Russell Johnson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3891600 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Russell Johnson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Russell |
| FAMILY NAME | Johnson |
| SIGNATURE | JOHNSON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6303-912X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
‘A Communication Ethic of Dialogic Reformation
A Communication Ethic of Dialogic Reformation: Nicholas of Cusa on Care for Communities in Crisis, by Michael R. Kearney. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2025. 230 pp. Hardcover USD $150.00. ISBN: 9783525502167
On Believing
Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work stands out in its attention to grammar as a philosophical category. He writes, “Essence is expressed in grammar. . . . Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.”1 A characteristically Wittgensteinian philosophical move is to reorient one's perspective on a philosophical problem by changing the part of speech, as it were. Debates over reason (as a noun) can be clarified if we ask instead about when someone …
Matthew Elia, ‘The Problem of the Christian Master
Matthew Elia, The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024, pp. 296, US$45.00, ISBN 9780300266597 (hbk)
A Thinking Reed
The Next Word
precis: Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, "There is no final theology," by which he meant that every theology is partial, possibly expressing a valuable truth but never encompassing the totality of the truth. For Tutu, the way we go about navigating conflicts, in theology and beyond, involves a recognition that we have neither the first word nor the last word. We are always already participating in an ongoing dialogical interaction. By comparing…
The Arc of the Moral Universe
Christian witness needs to tell a story in which people can recognize themselves, including political opponents and those who currently benefit from social injustice. It is this capacity to imagine a role for the enemy within the beloved community that separates Christian protest from the politics of resentment. This constructive component of activism makes the critical edge credible, and this is not just a matter of messaging but of theological …
Navigating Post-Truth and Alternative Facts
Since the 1960s or early 1970s, there has been an ongoing academic conversation, perhaps we can call it a field in its own right, in which scientifically-minded religion scholars and humanistically-minded scientists have discussed areas of overlap between these two discourses. This ongoing conversation—in this volume variously styled “religion and science,” “religion-and-science,” “religion/science,” “science and religion,” “Science and Religion,…
The Gospel in a Polarized Society
Political polarization is a phenomenon in which people with a variety of commitments cluster into two opposing camps whose animosity against one another is often disproportionate to their actual disagreements. Polarization is not simply a social atmosphere that makes Christian activism and ecumenism difficult; it also runs contrary to the vision of intergroup reconciliation outlined in Ephesians. After describing how polarization is a theological…
Introducing Prophetic Pragmatism
How does one categorize Cornel West? He describes himself on multiple occasions as a “neo-Gramscian pragmatist,” a “Jesus-centered intellectual bluesman,” and a “card-carrying Kierkegaardian—with a strong Chekhovian twist—and a Marxist-informed radical democrat with a tragicomic sense of life.” West seems intentionally cagy about being sorted into a particular school of thought. The resources he draws upon are too eclectic and the work he does wi…
Building Peace in a Culture War
This article argues that Christians committed to peace must attend more fully to the political and discursive climate of democratic society. In social conflicts characterized by mutual distrust, voices of dissent are routinely distorted or dismissed. Polarization is one of the biblical “powers” that oppose and obscure the Reign of God. Drawing on conflict transformation literature and Anabaptist ecclesiology, I argue that political theologians mu…
The Perilous Sayings
Doing Justice to Difference
Stanley Hauerwas’s theology is widely read as a rejection of the world in favor of the church, and thus the antithesis of politically‐engaged, publicly‐minded theologies like Reinhold Niebuhr's. However, Hauerwas's critical work can be more fruitfully understood as an effort in disambiguating concepts like “love” and “justice.” Attending to the role language plays in Hauerwas's thought shows how neo‐Anabaptist theology acts as a corrective to, no…
The Ministering Critic
This paper analyzes Kierkegaard's scattered writings on communication to foreground the distinctively theological dimension of Kierkegaard's rhetorical theory. "Indirect communication" needs to be understood as a strategy to address a specific theological problem, namely, the tendency for readers who think they are already Christian to dismiss or domesticate rhetoric that summons them to authentic Christian existence. Since Christianity is an "ex…
The gospel and the prosperity gospel
By examining how theologians and lay scholars should respond to the prosperity gospel, this article argues that theological criticism is less a matter of wholesale rejection of false views and more a matter of expanding partial views. Drawing on Pascal and Kierkegaard, I describe what dialectic means for Christian witness. Their insights help us to criticize compassionately - in Paul's words, to speak the truth in love
Building Peace in a Culture War
