Helen Smith Shoemaker

Helen Smith Shoemaker (March 16, 1903 – January 29, 1993) was an American author, sculptor and Episcopalian church leader, and co-founder of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer.

Biography She was born in New York City on March 16, 1903 to Howard Alexander Smith, a U.S. senator from New Jersey from 1944 to 1958, and Helen Babcock Dominick. She attended schools in Colorado, Princeton, New Jersey, and Florence, Italy. She also studied art in Paris and New York. In the 1920s in New York, she was attracted to the First Century Christian Fellowship founded by Frank Buchman, that would later become the Oxford Group in 1928, and the Moral Re-Armament movement (MRA) in 1938. She published a number of books on prayer, including Prayer and You (1948), and The Secret Effect of Prayer (1967).

The family moved to Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh in 1952 and retired to a home in the Greenspring Valley of Baltimore County in 1962. Mr. Shoemaker died in 1963.

Sculptures

In her early 70s, Mrs. Shoemaker began sculpting again. She created a series of bronze statues of Archangels, a head of Christ and several other works now owned by churches and other religious organizations.

Shoemaker created a set of four Archangels consisting of Archangel Michael, Archangel Gabriel, Archangel Uriel and Archangel Raphael.

The bronze Archangels were manufactured under private contract and were delivered with a 40-page booklet on The Archangels.

Every Archangel made by Shoemaker was done by her employing the process of Lost-wax casting, each statue therefore had unique and slight differences.

No complete set of the four bronze Archangels is known to exist.

Publications Prayer and You (1948) Prayer Through Prayer Groups (1958) I Stand by the Door (1967) Prayer is Action (1969) The Secret of Effective Prayer (1969) Prayer and Evangelism (1974) The Exploding Mystery of Prayer (1978) The Magnificent Promise (1985)