Karen Johnson

Biography

I am a historian of race and religion in the twentieth century United States.

My passion is to bring to light the knotty problems of religion and race in American history to help foster flourishing for all people. During my seminary MA program, I first began to see race. There, I started studying the intersection of religion and race in U.S. History, which was both a historical interest and a personal one because of how my own personal, social and church life had been shaped by these forces I did not see. I studied the subject further in my doctoral work, and it was a gift to be able to write the history of people who tried to bring their faith to bear in positive ways on the issues of race in American history. I also learned how complicated and difficult race is. While working on my doctorate, my husband and I lived in Chicago's Austin neighborhood. There (as a white person who could no longer easily ignore race), I learned about race and religion from my neighbors there, by being white in a mostly-black neighborhood, and from the people at Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church, the interracial church where we were members. This context shaped the writing of my first book, One in Christ: Chicago Catholics and the Quest for Interracial Justice, which was a joy to write.

The classes I teach at Wheaton often explore these issues from a variety of perspectives, and I love to learn alongside my students. I also have the privilege of training future social studies teachers, which helps me consistently refine my own pedagogy. I am currently editing a book called Understanding and Teaching Religion in U.S. History, with Jonathan Yeager, which will be a resource for high school and college history teachers.

My next two book projects are a general history of religion and race in U.S. history for non-academics, and a history of race, Christianity and place in Chicago and its suburbs in the post-civil rights era.

Education

University of Illinois at Chicago
Ph. D., History, 2013

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
M. A., Christian Thought, 2006

Carleton College
B. A., History, 2003

Areas of Expertise

Urban History
Civil Rights
Religion and Race
Teaching History
U.S. History

Presentations

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND ENDOWED LECTURES

“Catholic Social Thought and Civil Rights,” Haid Symposium on Southern Catholicism, October 2024 (invited participant).

“Clarence Jordan’s Love Letter to White Christians,” American Society of Church History, January 2025 (panel organizer: Evangelical Christians and the Politics of Reform in Twentieth Century America).

“Keeping the Faith: John Perkins and the Intersection of Belief and Action in the Civil Rights Movement,” American Society of Church History, January 2024.

“Teaching Historical Thinking Using the History of Race in America,” American Society of Church History, January 2024 (panel organizer: Teaching the Histories of Race and Christianity in American History).

“Expanding the Laity’s Role in the Church,” Respondent to Mark A. Noll’s “C.S. Lewis for American Roman Catholics, 1936-1947,” Ken & Jean Hansen Lectureship Series, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, January 2022.

“The Significance of Parish Boundaries,” Roundtable, American Society of Church History, January 2021.

“Understanding and Teaching Religion in U.S. History,” chair (panel organizer), American Historical Association, January 2020.

“Racial Housing Integration, Suburbanization, and Debates over America’s Judeo-Christian Heritage,” American Historical Association, January 2020.

“Talking About Religion and Race in History Classrooms,” American Historical Association, January 2020.

“When Institutions Don’t Practice What They Preach,” Roundtable Member, Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities Diversity Conference, October 2019.

Inaugural Margaret Diddams ’83 Annual Lecture on Faith and Learning, Wheaton College, “Place Matters: The Vocation of Where We Live and How We Live There,” February 2019.

“Black Catholics and White Priests: The Costs of Organizing Across Parish Boundaries,” American Historical Association, January 2019 (panel organizer: Black Catholics in a White Church: Negotiating Racial Exclusion in Chicago).

“One in Christ: Christians and Race in the Northern Civil Rights Movement,” Clara Holt Annual Lecture at Point Loma Nazarene University, November 2018.

“Religion and Suburban Integration,” Society of the Study of U.S. Intellectual History,” November, 2018.

“Believing Sources and Teaching Historical Thinking,” Conference on Faith and History, September 2018.

"History, Christianity and Race," Lumen Research Institute Conference on The State of the Evangelical Mind, September 2017.

"Placing Vocation for Human Flourishing," Evangelical Theological Society Southeastern Meeting, March 2017.

"Religion in the Chicago Freedom Movement," American Historical Association, January 2017.

"Remembering Emmett Till: On the Importance of Teaching White Supremacy," Conference on Faith and History, October 2016 (panel organizer: The Significance of America's Racial Past in the Present).

Roundtable Comment on Edward Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898), Conference on Faith and History, October 2016 (panel organizer).

