The school's board of directors praised her “exceptional background in pedagogy.”
Wingeier-Rayo is a fourth-generation missionary, having spent 15 years in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the Rio Grande Valley.
The American Academy of Religion is committed to helping its members face an uncertain field, the leaders said.
The scholar of religion and culture will become president in September.
The Episcopal presiding bishop wove in references to Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Luther King Jr., and the composers of African American spirituals.
As general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, he led his denomination in standing against apartheid.
Borgdorff was also the first executive director of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.
The author of The Once and Future Church was part of the shift to looking at congregations in their contexts—not just the church in general.
Patricia A. Davenport and Viviane Thomas-Breitfeld will each lead a regional body in the predominantly white mainline Protestant denomination.
Tandean Rustandy, a business graduate of the University of Chicago, is funding scholarship at the Divinity School to broaden how Christianity is taught.