Dr. Sarah Kathleen Johnson

Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology and Worship

Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow

Education

Ph.D. University of Notre Dame (2021)

M.A.R. Yale Divinity School (2010)

M.T.S. University of Waterloo/Conrad Grebel University College (2008)

B.A. University of Waterloo/St. Jerome's University (2007)

Teaching and Research

Dr. Johnson is a practical theologian who studies Christian worship in the context of a changing North American religious landscape. Her research at the intersection of liturgical studies and sociology of religion employs qualitative methods that value everyday religious experience. Commitments to interrogating the relationship between liturgy and ethics and engaging ecumenically across Christian traditions ground her research, teaching, and church leadership.

Dr. Johnson served on the editorial team for the Mennonite hymnal and worship book, Voices Together (2020), and is the editor of the Voices Together: Worship Leader Edition (2020). Originally from Waterloo, Ontario, she is affiliated with Mennonite Church Canada and was as a pastor in Ottawa.

Selected Publications

“Online Communion, Christian Community, and Receptive Ecumenism: A Holy Week Ethnography during COVID-19.” Studia Liturgica 50.2 (2020): 188-210.

“Hubmaier’s Milk Pail: Anabaptist Baptism, Rituals of Resistance, and Liturgical Authority.” Worship 93 (October 2019): 300-322.

“Poured Out: A Kenotic Approach to Initiating Children at a Distance from the Church.” Studia Liturgica 49.2 (2019): 175-194.

“Trinitarian Worship for a Radical Church?” invited response to John D. Rempel, “An Impossible Task: Trinitarian Theology for a Radical Church?” Conrad Grebel Review 37.2 (2019): 171-179.

“On Our Knees: Christian Ritual in Residential Schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.” Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 47.1 (March 2018): 3-24.

Bear, Carl, and Sarah Kathleen Johnson. “Medieval Hymns on Modern Lips: An Analysis of Medieval Texts and Tunes in Twenty-First-Century Protestant Hymnals.” The Hymn 69.1 (Winter 2018): 10-16.

“Meeting Mystery in Mennonite Worship: Presence as Absence Empowers Ethics.” Worship 84.3 (May 2010): 253-274.

“The ‘Shared Convictions’ of Mennonite World Conference in Developmental Context and Ecumenical, Anabaptist and Global Perspective.” Conrad Grebel Review 27.1 (Winter 2009): 36-56.