Dr. Heather Murray Elkins, Frederick Hannan Emerita Professor of worship, preaching and the arts of Drew Theological School at Drew University, is a widely-known United Methodist preacher and teacher in the area of worship, preaching, spirituality, and the arts. An elder in the WVa United Methodist Church, Rev. Elkins devotes her work to the integration of spiritual, political, and bodily life. Drawing on the spiritual resources of traditional liturgies, the arts, and Appalachian culture, she utilizes poetry, prayer, material culture, and ritual studies.
She has been a teacher in the first independent bi-lingual Navajo school, a rural church pastor, a truck stop chaplain, a seminary faculty member, and an academic dean.
The Holy Stuff of Life: Stories, Prayers, and Poems about Human Things, and Wising Up, a collection of essays and rituals dedicated to honoring women and the process of aging, are available through Pilgrim Press. Some of her other writings on worship and preaching are found in the Upper Room Disciplines, Pulpit, Table and Song, Preaching in the Context of Worship , the series of The Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible, and Worshiping Women: Re-forming God’s People for Praise.