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. Tucker's publication information

Karen Westerfield Tucker, Professor of Worship at the Boston University School of Theology, 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 Canada, and in New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Norway, and Wales. 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; a book developed from this project is forthcoming from Eerdmans.

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). With Geoffrey Wainwright she edited The Oxford History of Christian Worship (Oxford University Press, 2006), and is also co-editor with Professor Wainwright for a volume on worship in the Wesley Works Project (Abingdon Press). In 2005 she became the editor-in-chief for the international and ecumenical Studia Liturgica. Professor Westerfield Tucker is a member of the international dialogue between the World Methodist Council and the Roman Catholic Church, and is the President-elect of Societas Liturgica.