Susan McArver


  • Ph.D., Duke University
  • M.A., Religion, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary
  • B.A., Salem College

Susan Wilds McArver is the H. George Anderson Professor of Church History at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. She joined the faculty in 1998.

McArver's particular research interests include religion in the South, women's history and Lutheran history. Her doctoral dissertation at Duke University examined the history and changing contexts of Lutherans in South Carolina between the years 1886 and 1918. She is the author of numerous articles about American religious history.

McArver has served in several capacities at the churchwide level of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, including a six-year term on the ELCA Church Council, where she chaired the ELCA's Program and Services Committee.

She has previously served on the task force developing the ELCA Social Statement on Education and the task force that created and unified the ELCA's Word and Service roster.

McArver is past president of the Lutheran Historical Conference, an organization of church historians from the ELCA, Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod, and currently remains a member of its board of directors. She also presently serves as chair of the advisory council on the James R. Crumley Jr. Archives of Region 9 and has served as chair of the ELCA Deaconess Community's Committee on Vocation and Education.