"The Chicago Freedom Movement: Race and Religion in an American City," Urban History Association, October 2016.

"Lay Women and Priests in the Second City: Going Beyond LaFarge for Catholic Interracial Activism's Origins," American Catholic Historical Association, March 2015.

"Religion and Suburban Integration," Urban History Association, October 2014.

“Integrating the Suburbs: Black Catholic Pioneers and the Debate Over Religion in the Public Square,” American Historical Association, January 2014 (panel organizer: The Long Civil Rights Movement, Catholics, and the American Century).

“Catholic and Protestant Approaches to Reconciliation: Creating Spaces of Reconciliation in a Structurally Segregated Society,” John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation: National Symposium, May, 2013.

“Race, Religion and Civil Rights: Catholic Youth and the Push for Interracial Justice in 1930s Chicago,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, November 2012.

“Catholic Pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement: Lay Women, Race, and Interracial Justice,” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, April 2012.

“Catholic Women and the Civil Rights Movement,” Loyola University’s Women in Leadership Archives Lecture Series, January 2012.

INVITED TALKS, NOMINATIONS AND DOCUMENTARY CONTRIBUTIONS

Keynote speaker, Christian Educators Diversity Alliance, Biblical Principles for Color and Culture in Christian Schools: A Call to Action Conference at Wheaton College, June 2024.

Panelist, “From Darkness to Light: Exploring Celebration, Lamentation, and Repentance as a Campus Community,” Historical Review Task Force Implementation, Wheaton College, November, 2023.

“The Stories We Carry: Practices that Uncover the Racial Narratives that Shape our Classrooms,” with Andrew Hart (Messiah College), Project on Lived Theology’s Lift Every Voice and Teach, Hamline University, 2023.

“Positionality and Self Care,” with Rebecca Kim (Pepperdine University), Patricia Brown (Azuza Pacific University) and Nicholas Rowe (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Project on Lived Theology’s Lift Every Voice and Teach, Hamline University, 2023.

“Lunch and Learn with Karen Johnson,” Human Needs and Global Resources Wheaton College, 2023.

“Race in America: How Race and Christianity Intersect,” Wyndemere Community, 2023.

Respondent, “The Evangelical Mind in a Social Media Age: A Conversation with Mark Noll,” Wheaton College Faith and Learning, 2022.

Hansen Lecture, Respondent to Mark Noll, “C.S. Lewis for American Roman Catholics, 1936-1947,” Wheaton College, 2022.

Nominated for Emerging Public Intellectual Award, Redeemer University, 2021.

Common Good: The Story of the York Center Cooperative, Tim Frakes and Lombard Historical Society, 2021.

“Placing Vocation,” Wheaton College Humanities Colloquium, 2017.

“Teaching Race,” Wheaton College First Year Seminar Faculty, 2017.

“Wrestling with America’s Racial Past,” Wheaton College, 2017.

"Catholics, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement," Glen Ellyn Public Library, 2015.

"Catholics, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement," Wheaton College Humanities Colloquium, 2014.

“Catholics, Race, and Civil Rights,” Valparaiso University, 2013.

“Catholics, Race, and Civil Rights,” UIC Brown Bag Seminar, 2013.

Courses Taught

American History from 1865
Sports in US History
Sports and Christianity
U.S. History since 1945
The Civil Rights Movement
American Cities and Suburbs
Race and Ethnicity in U.S. History
Methods of Social Studies Instruction
Race, Justice, and Reconciliation in U.S. History
First Year Seminar: Place Matters

Selected Publications

BOOKS

Johnson, Karen J. One in Christ: Chicago Catholics and the Quest for Interracial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Johnson, Karen J. and Jonathan Yeager, Understanding and Teaching Religion in U.S. History. University of Wisconsin Press, 2024.

Johnson, Karen J. Ordinary Heroes for Racial Justice: A History of Christians in Action. Intervarsity Press Academic, 2025.

PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

Johnson, Karen J. “Talking About Religion and Race in the Classroom.” In Understanding and Teaching Religion in U.S. History, ed. Karen J. Johnson and Jonathan Yeager. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2024.

Johnson, Karen J. “Response to ‘Surprise: Roman Catholics as Lewis’s First and Most Appreciative Readers.’” In C.S. Lewis in America: Readings and Reception, 1935-1947 by Mark Noll,” 35-48. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2023.

Johnson, Karen J. “A Pedagogy of Healing.” In Lament and Justice in African American History, ed. Trisha Posey. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023.

