Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard

Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard, known as Dick Sheppard (2 September 1880 – 31 October 1937) was an English Anglican clergyman, Dean of Canterbury and pacifist.

Dick Sheppard was the younger son of Edgar Sheppard, a canon at Windsor royal chapel, and Mary White. He was educated at Marlborough College and then (1901-4) Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He worked with the poor from Oxford House, Bethnal Green, and then for a year as secretary to Cosmo Lang, then Bishop of Stepney. He studied for the ministry at Cuddesdon College, and was ordained priest in 1908. Returning to work with the poor at Oxford House, he suffered in 1910 the first of what would prove to be recurrent breakdowns due to overwork.

With the onset of war, Sheppard spent some months as chaplain to a military hospital in France, before being sent home with exhaustion. Supported by Lang, he took the fashionable and high-profile living at St Martin-in-the-Fields, turning the church into an accessible social centre for all those in need. He married Alison Lennox, who had nursed him during his breakdowns, in 1915.

From 1924, when Sheppard provided the first service ever broadcast by the BBC, his broadcast sermons gave him national fame. However, another breakdown and acute asthma led to his resignation. Becoming a pacifist, he articulated a vision of a non-institutional church in "The Impatience of a Parson" (1927).

Lang, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1928, made Sheppard Dean of Canterbury. Although his preaching attracted huge audiences, illness once again forced resignation.

Trying to develop a public political platform for pacifism, Sheppard in 1932 proposed leading unarmed peacemakers to stand between the Chinese and Japanese armies in Shanghai. More successfully, he issued a call for 'peace pledges' in 1934. He published "We Say 'No' "(1935), and formally established the Peace Pledge Union in 1936. In 1937 - the year of his death - his wife left him, and students elected him Rector of Glasgow University.

External links

* [http://www.ppu.org.uk/ppu/ppu_histx.html A brief history of the PPU]
* [http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/people/pst_dick.html Dick Sheppard Biography]
* [http://www.ppu.org.uk/e_publications/sheppard.html Links to Excerpts of Sheppard's Writings]
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=25593894 Memorial Page for Dick Sheppard]
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