Marcia Y. Riggs, 1983 M.Div.

Marcia Y. Riggs is the J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. She is often engaged as a lecturer and preacher and has published dozens of articles on ministerial and sexual ethics, moral education, and public policy.

She is a recognized authority on the black woman’s club movement of the nineteenth century, the subject of her first book, Awake, Arise, and Act!: A Womanist Call for Black Liberation. Her other books are Can I Get A Witness?: Prophetic Religious Voices of African American Women, an Anthology; Plenty Good Room: Black Women versus Male Power in the Black Church; and Ethics that Matters: African, Caribbean and African American Sources  (coedited with James Logan).

Riggs has served on the editorial boards for the Encyclopedia on Women and Religion in North America, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Feasting on the Word Lectionary Commentary Series.  For several years she has also chaired committees in the American Academy of Religion and the Association of Theological Schools.  She is a member of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, Society of Christian Ethics, and the American Academy of Religion.

Riggs has developed an ethical theory and practice called “religious ethical mediation.”  Religious ethical mediation prepares leaders to address religion, conflict, and violence in a transformative manner. Her educational not-for-profit ethics center, Still Waters: A Center for Ethical Formation and Practices, Inc, is offering a certificate program in religious ethical mediation as well as a D.Min. program in theories and practices of conflict transformation in collaboration with New York Theological Seminary.