wfn.org | Atlanta rector appointed to head Women's Ministries at Church Center

[Daphne Mack <dmack@episcopalchurch.org>]

Atlanta rector appointed to head Women's Ministries at Church Center

by James Solheim

(ENS) In a letter to members of the church's Executive Council, Presiding 
Bishop Frank T. Griswold announced today that the Rev. Margaret Rose, 
rector of St. Dunstan's Church in Atlanta, Georgia, has been appointed 
director of Women's Ministries at the Episcopal Church Center in New 
York. She will begin her work April 1.

Calling the appointment "very good news," Griswold said that Rose "will 
bring a great deal of experience, creativity and commitment to women's
concerns."

Responding to the appointment, Rose said, "I look forward to building on the

strong foundation of advocacy and justice the Office for Women's Ministries 
has long represented.  As a parish priest and lifelong Episcopalian, I seek
to 
build bridges among the many networks within the church and to strengthen 
our work with ecumenical and interfaith partners. It is crucial in these
times 
that women's voices be heard not only within the structures of the church
but 
in the world outside its walls."

Underscoring her lifelong involvement in women's and justice concerns, Rose 
has for the last two years worked with the Ford Foundation on a project to 
identify innovative women leaders in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. "A 
convening of 20 of these women in May of 2002 made it clear that, while
women 
are exercising pioneering leadership within their institutions, whether or
not there 
will be long-term institutional change is still an unanswered question," she
said.

Rose has been rector of St. Dunstan's, a parish of 225 in northwest Atlanta,
for 
the last 10 years where she has helped focus the parishes strong commitment
to 
outreach, racial and gender justice and the environment.

An honors graduate of Wellesley College, Rose graduated in 1979 from Harvard

Divinity School where she was a fellow of the Fund for Theological
Education. She 
has also studied theology and political science in France and Switzerland.
After 
graduation from Harvard, she served an internship at Trinity Lutheran Church
in 
Oldenburg, Germany, before returning to Boston where she was a Cox Fellow
and 
deacon at St. Paul's Cathedral. She then served as curate and founding
director of 
the Jubilee Senior Action Center at St. John the Evangelist in Boston,
associate rector 
and urban missioner at Christ Church in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, and
interim rector 
at St. Barnabas in Falmouth before the move to Atlanta.

In the Diocese of Atlanta, Rose served on the Commission on Ministry, as
dean of the 
North Atlanta Convocation of Churches, on the board of the conference
center, and 
was elected deputy to the 2000 and 2003 General Conventions. She is vice
president 
of the Episcopal Urban Caucus and active in the Episcopal Peace Fellowship
and the 
Episcopal Women's Caucus. 

On the civic level she was on the board of the local Industrial Areas
Foundation project, 
an ecumenical and multi-racial coalition of churches, the Mayor's Commission
on 
Community Relations, as well as the North Atlanta Parents for Public
Schools.

She is married to the Rev. Mark Baker, vicar of the Church of the Holy
Comforter in 
Atlanta, and they have two daughters, Hannah, 16, and Miriam, 14.