Terrence L. Johnson
· Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious StudiesHarvard University · Faculty of Divinity
Active 1998–2026
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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…
Research topics
- History
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Archaeology
- Art
- Philosophy
- Aesthetics
- Religious studies
- Gender studies
- Epistemology
Selected publications
Columbia University Press eBooks · 2021 · 42 citations
1st authorCorrespondingTerrence L. Johnson argues that the Black radical tradition derives its force from its unacknowledged ethical and religious dimensions. We Testify with Our Lives traces Black religion's sustained influence from SNCC to the present, reconstructing a radical lived ethics of freedom and justice.
Duke University Press eBooks · 2020 · 11 citations
Affective Trajectories explores affective and emotional experiences as manifestations of religion in the rapidly shifting conditions of postcolonial African urban spaces and the diaspora. The editors define the term "affective trajectory" as the force of affect in the religious lives of individuals and communities; it is a network of people, religious forces, and material places that are established, dissolved, and remade, and a mode of articulating time-space coordinates that include, for insta…
2021-08-17 · 2 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingPolice killings of unarmed Black people have ignited a national and international response unlike any in decades. But differing from their civil rights-oriented predecessors, today's activists do not think that the institutions and values of liberal democracy can eradicate structural racism. They draw instead on a Black radical tradition that, Terrence L. Johnson argues, derives its force from its unacknowledged ethical and religious dimensions.We Testify with Our Lives traces Black religion's s…
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
Perspectives on Politics · 2026-04-10
article1st 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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