ather Lawrence R. Sipe has been an honorary assistant priest at S. Clement's since August of 1996. He was born in 1949 in York, Pennsylvania. He was graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Chicago in 1971 with a bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature, and went on to teach for two years in a one-room school (grades one through eight) in a small, isolated fishing village in Newfoundland, Canada's easternmost province. After studying for another bachelor's degree in Elementary Education at Bloomsburg State College, he taught for four years at Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart (Kindergarten through grade two) in Princeton, New Jersey.

In 1980, he was graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia with a master's degree in Psychology of Reading, and then returned to Newfoundland, where he was a coordinator and supervisor of language arts for the Port aux Basques Integrated School Board for thirteen years. It was during this time that he studied privately for the priesthood, through the Montreal Diocesan College, a part of McGill University. He was ordained to both the diaconate (in 1986) and the priesthood (in 1989) by the Right Reverend S. Stewart Payne, the Bishop of Western Newfoundland, at St. James' Anglican Church in Port aux Basques. He served as an honorary assistant at St. James', visiting the sick and shut-in, training acolytes, and assisting on Sundays.

Father Sipe returned to the United States in 1993 to study for a Ph.D. in children's literature and early literacy development at Ohio State University in Columbus. During his three years of doctoral work, he was an honorary assistant at St. James' Episcopal Church, Columbus. In 1996, he accepted a position as assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he joined the faculty in the Reading, Writing, and Literacy program. In March of 2002 Father Sipe was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Education. He currently supervises doctoral dissertations and teaches courses in literature for children and adolescents. His research focuses on how children in Kindergarten, first, and second grade gradually come to understand and interpret literature.

Father Sipe's Web Page at the University of Pennsylvania