Interim Director of the Program for Anglican Studies

The Very Rev’d William H. Petersen, PhD, DD, is Emeritus Dean of Bexley Hall Seminary, formerly of Rocheseter, NY, but now in Columbus, OH, as a partner with Trinity Lutheran Seminary. Dean Petersen was also Professor of Ecclesiastial and Ecumenical History at Bexley Hall and, additionally, taught liturgics and a seminar in Dante’s Divine Comedy. In 2010 he was appointed by the Presiding Bishop as representative of the Episcopal Church to the Consultation on Common Texts (publisher of the Revised Common Lectionary). In the same year he also served a term as visiting professor at Ming Hua (Anglican) Theological College in Hong Kong. More recently, he has been appointed as a Consultant to the Ecumenical Office of the Episcopal Church and has served as Interim Pastor of Christ Church, Pittsford, NY. He has published in the areas of ecumenics, church history/historical theology, and liturgics and is currently at work on a book to be titled What Are We Waiting For? Reclaiming Advent for Time to Come.

Dean Petersen is a past president of the North American Academy of Ecumenists; co-convener of the Anglican Colloquium in the North American Academy of Liturgy in which he is also founder and convener of the Advent Project Seminar; a member of the International Anglican Liturgical Conference and Societas Liturgica, the international and ecumenical academy of liturgical theologians; and was for twenty years a member of the Anglican-Lutheran International Commission. Dean Petersen also has served on several national commissions of the Episcopal Church and has been twice a deputy and three times an alternate to General Convention from the Diocese of Rochester. During his career he has also served congregations and college chaplaincies in Iowa, California, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York.

A 1963 graduate of Grinnell College (BA) in his native Iowa, he subsequently attended the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (MDiv) in California, and the Graduate Theological Union (PhD), Berkeley, CA. He has been married to Priscilla Eide Petersen since 1963 and they reside in Fairport, NY.