Meet Dr. Marcia Riggs

Dr. Marcia Riggs is a Womanist Christian Liberation ethicist. She is a recognized authority on the Black woman’s club movement of the nineteenth century. Riggs graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Lynchburg, VA with a Bachelor of Arts in Religion. She then proceeded with her education to Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT where she graduated with a Master of Divinity degree . Dr. Riggs earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Religion (Ethics) from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. After teaching ethics in the area of religion and society at Drew University Theological School Dr. Riggs joined Columbia Theological Seminary’s faculty in 1991. She was one of six Luce Scholars named by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) and The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. as Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology for 2017-2018. She currently holds the position of J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics as well as serves as Ombudsperson for the seminary.

Dr. Riggs is also the Founder of an applied ethics non-profit center called Still Waters: A Center for Ethical Formation and Practices, Inc.  Still Waters’ mission is to provide education in conflict transformation theory and practices, particularly focusing upon the intersection of religion and violence.  Dr. Riggs, in her work at Still Waters, assists organizations and churches in employing her theory and practice of Religious Ethical Mediation (REM) as the means of living out their purpose in the world.

In her own words . . .

I am a middle child. According to some psychological thinking, the middle child is sensitive to injustices, seeks fairness, and tends to be a skilled negotiator or instigator. I was the sibling who stood up for everyone’s rights (sometimes sibling vs. sibling, sibling vs. parent, parent vs. siblings). My middle child nature has developed into a ministerial vocation of being a transformative mediator in any of the contexts for ministry in which I find myself.

With the publication of my dissertation as the book, Awake, Arise, and Act: A Womanist Call for Black Liberation, my concept of a mediating ethic became the basis of a Womanist liberation ethic of responsibility. That idea of a mediating ethic has become my constructive theory and practice called Religious Ethical Mediation (REM). For me, REM is a worldview, a way of life, a way of being and doing as a moral agent that I have been committing to intentionally day-in-and-day-out. I dreamed an image, the process, and the name for the process, Religious Ethical Mediation, into consciousness. I am a religious ethical mediator doing my life’s work.

With the acceptance of me as the seminary’s organizational ombudsperson, I am now applying REM as a means for institutional transformation, addressing dynamics that perpetuate racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia, etc. working to transform the culture of exclusion into a culture of acceptance and respect. As liaison for the Transformative Community Conferencing process in my role as ombudsperson, I am engaged passionately as a religious ethical mediator working with the seminary’s constituents on the transformation of relationships and systems here at CTS.