Shoemaker, Samuel Moor

Samuel Moor Shoemaker was born on December 27, 1893, to a wealthy Episcopalian family with deep roots in Maryland high society. He attended Princeton University where he was involved with the Philadelphian Society that shaped much of his early ministry. After graduation, he moved to Beijing to teach and do missionary work. While there Shoemaker met Frank N. D. Buchman, a Pietist Lutheran preacher and activist who would go on to found the Oxford Group that evolved into the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement.

Shoemaker was ordained to the diaconate in 1920 and to the priesthood in 1921. In 1925 he accepted a call to serve as rector of Calvary Church, New York City.

In 1926, Shoemaker began hosting weekly evening meetings geared toward training working people to witness their faith and convert others in their workplaces. He traveled the country in 1932, sermonizing to combat what he saw as the spiritual decay brought on by the Great Depression. His establishment of a rescue mission on New York City’s Lower East Side led him to minister to men struggling with addiction, including William Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Shoemaker continued to pursue those ministries at Calvary Church in Pittsburgh, where he became rector in 1952. He also sought to win converts through his writing. He published frequently in the parish newsletter The Calvary Evangel and later independently as the renamed magazine Faith at Work. Failing health forced Shoemaker to resign from active ministry in 1962.

Samuel Moor Shoemaker died in Baltimore on October 30, 1963.