Early Life and Education
Sharpe was born in a working-class family in Lancaster, England. Aged 11, he won a scholarship as a non-boarding student at the Royal Lancaster Grammar School. His favourite sports were rowing and long-distance cycling. It was in his late teens, through a school friend, that he was brought into contact with Christianity at a local Methodist church. After doing National Service in the British Education Corps - this was at the time of the Korean War - he presented himself as a student at the Hartley Victoria College in Manchester, as a candidate for the Methodist ministry. Later, however, he chose the path of scholarship and so was not ordained. At the University of Manchester he achieved a B.A. (Theol.) and an M.A. degree in the History of Religions, studying under Professor S. G. F. Brandon. In 1958 he went to Sweden, where seven years later he received his doctorate in theology (Teol. Dr) in Church History with Missiology from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. He married Birgitta Johannesson in 1962. After a one-year visiting appointment at a liberal arts college in Indiana, USA, he joined Prof. Brandon at the University of Manchester, England, in 1966 and then Prof. Ninian Smart at the University of Lancaster in 1970. He collaborated with Ninian Smart in promoting religious studies as a subject in British schools. He also spent time in field and archival research in India, and in 1977 became the inaugural Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney (1977-1996).
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