Edited by Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, it comprises scholarly essays on Christian worship practices.

Coverage is primarily historical, spanning from the origins of Christian worship to the modern era, with reference to a variety of denominations and traditions.

[2][1] Subject matter spans from the apostolic era to the modern period, with coverage including worship among medieval Western and Eastern Christianity, Protestantism, and monastic forms.

[3] Richard A. Rosengarten's review for Church History appraised the chapters as sometimes more or less successful but praised the depth and clarity of content provided by the editors and contributors.

While ultimately approving of The Oxford History of Christian Worship as a reference work, Rosengarten felt that there were limitations in scholarly engagement between recent developments in religious studies and a failure to explicitly reject "the dichotomy of the normative and the descriptive".