Terrence L. Johnson
· Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious StudiesHarvard University · Faculty of Divinity
Active 1998–2026
About
Terrence L. Johnson is the Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies, Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and director of Religion and Public Life. 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, weaving together African American religions, political theory, and American history to explore broad conceptual schemes related to religion, democracy, ethics, liberalism, justice, and freedom. He is the author of several books, including Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue (2022), which won 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). Johnson also serves as co-editor of the Duke University Press Series 'Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People.' Currently, he is completing a manuscript titled Torn Asunder: Race and Religion in the Shadow of Law and Justice, under contract with Columbia University Press, and is co-writing a book on ethics and law with M. Cathleen Kaveny. He is a faculty associate of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics and a member of the Corporation at Haverford College. In 2024-25, he is an inaugural Steven M. Polan Fellow in Constitutional Law and History at the Brennan Center for Justice, engaging in debates on the meaning and promise of the U.S. constitution.
Research topics
- History
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Archaeology
- Art
- Philosophy
- Aesthetics
- Religious studies
- Gender studies
- Epistemology
- Anthropology
Selected publications
Perspectives on Politics · 2026-04-10
article1st authorCorrespondingReligion and American Nationalism
2025-12-24
other1st authorCorrespondingThis chapter explores the intersection of religion and nationalism in the United States, focusing on David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. It argues that Walker's work exemplifies the complex interplay between religious and political metaphors in shaping American national identity. The analysis highlights Walker's historical biblical exegesis as an example of Black revolutionary political thought and insurrectionist ethics, which critiques the metaphysics of enslavement. Furthermore, it discusses how Walker's Appeal underscores the entanglement of American nationalism with biblical myths and tropes, ritualized through political acts, economic decisions, and moral claims. The chapter also explores Walker's critique of Thomas Jefferson's racist views and his inspiration of Black abolitionists. It concludes by arguing that slavery is the tether between Christianity and the rise of the modern political community, where violence and captivity sustain the nation's financial and moral economies. The study concludes that Walker's Appeal serves as a critical case study for understanding the role of religion in US nation-building and the interplay between religion and politics in nineteenth-century America.
Black Faith and the Ethics of Human Dignity
Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics · 2024-01-01
article1st authorCorrespondingDr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s theology and rights-based activism remain highly relevant in a constitutional democracy. However, King’s use of human dignity in his early sermons as an extension of political rights faces serious challenges from Black leftist political writers and the Black Lives Matter movement. At issue is the extent to which human dignity should be examined as a distinct political, aesthetic, and moral category that must be explored and embraced more explicitly and wholeheartedly in Black politics and political theory. Bracketing human dignity inside the category of political rights, which King often did in his early writings, undermines the comprehensive nature of antiblack racism and limits the scope and range of questions and resources we might employ to address the social ontology of Blackness. A sustained attention to human dignity provides an opportunity for new scholarly direction in the study of Black politics and political thought by expanding the boundaries of the political and creating space for morality and Black religion in the political (leftist) imaginary.
Bad Faith and the Contours of Black Consciousness
Small Axe A Caribbean Journal of Criticism · 2024-03-01
article1st authorCorrespondingThis discussion essay examines Lewis R. Gordon’s Fear of Black Consciousness (2022) and his analysis of ethics and politics within Black political philosophy. Gordon’s interdisciplinary book weaves together film, jazz, Judaism, and Egyptology (for instance) to interrogate the limits of political liberal concepts such as liberty, justice, and equality for analyzing and addressing anti-Black racism. A central concern facing Gordon is the degree to which bad faith is ignored or underexamined in political philosophy and public debates on social justice and freedom. Exploring how the racialization of the “Black” informs competing responses to anti-Blackness among Black and non-Black communities, this essay weighs the usefulness of Gordon’s metareflective framing for understanding the tension and significance of religion and moral claims in developing theories of freedom within Black political philosophy.
Religion and Politics in the United States: An Overview
2024-01-01
other1st authorCorrespondingThis article interrogates the origins, philosophy, and contradictions of religious freedom and public reason in the United States. The author highlights the tension between Church and State through the lens of the Constitution, its framers, and the evolution of Protestant Christianity in America. This article examines how the Enlightenment and religious claims constructed an ideological framework that placed people of African origin as culturally, morally, and legally inferior to those of European descent. The paper reveals the complexities of Anglo-American liberalism and its notions of religious freedom, particularly how claims of religious liberty cemented and defined racial and gender hierarchies. To grapple with the role of religion in the public, the author turns to American political theorist John Rawls and carves out a place for religion and religious commitments in Rawls’s model of liberalism and public discourse. The article reads Rawls as a guide for developing a public reason that expands, deepens, and delineates public dialogue as a tool for addressing existential political and social issues. The article pinpoints the limits of ideal theory and Rawls’s conceptions of political justice, to raise important questions of race, religion, and democratic participation. Lastly, this paper proposes the Black institutional church as a model for how religion can work to expand rights and articulate moral claims. The author demonstrates how religion is both a challenge and a potential resource in navigating pluralism and cultivating hope in democratic transformation.
Perspectives on Politics · 2023-03-01
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Perspectives on Politics · 2023-03-01
article1st authorCorrespondingAn abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
HTR volume 116 issue 3 Cover and Front matter
Harvard Theological Review · 2023-07-01
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Religion in American Public Life
2022-01-01 · 1 citations
other1st authorCorrespondingRecent discussions in moral philosophy focus on the role of religion in public debates on social justice. Following the lead of John Rawls, many liberals distinguish political concerns from religious ones. The distinction is often justified as a way to avoid the impasse that may emerge when persons
5. HUMANISTIC NATIONALISM AND THE ETHICAL TURN
Columbia University Press eBooks · 2021-09-09
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 48 shared
Marian Burchardt
Leipzig University
- 26 shared
Jacob K. Olúpònà
Harvard University Press
- 26 shared
Dianne M. Stewart
Emory University
- 16 shared
Josh Cohen
New York University Press
- 16 shared
J J Kimche
Harvard University Press
- 16 shared
Chance Bonar
Tufts University
- 16 shared
Francis X. Clooney
Episcopal Divinity School
- 16 shared
Joe P R O D U C T I O N S Ta F F Chance Bonar
New York University Press
Awards & honors
- Outstanding Book award by the Association for Ethnic Studies…
- Steven M.. Polan Fellow in Constitutional Law and History at…
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