Karen B. Westerfield Tucker

Professor of Worship

B.A. Emory and Henry College
M.Div. Duke University
M.A. University of Notre Dame
Ph.D. University of Notre Dame

Dr. Westerfield Tucker's Publications

Karen Westerfield Tucker is a United Methodist elder (presbyter) affiliated with the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. She served a congregation in Rock Island, Illinois and the Wesley Foundation at the University of Illinois (U-C) before pursuing the doctorate in liturgical studies at the University of Notre Dame. She was on the faculty at Duke University for fifteen years, and has taught seminary and continuing education courses throughout the United States and in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Norway. Her academic and research interests include North American liturgical history and theology, Methodist/Wesleyan liturgical history and theology, liturgy and pastoral care, and hymnody. In 2002-2003 she was selected as a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology to study the theological and cultural dynamics of hymnals.

Dr. Westerfield Tucker is the author of American Methodist Worship (Oxford University Press, 2001), and she conceived and edited The Sunday Service of the Methodists: Twentieth-century Worship in Worldwide Methodism (Abingdon/Kingswood, 1996). A writer for the Wesley Works Project (Abingdon Press), she is also editing a major history of Christian worship for Oxford University Press. She is an assistant editor for the international and ecumenical Studia Liturgica and in 2005 will become the journal’s senior editor. She chairs the Worship and Liturgy Committee of the World Methodist Council and is responsible for overseeing the worship of the 2006 World Methodist Conference in Korea.