wfn.org | Dr. Ann K. Riggs Named NCC Faith and Order Director

[Carol Fouke <carolf@ncccusa.org>]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2252/2227
E-Mail: news@ncccusa.org; Web: www.ncccusa.org
NCC2/25/02 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DR. ANN K. RIGGS NAMED NCC FAITH AND ORDER DIRECTOR

	February 26, 2002, NEW YORK CITY - Dr. Ann K. Riggs, a Quaker who for the
past five years has served the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops in their
ecumenical work, has been named Director of Faith and Order for the National
Council of Churches.

	Her election by a search committee was confirmed by the NCC's Executive
Board, meeting here Feb. 25-26.  Effective immediately, Dr. Riggs, of
Crownsville, Md., will be based in the Council's Washington, D.C., office.
NCC headquarters is in New York City.

	"Dr. Riggs brings a remarkable package of qualifications with her,"
commented the Rev. Dr. Paul Meyendorff of the Orthodox Church in America,
Co-Chair of the NCC Faith and Order Commission.  The commission's
representatives from a broad range of NCC member and non-member communions
work together on church-uniting and church-dividing issues of belief and
practice.

	Since 1997, Dr. Riggs has represented her communion, the Friends General
Conference of the Religious Society of Friends, on the Commission,
co-chairing its 2000-2003 study on "Authority in the Church."

	As Assistant to the Director of the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs since 1996,
she served a key role in administration, budgeting and planning and provided
background expertise for bishops, secretariat staff and others to undergird
their participation in the ecumenical movement.

She carried particular responsibility for nurturing U.S. Catholic Church
relations with the historically Black Protestant churches, the Peace
Churches and the World Council of Churches' U.S. Conference.

Dr. Riggs is a recognized expert in the role of visual art and architecture
within the ecumenical movement - a melding of her interests in art and
theology.  She earned her B.A. in art (1972) from Smith College,
Northampton, Mass., going on to earn an M.A. in art history (1982) from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C.  From 1980-81, she was
intern and guest curator at the Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum and, from
1981-84, research associate and curator at the Worcester Historical Museum.

	Increasingly, she found herself intrigued by theological concerns, which
led her to earn an M.Div. (1992) and Th.M. (1995) at Duke Divinity School.
There, she studied baptism and eucharist with Geoffrey Wainwright.

Dr. Riggs earned her Ph.D. in 2001 from the School of Religious Studies,
Catholic University of America.  Focusing on hermeneutics, theology and
spirituality, her dissertation was "Visual Arts and Architecture in
Ecumenical Statements of the Holy See and the World Council of Churches,
1982-1997: Issues of Theological Anthropology."

The NCC's new Associate General Secretary for Faith and Order is a member of
the Catholic Theological Society of America, American Academy of Religion
and North American Academy of Ecumenists, and is a founder and associate
editor of the journal "Quaker Theology."

Dr. Riggs is co-author (with Jeffrey Gros and Eamon McManus) of
"Introduction to Ecumenism" (1998, Paulist Press), a textbook used in both
Roman Catholic and Protestant seminaries.  She is co-editor (with Fernando
Enns and Scott Holland) of "Peace-Theology and Culture in a Globalized World
from the Perspective of the Historic Peace Churches," forthcoming in 2003.
The volume comprises papers from a June 2001 consultation, in Switzerland,
of international historic peace churches at the beginning of the World
Council of Churches' Decade to Overcome Violence.

Dr. Riggs in January 2002 served as an adjunct professor in the Wesley
Theological Seminary's D.Min. in Ecumenism Program, and has held several
teaching assistantships at Wesley, Duke and Catholic universities.

	At the National Council of Churches, Sister Paul Teresa Hennessee, S.A.,
has served as interim Faith and Order director since July 2001, following
the departure of the Rev. Dr. William Rusch to staff the projected Second
Conference on Faith and Order in North America.

	The NCC Faith and Order Commission is an active participant in planning for
that conference, anticipated for 2005.  In 2000-2003, the commission has
studies underway on "Authority in the Church," "Authority of the Church in
the World" and "Full Communion," and has just begun planning for 2004-2007.

The commission also is integrally involved in discussions of a possible new,
broader expression of Christian unity in the United States.  NCC member
communions, along with the Roman Catholic Church, The Salvation Army and
several Evangelical and Pentecostal bodies, held a first meeting in
September and plan to meet again in April.

-end-