The William Henry Hoover Lectures were established at the Disciples Divinity House in 1945 to encourage a vital discussion of Christian unity. Today the conversation has widened to include interreligious perspectives. The lectures explore the issues with which Christians wrestle as they seek to understand and share life before God in the midst of the whole, interconnected world.

Previous Hoover Lecture series have explored “The Civil Rights Movement as an Ecumenical and Interfaith Movement” and “Humanity Before God: Contemporary Faces of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Ethics,” both of those in conjunction with the Divinity School’s Sharpe Lectures. In 2005 “A Celebration of the Arts” combined lectures and performances to explore religion and the arts.

In 2009, the "Culturing Theologies, Theologizing Cultures: Exploring the Worlds of Religion" conference brought together scholars and practitioners to re-examine the role and value of culture in theological reflection and the role and value of theology in cultural reflection. Where and how do new theologies and theories of culture intersect? How do these emergent perspectives aid interpretation of and engagement within the ecumene, the whole encultured world? The conference was presented under the auspices of the Divinity School's D. R. Sharpe Lectures with the Hoover Lectureship as a co-sponsor. Conference organizers were Garry Sparks and Chris Dorsey, who were then PhD candidates in Theology and Disciples Divinity House Scholars.

Hoover Lecturers have included Larry Bouchard, Taylor Branch, Frank Burch Brown, James Cone, John Cobb, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, James Gustafson, Vincent Harding, Ronne Hartfield, Beverly Wildung Harrison, Mark Jarman, Bernard McGinn, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Bernice Johnson Reagan, and William Schweiker.