Dr. Culp, the beloved Dean of Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago, has been named one of 5 Vice – Moderators for the Commission on Faith and Order, a body of the World Council of Churches. Rev. Terri Owens, General Minister and President, reflects “Dean Culp represents the Disciples on this body and is certainly a phenomenal witness for our church as they are focused on the task of constructive theology as part of the global ecumenical movement.”
Kris Culp has been Dean of the Disciples Divinity House since 1991. She is also Associate Professor of Theology in the Divinity School and in the College. An alumna of the Disciples Divinity House and a 1989 PhD graduate of the Divinity School, she earned the Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Bachelor of General Studies degree from the University of Iowa. From 1985-91, she was a member of the faculty of Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri.
She is the author of Vulnerability and Glory: A Theological Account (Westminster John Knox, 2010), one of the first theological works to connect multidisciplinary conversations about environmental and economic vulnerability with theological anthropology and sociality. She is the editor of The Responsibility of the Church for Society and Other Essays by H. Richard Niebuhr (2008).
She represents the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and serves as one of the commission’s vice moderators. She has served on numerous boards, including, presently, the Board of Stewards of the Week of Compassion; she regularly serves in an advisory capacity to various groups; and she has served as chair of the Council on Theological Education of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and on the denomination’s General Board and Administrative Committee. She was a founding member of the Board of Directors of DisciplesWorld, a journal of news, opinion, and features about the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and its chair from 2006-09. She is a former president of the Association of Disciples for Theological Discussion and was a founding member of the Forrest Moss Institute, an association of Disciples women scholars.