Terrence L. Johnson

Dr. Terrence L. (Kojo) Johnson joined Candler in August 2026 as the Mary Lee Hardin Willard Dean. An internationally recognized scholar, academic leader, and ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, he previously served as the director of Religion and Public Life and Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School. Prior to this, he held faculty and administrative leadership positions at Haverford College and Georgetown University.

A distinguished scholar of African American religion, ethics, and politics, Johnson examines the moral foundations of public life and the responsibilities of religious and educational institutions in a pluralistic society. His interdisciplinary work brings African American religious thought into conversation with political theory and American history, with particular attention to justice, freedom, and law.

His recognized work in cross-cultural leadership development prepares scholars and institutional leaders to lead across differences with intellectual agility, cultural fluency, and a shared sense of purpose.

Johnson is the author of four books and numerous scholarly and popular articles, as well as the founding editor and co-editor of two book series: Race, Politics, and Religion (Georgetown University Press) and Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People (Duke University Press). His most recent book is Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue, co-written with Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown University Press, 2022); Torn Asunder: Race and Religion in the Shadow of Law and Justice is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

In 2024-2025, he was among five scholars chosen as inaugural Steven M. Polan Fellows in Constitutional Law and History at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. He is deeply committed to the liberal arts and sciences, graduate education, and preparing principled scholars and leaders.

BOOKS

Torn Asunder: Race and Religion in the Shadow of Law and Justice, Columbia University Press, forthcoming

Series co-founder and co-editor, “Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People,“ Duke University Press, 2014-present

Co-author with Jacques Berlinerblau, Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue, Georgetown University Press, 2022

We Testify with Our Lives: How Religion Transformed Radical Thought from Black Power to Black Lives Matter, Columbia University Press, 2021

Founding series editor, Race, Politics, and Religion, Georgetown University Press, 2021–Present

Tragic Soul-Life: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2012