Sarah Kathleen Johnson
Assistant Professor | Faculy of theology
Profile
Sarah Kathleen Johnson is Assistant Professor of Liturgy and Pastoral Theology, Director of Undergraduate Studies (BA, MTS, MDiv), and Director of Anglican Studies.
She 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. She is the author of Occasional Religious Practice: Valuing a Very Ordinary Religious Experience (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Dr. Johnson is ordained for ministry in Mennonite Church Canada and was appointed an Honorary Canon of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa in 2025. She served as the president of the Canadian Theological Society (2023-2024).
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
- Introduction to Ministry
- Sociological Perspectives on Christian Community
- Liturgy and Experience: An Introduction to Christian Worship
- Issues and Debates in Contemporary Ethics: Liturgy and Ethics in Times of Crisis
Books
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. Occasional Religious Practice: Valuing a Very Ordinary Religious Experience. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Andrew Wymer, eds. Worship and Power: Liturgical Authority in Free Church Traditions. Worship and Witness Series, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Cascade, 2023.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, ed. Voices Together: Worship Leader Edition. MennoMedia, 2020.
Kauffman, Bradley, Benjamin Bergey, Sarah Kathleen Johnson, and Adam M. L. Tice, eds. Voices Together. MennoMedia, 2020.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. Youth Worship Sourcebook. MennoMedia, 2009.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, Audrey Seah, and Erik Sorensen. “The Cow and the Canoe: Ritual Responses to Crisis in Rwanda and Canada.” Journal of Global Catholicism 9.3 (2025): 30-77.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Nathan Chase. “Occasional Religious Practice in Early Christianity.” Questions Liturgiques 104.3-4 (2024): 129-154.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Evolving Liturgy and Enduring Hybridity: An Ecumenical Ethnographic Study of Four Pandemic Holy Weeks.” Ecclesial Practices 11.2 (2024): 107-127.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Looking and Listening for Lived Theologies of Truth and Reconciliation: Learning from a Diffuse Art Installation in the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.” Toronto Journal of Theology 40.2 (2024): 176-192.
Graber, Katie, Anneli Loepp Thiessen, and Sarah Kathleen Johnson. “Centring Relationship: The Necessity and Complexity of Worshiping with Songs and Prayers with Connections to Indigenous Communities.” Conrad Grebel Review 41.1 (2023): 18-52.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Anneli Loepp Thiessen. “Contemporary Worship Music as an Ecumenical Liturgical Movement.” Worship 97 (2023): 204-229.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Free Church Worship: Renewed from Within and Beyond.” Liturgy 37.4 (2022): 40-46.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Crisis, Solidarity, and Ritual in Religiously Diverse Settings: A Unitarian Universalist Case Study.” Religions 13.7 (2022): 614. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13070614
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Adam M. L. Tice. “Our Journey with Just and Faithful Language: The Story of a Twenty-First-Century Mennonite Hymnal.” The Hymn 73.2 (Spring 2022): 17-27.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Online Communion, Christian Community, and Receptive Ecumenism: A Holy Week Ethnography during COVID-19.” Studia Liturgica 50.2 (2020): 188-210.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Hubmaier’s Milk Pail: Anabaptist Baptism, Rituals of Resistance, and Liturgical Authority.” Worship 93 (2019): 300-322.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Poured Out: A Kenotic Approach to Initiating Children at a Distance from the Church.” Studia Liturgica 49.2 (2019): 175-194.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “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.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “On Our Knees: Christian Ritual in Residential Schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.” Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 47.1 (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 (2018): 10-16.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Meeting Mystery in Mennonite Worship: Presence as Absence Empowers Ethics.” Worship 84.3 (2010): 253-274.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “The ‘Shared Convictions’ of Mennonite World Conference in Developmental Context and Ecumenical, Anabaptist, and Global Perspective.” Conrad Grebel Review 27.1 (2009): 36-56.
Other Articles and Chapters
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Exploring an Ecumenical Feast of Creation: A Free Church Perspective and Attending to the Experience of Ordinary Worshipers.” Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy (2025): 23-27.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Tradition and Hope: A Mennonite Chain of Memory.” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 25.1 (2024): 14-20.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “Domination, Resistance, Solidarity: An Analysis of Power in the Making of a Mennonite Worship Book.” In Worship and Power: Liturgical Authority in Free Church Traditions, edited by Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Andrew Wymer, 75-95. Cascade, 2023
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Andrew Wymer. “Introduction: Liturgical Authority in Free Church Traditions.” In Worship and Power: Liturgical Authority in Free Church Traditions, edited by Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Andrew Wymer, 1-24. Cascade, 2023
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. “The Problem of Mennonite Worship Leadership becoming ‘Women’s Work.’” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 23.1 (2022): 23-32.
Bear, Carl, and Sarah Kathleen Johnson. “Singing with the Early and Medieval Church through Voices Together.” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 23.1 (2022): 75-84.