold several positions during his years at the school, including as president of the missionary society.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pages 16-17.
Upon graduating in 1912, Shoemaker attended Princeton University as had his father. 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. Upon returning, Shoemaker and three other students protested war propaganda and military drills at the university.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pages 17-19. At Princeton, Shoemaker had met Robert Speer, John Mott and Sherwood Eddy through the World Student Christian Federation. He became interested in personal evangelism and missionary work, as well as the relatively new ecumenical movement.Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (Church Publishing Company, New York, 2010) page 200.Harris Irving, The Breeze of the Spirit (The Seabury Press, 1978), page 22. He graduated from Princeton in 1916.
From 1917 until 1919, with the blessing of the Rt. 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. Shoemaker spent several years in China. In January 1918 he met there Frank Buchman, founder of the First Century Christian Fellowship, later known as the Oxford Group. 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.Harris Irving, The Breeze of the Spirit (The Seabury Press, 1978), pages 4-5. Buchman also told Shoemaker about the essence of the Sermon on the Mount being four absolutes: honesty, purity, unselfishness and love.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand By the Door: The Life of Sam Shoemaker, (Word Books, 1978), pages 24-25. After contemplating his own inadequacy compared to those absolutes, Shoemaker decided to let God guide his life.Bill Pittman, "AA, the way it began" (Glen Abbey Books, 1988) page 117. He returned to Princeton in 1919 to head the Philadelphian Society, a campus Christian organization which he had led during his senior year.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pages 20, 27.
Calvary Church in New York On June 20, 1920, bishop Murray ordained Shoemaker a deacon in the Episcopal Church. On June 12, 1921, he was ordained a priest. Shoemaker then returned to his earlier post at Princeton through the school year, 1922–23. There, he maintained his ties with the First Century Christian Fellowship; Buchman also made frequent visits to Princeton. 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.
After completing his missionary year at Princeton, Shoemaker entered General Theological Seminary in New York. During his second year, Dr. Charles Lewis Slattery, rector of Grace Church, at Broadway and Tenth Street, appointed him as a part-time assistant. After graduation and ordination, with his bishop's approval, Shoemaker and two British university graduates traveled with Buchman through Europe and the Middle East, exploring the meaning of Christian discipleship in missions and hospitals as they had in Beijing.Harris Irving, The Breeze of the Spirit (The Seabury Press, 1978), p. 7 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.Harris Irving, The Breeze of the Spirit (The Seabury Press, 1978), pp. 7-8Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 45-47
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.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 48-50 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.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 54-55
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. The church's ministry grew rapidly, by about 100 parishioners at the Sunday morning service in his first year, and another 100 during the second.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), p. 56 However, not all of Calvary's members congregation were committed to the radical life style and "hot gospelling" of the Oxford Group. Selling some church lots on 22nd Street to build a new eight-story Calvary House in place of the old rectory also caused controversy.Helen Smith Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door (Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 57-58
At a different location, the church also owned and operated the Calvary Mission, or Calvary Rescue Mission, an outreach project to serve the disadvantaged. The facility could house up to 57 homeless men, and served over 200,000 meals in its 10 years of operation.
In 1926, Shoemaker founded the Faith at Work movement (later called Lumunos in 2000). On Thursday evenings through approximately 1936, lay persons both presented their witness of their life as Christians in the workaday world and were trained to witness to that world (see section below).
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.
However, when the Great Depression hit in 1929 and continued, controversy had grown around Shoemaker. In 1932, the Calvary vestry granted him an extended leave of absence to bring his ideas to a wider audience.