Our History

Sheppard and Worlock arrived in Liverpool within a year of each other. In 1975, the city was still divided along sectarian lines, and 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland were ongoing. At the same time, unemployment was high and the city's civic leadership was unstable. When Worlock was duly appointed, it is said Pope Paul VI gave him a double mandate: “to work with the poor and unemployed, and to prevent Liverpool becoming another Belfast”.

On the night he arrived, Worlock was visited by Sheppard who arrived on his doorstep with a bottle of wine. Understanding the crisis the city was facing and the human consequences it would lead to, they resolved to work together despite their seriously held differences on doctrine, bringing complementary gifts and quickly established a close working relationship. Sheppard’s wife Grace is said to have played a key role as the working partnership grew into a personal friendship.

As they wrote in their jointly authored book, "Better Together" (1988), they saw their role as one of reconciliation in a city that had become bitterly divided and battered by industrial decline. Recognising each other as 'brothers in Christ', they worked to help families and communities flourish. Their principle was: “Do everything together, except the things which conscience forces us to do apart.”

In the absence of coherent civic leadership, the bishops found themselves trusted as community leaders. In the 1981 Toxteth riots, they mediated jointly between the black community and police. They became involved in industrial disputes and brokered deals that helped to strengthen local institutions, and to found new ones, including Liverpool Hope University. They encouraged local leadership, supporting the development of the Eldonian Community housing association.

Finding themselves regarded as “honest brokers” among mutually suspicious groups, they listened to all sides and acted as interpreters - between businesses and unions, Catholics and Protestants, affluent and working class communities, the police and the black community, the Trotskyist Militant Tendency and the Conservative Thatcher government. Building bridges between estranged groups, they managed to secure government confidence on the one hand and deep affection from the people on the other. In this way they strengthened civil society and social trust.

They established and co-chaired the Michaelmas Group with business and industry leaders which met monthly, which worked to retain investment and tackle unemployment. When the city’s Trotskyist Militant Tendency was in the ascendancy they refused to take sides, consequently finding themselves branded as traitors by the Left and “statist” by the Right. When the Hillsborough disaster struck in 1989, they stood in solidarity with a hurt city in shock and under siege from a hostile press.

The visit of Pope John Paul II in 1982 was a significant moment, but theirs was not a cosy Anglican–Catholic club. They worked closely in partnership with Free Church leaders, forging a distinctive Merseyside voice and acting together locally in partnership with communities, strengthening local institutions and tackling social problems of the time, refusing to accept the policy of 'managed decline.'

In 2008 the Sheppard–Worlock Monument was installed in Hope Street, at each end of which stand Liverpool's Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals. Paid for by a popular appeal led by the Liverpool Echo newspaper, the five metre high sculpture is situated halfway down the street, and depicts the bishops standing in front of two bronze doors. 

The younger of the two bishops, David Sheppard in his youth had been a sportsman with a national profile, twice captaining England's cricket team, earning 22 caps between 1950 and 1963. After a conversion experience and ordination, he dedicated his energy to the wellbeing of communities in the inner city, first in London and then in Liverpool. Using his influence to champion the interests of working class communities and others experiencing marginalisation, he was leading spokesman Faith in City, the report which challenged the divisive impact of government policy on society. 

Born in 1929, Sheppard underwent a conversion experience, and became a conservative evangelical Christian, while reading history at Cambridge. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1955 and married Grace Isaac in 1957. After his first appointment as curate at St Mary’s, Islington, he spent eleven years as warden of The Mayflower, a dockland settlement in Canning Town in London’s East End. Here, he was influenced by George Burton, a youth worker from Glasgow who made a lasting impression on his approach to inner-city mission.

He remains the only ordained minister to have played Test cricket. Heavily involved in the campaign to ban apartheid South Africa from international cricket, in 1960 he became the first Test cricketer to take a stand on the issue, refusing to captain the Duke of Norfolk’s XI against a visiting white South African side. “I do not regard cricket in South Africa as a non-political game …”, he said, “as a cricketer and a Christian, I would be wrong to keep silent.” In 1968 he led a challenge against the MCC in the D’Oliviera affair, after which no England cricket team toured South Africa for 27 years.

He became Bishop of Woolwich in the diocese of Southwark in 1969. Here, he served under Bishop Mervyn Stockwood of Southwark alongside other Anglican churchmen inspired by a radical theology. As Bishop of Liverpool from 1975, Sheppard and his Roman Catholic counterpart Archbishop Derek Worlock dedicated themselves to the needs of the city in a time of crisis. [See Sheppard and Worlock above].

As vice chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, Sheppard was the leading spokesman for the influential Faith in the City report (1985), which was critical of the policies of the Thatcher government and they impact on communities.

He retired in 1997, and in 1998 was elevated to a life peerage, taking the title Baron Sheppard of Liverpool. He was an active member of the House of Lords on the Labour benches. He died of cancer in 2005. His wife Grace died in 2010. They are survived by their only child, Jenny, who in 2011, founded Together for the Common Good. 

Before coming to Liverpool, Derek Worlock had served in East London and Portsmouth. He had a passion for communities and for encouraging the role of lay people, much to the irritation of the conservative wing of his church which regarded him as a dangerous radical. He justified his positions in terms of Catholic Social Teaching, which he regarded as the Church's "best kept secret". A skilled political operator, he was instrumental in the visit of Pope John Paul II to Britain in 1982, the first by a reigning pontiff since the Reformation.

