Abigail Evans graduated from Jamestown College in 1958. She then went on to earn her Masters and Ph.D. She worked in a variety of positions including the parish, foreign missions, teaching, and administration.

She served as the Director of Field Education and Associate Professor of Practical Theology of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Abigail Rian Evans, who graduated from Jamestown College in 1958, went on to receive graduate degrees from the Escola de linguas orientaco (Campinas, Brazil), the University of Basel (Basel Switzerland) and Princeton Theological Seminary (Princeton, New Jersey).  Evans earned her doctoral degree from Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.), with a concentration in philosophy and bioethics.

Evans was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1969.  She has served as a pioneer missionary and seminary professor in Brazil; pastor and community organizer in Appalachia; Chaplain at Columbia University; associate synod executive for seven hundred churches in Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Maryland; and pastor of churches in North Dakota, New York, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

In 1983 Evans founded the National Capital Presbytery Health Ministries (NCPHM), which she directed until 1991.  NCPHM developed programs in health promotion and education in collaboration with government, communities, churches and academic institutions.  The organization’s efforts included work in AIDS, substance abuse, aging, and disabilities.

From 1984 to 1988 Evans was director of New Programs and senior staff associate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University.  Her work included symposia on bioethics and applied ethics, the associates program, and serving as liaison with the media and Bioethics Institute worldwide.

Evans has lectured and taught bioethics and health concerns at seminaries, churches, secondary schools, hospitals, universities, hospices, medical schools, and community groups over the last two decades.  She initiated a multidisciplinary investigation of techniques to reduce some of the undesirable effects of stress in adolescents.  She served as co-chairperson of the Task Force on Science, Values and Technology for the Council of Churches of Greater Washington, D.C., Board of Governors of the Washington Ecumenical Institute.  As staff associate in medical education and ethics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University (1979 – 1981), Evans was the principal investigator for a two-year study on admissions criteria for medical schools that would take into account applicants’ ethical sensitivity and service orientation.

From 1983 to 1991 Evans served as an ethics consultant on the Institutional Review Board of the Neurology Institute of the National Institutes of Health, the Animal Care and Use Committee of Georgetown University Medical Center.  In 1993 she was named a member of the Ethics Working Group of the Clinton Health Care Task Force.

Currently, Evans is director of field education, coordinator of clinical pastoral education, and associate professor of practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.  Her duties include teaching bioethics and health care issues from a pastoral perspective, as well as courses in spiritual formation and nature of ministry and overseeing the Field Education program, which places 300 interns in over 300 different specialized ministries and churches each year.  Later this year Evans will have the opportunity to present a paper at the CEHILA Ecumenical Conference on the History of the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean.  She will present in Portuguese and the paper will be published as part of the proceedings of the conference. 

She has published articles on Biblical themes of health and healing, addictions, substance abuse, AIDS, abortion, surrogate motherhood, science and theology, reproductive technologies, and is currently writing on parish nursing, liturgical resources for healing, organ donation, spiritual foundations for health, and models for health ministries.  Evans is married to John Powers and has four grown sons.