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 (LTSS). She joined the faculty in 1998.

McArver's 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 a deep passion for connecting students with their history and illustrating how it affects their lives in the present, even when they do not realize it. Her most recent historical projects involve research into the life of abolitionist Simeon Corley, a member of the seminary's Board of Trustees in the 1850s before the Civil War, and research into the connections between Ernest Hazelius of LTSS and Samuel S. Schmucker of Gettysburg Seminary in the 1840s.

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 and on the task force that created and unified the ELCA's Word and Service roster. She is currently serving on the ELCA’s Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church.

McArver is past president of the Lutheran Historical Conference, an organization of church historians from the ELCA, Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod. She also presently serves as president of the Board of Directors of the James R. Crumley, Jr. Archives of Region 9.