Born in London in 1920, Worlock once confessed that there had never been a time when he did not want to be a priest. His father was a journalist turned Conservative political agent; his mother had been a suffragette. Ordained in 1944, Worlock served briefly as a parish priest in the archdiocese of Westminster before being appointed secretary to Archbishop Bernard Griffin. Following Griffin’s death, he became secretary to Archbishop William Godfrey and spent much time in Rome helping prepare for the Second Vatican Council. From 1964 he served as parish priest in a dockland community in east London while continuing his work with the Council.

In 1965 he was named Bishop of Portsmouth, thus becoming the first post-conciliar bishop. Eleven years later he became Archbishop of Liverpool, arriving only nine months after Bishop David Sheppard. [See An Unlikely Partnership, above]. Throughout his career, he was involved in numerous national initiatives, included the negotiations that led to the establishment of Churches Together in England (CTE) and the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland (CCBI, later CTBI).

Passionate about the releasing the energy of the laity, Worlock devoted his energy to designing the 1980 National Pastoral Congress in Liverpool. Making full use of his gifts as a meticulous organiser, this was a one-off 2,000-strong assembly of lay men and women to discern how the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council should be implemented in England and Wales. In The Easter People, the congress report which he chaired, detailed steps were set out through which the gifts of the laity could be released to enrich the Church. Under his leadership in Liverpool, the idea of "collaborative ministry", in which clergy and laity worked side by side, was firmly planted, but the report failed to gain traction more widely, challenging as it did, the clerical conservative model of the Church that prevailed at the time.  

Worlock was instrumental in the historic visit of John Paul II, the first to the UK by a reigning pope since the Reformation. His role in this unprecedented event was pivotal, not only in making the invitation, but also in paving the way for the iconic reconciliatory visits of the Pope to Canterbury and Liverpool Cathedrals, setting a new norm of ecumenical warmth which has since become routine. At the height of the Falklands crisis this pastoral visit by Worlock's former Council colleague was almost cancelled at the last minute but saved as a result of his diplomacy behind the scenes.

Worlock was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1996 but died of cancer just a week before he was due to receive it, two days after his 76th birthday. 

This new formal collaboration of all the churches began with the establishment of the Merseyside Churches’ Ecumenical Council, set up in 1975 on the initiative of the Revd David Savage, a Baptist minister, and the Revd Edward Patey, Dean of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. The following year the Church Leaders Group was set up. A later development was the Merseyside and Region Churches’ Ecumenical Assembly (MARCEA) with around 200 members from different churches, renamed and reshaped in 2003 as Churches Together in the Merseyside Region.

The Church Leaders Group included members from the Methodist Church (the Revd Norwyn Denny, later succeeded by the Revd Dr John Newton), the United Reformed Church (the Revd John Williamson, succeeded by the Revd Eric Allen), the Baptist Union (the Revd Trevor Hubbard, succeeded by the Revd Keith Hobbs) and the Salvation Army (Colonel Lily Farar, succeeded by Major Douglas Raynor). Anglican members included Bishops Michael Henshall and Bill Flagg. Roman Catholic leaders included Auxiliary Bishops Kevin O’Connor, Anthony Hitchen and John Rawsthorne.

In 1985 the Merseyside leaders agreed a Covenant for Unity, signed during a Pentecost service that year by Norwyn Denny, John Williamson and Trevor Hubbard for the Free Churches and Bishop David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock for the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. A national Salvation Army decision prevented Douglas Raynor from signing, but he joined in the prayer asking God to “bind us together as partners with you in the task entrusted to us, that obedient to your command we may proclaim the Good News and make disciples of all nations”.

The Free Churches also decided to appoint a Moderator as “a recognised spokesman to stand with the Bishop [Sheppard] and Archbishop [Worlock] in the corporate witness of the Churches”. John Williamson, the first holder of the post, was soon involved with Sheppard and Worlock in activities such as meeting with national and local politicians. By the time John Newton succeeded Williamson in 1987, the “Liverpool Two” (Sheppard and Worlock) had become the “Liverpool Three”, and local people were used to the churches acting together. Even so, in press photographs there was a tendency to focus on the two bishops and crop out the Moderator, to prevent which the bishops insisted that the Moderator stand between them for photo calls.

In 1990 Newton preached at the service held in Liverpool to launch the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland. The service established a form now used at Pentecost in alternate years, beginning in one of the two cathedrals (Anglican or Roman Catholic) and concluding in the other, with Christians of all traditions walking together along Hope Street which links them.

During his sermon, Newton proclaimed: “We meet in hope, and we meet in Liverpool. At one time to mention Liverpool and Christian unity in the same breath would have seemed like a sick joke. This is a city like Glasgow and Belfast that has been disfigured by bigotry and sectarianism. For years, Liverpool had a powerful Protestant Party, segregated housing and a firm belief that the orange and green could hardly belong to the same Christian rainbow. There are still a few contemporary ancestors, who haven’t heard that peace has broken out, and are sadly bent on fighting the old wars. But the majority of Christians on Merseyside have moved from rivalry to co-operation, and co-operation to commitment. Working and praying together, we have reached a degree of mutual understanding that has given us a common purpose. We are ‘Churches Together’, not yet fully one, but to a wonderful extent reconciled.”

“Ecumenism”, he once said, “is sometimes presented as a kind of ecclesiastical game of beggar-you-neighbour. ‘If you give us this, I’ll give you that’—for the sake of ‘unity’. I believe this whole approach to be spurious and unworthy of those who believe in a God who has set before us the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’. We are not trying to strip one another of our most distinctive treasures, but to share them.”