Fr. Olver is the Executive Director and Publisher of The Living Church Foundation. A priest for more than eighteen years, he was the assistant rector at Church of the Incarnation, Dallas (2006-2013) and has served widely in the Episcopal Church: as the Ecumenical Officer (2005-2010) and on the Executive Council (2008-2011) in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas; as a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the U.S. (ARCUSA), the official dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (2008-2014); as a member the Task Force on Liturgical and Prayer Book Revision for the Episcopal Church (2018-2021); and as a deputy to General Convention (2022 and 2024). He has also been involved in the Anglican Centre in Rome and regularly teaches a course there on Anglican ecclesiology and ecumenism.
Like the eighth editor of The Living Church magazine, H. Boone Porter, Fr. Olver is a liturgical scholar who takes up this post after having served as a professor at Nashotah House Theological Seminary for nearly a decade (2014-2023). He has taught courses in the history of Christian worship, practical liturgics, early Christian liturgy, ecclesiology and ecumenism, and pastoral theology. His research interests include sacramental theology, early liturgical development, the origin of the Roman Canon, and the development of Anglican liturgy. He has presented lectures and papers in the United States and around the world, published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes (such as the Harvard Theological Review, the Journal of Anglican Studies, Studia Patristics, Ecclesia Orans, the Anglican Theological Review, the Journal of Early Christian Studies). He authored a number of the entries on liturgy in the fourth edition of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (ed. Andrew Louth), wrote a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to the Book of Common Prayer, and has published over 50 articles in the Covenant blog of The Living Church. His first monograph, The Origin of the Roman Canon Missae is forthcoming from Brepols in the Studia Traditionis Theologiae series and will be the first volume in English to consider the history the Roman Canon since Vatican II. He is also co-authoring a volume with Nathan Jennings (Seminary of the Southwest), Turning Points in Prayer Book History: From England, through Scotland, and to America, that will be published by Seabury Press.
Fr. Olver was raised in the Brethren in Christ tradition in southern Pennsylvania and sensed a call to a vocation in Christian ministry at a young age. A trained musician, he was introduced to Anglicanism as an undergraduate. Fr. Olver’s hobbies include running, rock climbing with his son, novels and films, and backyard chickens. His wife Kristen is a practicing therapist and they were married in 2001 and have two children. He is a non-stipdendiary assistant priest at Zion Episcopal Church in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where he attends with his family.
For Fr. Olver’s scholarly work, see his Academia.com page
Read his curriculum vitae
