Faculty > Profile

Sarah Kathleen Johnson

Assistant Professor

Sarah.Kathleen.Johnson@ustpaul.ca

613-236-1393, ext. :

GIG 356

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. Dr. Johnson is ordained for ministry in Mennonite Church Eastern Canada. She currently serves as the president of the Canadian Theological Society (2023-2024).

Courses taught

Education

Publications

Books

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. Eugene: Cascade, 2023.

Editor. Voices Together: Worship Leader Edition. Harrisonburg: MennoMedia, 2020.

Kauffman, Bradley, Benjamin Bergey, Sarah Kathleen Johnson, Adam M. L. Tice, eds. Voices Together. Harrisonburg: MennoMedia, 2020.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Anneli Loepp Thiessen. “Contemporary Worship Music as an Ecumenical Liturgical Movement.” Worship 97 (2023): 204-229.

“Free Church Worship: Renewed from Within and Beyond.” Liturgy 37.4 (2022): 40-46.

“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.

“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.

Other Articles and Chapters

“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, ed. Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Andrew Wymer (Eugene: Cascade, 2023), 75-95.

Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Andrew Wymer. “Introduction: Liturgical Authority in Free Church Traditions,” In Worship and Power: Liturgical Authority in Free Church Traditions, ed. Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Andrew Wymer (Eugene: Cascade, 2023), 1-24.

“The Problem of Mennonite Worship Leadership becoming ‘Women’s Work.’” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 23.1 (Spring 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 (Spring 2022): 75-84.