Episcopal Press and News
CDSP and Friends Honor Dr. Massey Shepherd
Episcopal News Service. March 26, 1981 [81107]
Berkeley, Calif. -- On March 5th, the 40th anniversary of the ordination of Dr. Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., to the diaconate, friends from throughout the Bay Area joined the community of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, where Dr. Shepherd has been a member of the faculty since 1954, for a special celebration.
Highlight of the evening was the formal announcement of the publication of Worship Points the Way: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr. The book is a festschrift, a collection of essays which pay tribute to a member of the academic community by writing about his field. CDSP's Professor Donn Morgan, who raised funds for the printing and assisted in production of the volume, presented Dr. Shepherd with the first copy.
Worship Points the Way was edited by Malcolm C. Burson and published by Seabury Press. Contributors include Sherman Johnson, Edward R. Hardy, John B. Coburn, Samuel M. Garrett, H. Boone Porter, Urban T. Holmes, James F. White, Daniel Stevick, James L. Empereur, S.J., John Cardinal Willebrands, O.C. Edwards, Jr., Dorothy Donnelly, C. S. J., William H. Petersen, and Ronald V. Glens.
Dr. Shepherd, who has been Hodges Professor of Liturgies at the Church Divinity School since 1954, will retire from full-time teaching in June. Dr. and Mrs. Shepherd will continue to reside in Berkeley, and he will teach two courses a year for CDSP and the Graduate Theological Union.
An internationally-known authority on liturgies and early Church history, Dr. Shepherd has been active in Anglican-Roman Catholic relations and was an observer at Vatican II. He was elected a deputy to General Convention from 1967 to 1976, and served as chaplain to the House of Deputies during that time.
Dr. Shepherd's most monumental work is The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary (1950). His most widely-known book, At All Times and In All Places, first appeared in 1947, with revised editions in 1953 and 1965. The Psalms in Christian Worship and A Liturgical Psalter for the Christian Year were both published in 1976. A Companion of Prayer for Daily Living, selected and edited by Dr. Shepherd, was published in 1978.