Terrence L. Johnson
On Leave
Fall 2023, Spring 2024
Education
- BA, Morehouse College
- MDiv, Harvard Divinity School
- PhD, Brown University
Profile
Terrence L. Johnson is Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies. His research interests include African American political thought, ethics, American religions, and the role of religion in public life. Johnson's interdisciplinary research agenda is historical, critical, and constructive. He weaves together African American religions, political theory, and American history to paint broad conceptual schemes for imagining religion, democracy, ethics, liberalism, justice, and freedom.
He is the author of Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue (2022, with Jacques Berlinerblau), winner of the 2023 Outstanding Book award by the Association for Ethnic Studies; We Testify with Our Lives: How Religion Transformed Radical Thought from Black Power to Black Lives Matter (2021); and Tragic Soul-Life: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy (2012). He also serves as co-editor of the Duke University Press Series "Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People." He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Torn Asunder: Race and Religion in the Shadow of Law and Justice, which is under contract with Columbia University Press. He is also co-writing a book on ethics and law with M. Cathleen Kaveny tentatively entitled Christian Ethics and the Trump Court.
Johnson is a faculty associate of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics and a member of the Corporation at Haverford College.
Courses
View HDS courses taught by Terrence L. Johnson in the my.harvard Course Search.
Also view FAS courses taught by Terrence L. Johnson. (HDS students: for jointly offered and reading and research courses, please enroll in the HDS version of the course.)
Selected publications
- "Moral Faith and the Legacy of John Lewis's Political Vision of 'Good Trouble' " (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
- "When Hope Appeared In Flesh: From Black Power to Barack Obama and the Spirit of the American Jeremiad" (Cross Currents, 2019)
See also
- "Blacks and Jews: Fifty-Five Years After James Baldwin’s “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White" (Lit Hub, 2022)
- "How the Black-Jewish Alliance Changed America—and Today's Struggle for Voting Rights" (Salon, 2022)
- "Blacks and Jews" Authors: 'Whoopi is not the enemy' but 'it may be too late' for America Anyway" (Salon, 2022)
- "Can Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff Reinvigorate the Black-Jewish Alliance?" (Salon, 2021)
Support
To reach Harvard Divinity School's faculty coordinators, email div-faculty_coordinators@calists.harvard.edu.
For media inquiries or requests, please contact Michael Naughton in the Office of Communications.