Margit Ernst-Habib

Theologian

The Rev. Dr. Margit Ernst-Habib is a theologian and lecturer with a research and teaching focus on Reformed theology from a global perspective, the theology of Karl Barth, as well as Feminist and Postcolonial theologies. After studying theology in Wuppertal and Göttingen (Germany), she worked as a research assistant for the Karl-Barth-Institute at the Georg August University in Göttingen, where she co-edited, among other volumes, Barth’s Die Theologie reformierter Bekenntnisschriften.

For several years, Ernst-Habib taught theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur/GA (USA), before moving back to her native Germany with a broadened, globalized perspective on Reformed theologies and Reformed ways of being church, which continues to deeply influence and challenge her writing, research, and teaching. As one on the Frierson Distinguished Scholars, she participated in the international Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Scholars’ Conference at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 2014, where her interest in and emphasis on theworldwide Reformed tradition was further intensified and diversified.

During her work with the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) as the theological coordinator of the project “Global Players. How Reformations Still Change the Work”, her theological approach was very much shaped and informed not only by being part of a global network of Reformed theologians, but also by listening to and learning from diverse approaches and challenges from theologians and churches of the worldwide Reformed tradition, trying to incorporate those voices into her own theological work.

She is the author of Reformierte Identität weltweit: Eine Interpretation neuerer Bekenntnisse aus der reformierten Tradition and But Why Are You Called a Christian? An Introduction to the Heidelberg Cathechism. In addition to her monographies, Ernst-Habib has published numerous theological essays, both in English and in German related to Reformed theology, feminism, and ecumenism.