This article argues that Christians committed to peace must attend more fully to the political and discursive climate of democratic society. In social conflicts characterized by mutual distrust, voices of dissent are routinely distorted or dismissed. Polarization is one of the biblical “powers” that oppose and obscure the Reign of God. Drawing on conflict transformation literature and Anabaptist ecclesiology, I argue that political theologians mu…
The gospel and the prosperity gospel
By examining how theologians and lay scholars should respond to the prosperity gospel, this article argues that theological criticism is less a matter of wholesale rejection of false views and more a matter of expanding partial views. Drawing on Pascal and Kierkegaard, I describe what dialectic means for Christian witness. Their insights help us to criticize compassionately - in Paul's words, to speak the truth in love
The Perilous Sayings
Doing Justice to Difference
Stanley Hauerwas’s theology is widely read as a rejection of the world in favor of the church, and thus the antithesis of politically‐engaged, publicly‐minded theologies like Reinhold Niebuhr's. However, Hauerwas's critical work can be more fruitfully understood as an effort in disambiguating concepts like “love” and “justice.” Attending to the role language plays in Hauerwas's thought shows how neo‐Anabaptist theology acts as a corrective to, no…
The Ministering Critic
This paper analyzes Kierkegaard's scattered writings on communication to foreground the distinctively theological dimension of Kierkegaard's rhetorical theory. "Indirect communication" needs to be understood as a strategy to address a specific theological problem, namely, the tendency for readers who think they are already Christian to dismiss or domesticate rhetoric that summons them to authentic Christian existence. Since Christianity is an "ex…
Introducing Prophetic Pragmatism
How does one categorize Cornel West? He describes himself on multiple occasions as a “neo-Gramscian pragmatist,” a “Jesus-centered intellectual bluesman,” and a “card-carrying Kierkegaardian—with a strong Chekhovian twist—and a Marxist-informed radical democrat with a tragicomic sense of life.” West seems intentionally cagy about being sorted into a particular school of thought. The resources he draws upon are too eclectic and the work he does wi…
Building Peace in a Culture War
This article argues that Christians committed to peace must attend more fully to the political and discursive climate of democratic society. In social conflicts characterized by mutual distrust, voices of dissent are routinely distorted or dismissed. Polarization is one of the biblical “powers” that oppose and obscure the Reign of God. Drawing on conflict transformation literature and Anabaptist ecclesiology, I argue that political theologians mu…
Navigating Post-Truth and Alternative Facts
Since the 1960s or early 1970s, there has been an ongoing academic conversation, perhaps we can call it a field in its own right, in which scientifically-minded religion scholars and humanistically-minded scientists have discussed areas of overlap between these two discourses. This ongoing conversation—in this volume variously styled “religion and science,” “religion-and-science,” “religion/science,” “science and religion,” “Science and Religion,…
The Gospel in a Polarized Society
Political polarization is a phenomenon in which people with a variety of commitments cluster into two opposing camps whose animosity against one another is often disproportionate to their actual disagreements. Polarization is not simply a social atmosphere that makes Christian activism and ecumenism difficult; it also runs contrary to the vision of intergroup reconciliation outlined in Ephesians. After describing how polarization is a theological…
The Arc of the Moral Universe
Christian witness needs to tell a story in which people can recognize themselves, including political opponents and those who currently benefit from social injustice. It is this capacity to imagine a role for the enemy within the beloved community that separates Christian protest from the politics of resentment. This constructive component of activism makes the critical edge credible, and this is not just a matter of messaging but of theological …
On Believing
Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work stands out in its attention to grammar as a philosophical category. He writes, “Essence is expressed in grammar. . . . Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.”1 A characteristically Wittgensteinian philosophical move is to reorient one's perspective on a philosophical problem by changing the part of speech, as it were. Debates over reason (as a noun) can be clarified if we ask instead about when someone …
Matthew Elia, ‘The Problem of the Christian Master
Matthew Elia, The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024, pp. 296, US$45.00, ISBN 9780300266597 (hbk)
A Thinking Reed
The Next Word
precis: Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, "There is no final theology," by which he meant that every theology is partial, possibly expressing a valuable truth but never encompassing the totality of the truth. For Tutu, the way we go about navigating conflicts, in theology and beyond, involves a recognition that we have neither the first word nor the last word. We are always already participating in an ongoing dialogical interaction. By comparing…
‘A Communication Ethic of Dialogic Reformation
A Communication Ethic of Dialogic Reformation: Nicholas of Cusa on Care for Communities in Crisis, by Michael R. Kearney. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2025. 230 pp. Hardcover USD $150.00. ISBN: 9783525502167
Philosophy (9 works) · Theology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Politics (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Gospel (3 works) · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics (3 works)