David Sheppard - Ecclesiastical Career

Ecclesiastical Career

Sheppard was converted to evangelical Christianity whilst at Cambridge and trained for the ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, where he attended the lectures of Owen Chadwick and Maurice Wiles, and was much impressed by a visiting lecturer, Donald Soper. He was involved with the ministry of E. J. H. Nash. He was ordained in 1955 and continued to play Test cricket until 1963, being the first ordained minister to do so. He became Bishop of Woolwich (a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Southwark) in 1969, and Bishop of Liverpool in 1975. He was an active broadcaster and campaigner, especially on the subjects of poverty and social reform in the inner cities, and opposition to apartheid and the 1970 South Africa Tour.

He worked closely with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Derek Worlock, on these issues, and was often an outspoken critic of Margaret Thatcher's government. In 1985 he was appointed as a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas, culminating in the publishing of the controversial report "Faith in the City". He retired in 1997, and in the 1998 New Year Honours was elevated to a life peerage, taking the title Baron Sheppard of Liverpool, of West Kirby in the County of Merseyside. He sat in the House of Lords on the Labour benches.