Johnson, Karen J. “To Believe or Not to Believe? Using Religious Sources to Teach Historical Thinking.” Fides et Historia 52 (1), 2020.

Johnson, Karen J. “Using Lament in the History Classroom to Engage the History of Race in America.” Fides et Historia, 50 (2), 2018: 114-123.

Johnson, Karen J. “Shaping Affections: Remembering Our Racial Pasts and Institutional Lament.” Christian Scholar’s Review 67 (4), 2018, 445-454.

Johnson, Karen J. "Another Long Civil Rights Movement: How Catholic Interracialists Used the Resources of Their Faith to Tear Down Racial Hierarchies," American Catholic Studies 126 (4), 2015: 1-27.

Johnson, Karen J. “Beyond Parish Boundaries: Black Catholics and the Quest for Racial Justice,” Religion & American Culture 25 (2), 2015: 264-300.

Johnson, Karen J. “Healing the Mystical Body: Catholic Attempts to Overcome the Racial Divide in the Depression and World War II,” in Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by Faith, ed. J. Russell Hawkins and Phillip Luke Sinitiere (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

BOOK REVIEWS

Johnson, Karen J. “Review of Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America’s Most Infamous Pilot, by Christopher Gehrz,” Fides et Historia, 55 (1): 2023.

Johnson, Karen J. “Review of Blood and Faith: Christianity in White American Nationalism, by Damon T. Berry.” Fides et Historia, 50 (2), 2018: 196-198.

Johnson, Karen J. “Review of Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migration, by Matthew Cressler.” Review of Religious Research, 2018.

Johnson, Karen J. “Review of Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois, by Kerry Pimblott.” Church History, 87 (3), 2018: 956.

Johnson, Karen J. “Review of Crossing Parish Boundaries: Race, Sports, and Catholic Youth in Chicago, 1914–1954, by Timothy B. Neary.” Journal of Illinois History 18 (2018): 224–25

Johnson, Karen J. "Review of Salvation with a Smile: Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church & American Christianity, by Phillip Luke Sinitiere," Sociology of Religion Journal, Winter, 2017, 446-447.

Johnson, Karen J. "Review of Lincoln Rice, Healing the Racial Divide: A Catholic Racial Justice Framework Inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls," American Catholic Studies, Winter 2015.

GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS AND SELECTIVE SEMINARS

Project on Lived Theology’s Lift Every Voice and Teach, 2021-2023 (Lilly Endowment).

Teacher Scholar Vital Worship Grant, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, 2021-2022.

John Stott Faculty Research/Study Leave Grant, 2022.

Sabbatical Grant, 2021 (Wheaton College).

John Stott Faculty Research Grant. 2020, 2021, 2023

Center for Faith and Innovation Faculty Fellow. 2019-2020 (Wheaton College).

Junior Faculty Achievement Award. 2019 (Wheaton College).

Best Faith and Learning Paper from 2016-2018. 2019 (Wheaton College).

Aldeen Award. 2016 (Wheaton College).

Opus Theology of Vocation Scholar. 2016-2017 (Wheaton College).

OTHER PUBLICATIONS AND BLOGS

Johnson, Karen and Drew G. Hart, “Workshop Notes: Identifying Racial Narratives,” The Mahle Lectures Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2024). DOI: https://doi.org/10.61335/2997-0172.1015

Johnson, Karen. “The Postures of Lament in the Classroom,” Christian Scholar’s Review Blog, March 30, 2022.

Johnson, Karen. “Let Justice Roll Down.” Conference on Faith and History Devotional, Baylor University Press, 2020.

Johnson, Karen. “Engaging Empathy, Disgust, and Lament,” The Anxious Bench, 20 November 2018, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2018/11/engaging-empathy-disgust-lament/.

Religion in American History Blog (http://usreligion.blogspot.com). I wrote a bi-monthly post from 2013-2018. At the time, the blog had over 500 hits/day, 1200 Facebook friends, and 800 followers on Twitter.

Johnson, Karen. “Wrestling On and Remembering American Christians’ Racial Past,” In Wrestle On, Jacob, ed. Jill Baumgaertner, 41-45. Wheaton, IL: Wheaton College, 2017.

Johnson, Karen J. “African Americans” and “Religion” in American Centuries: The Ideas, Issues, and Trends that Made U.S. History: Volume 5, The Twentieth Century, ed. Robert D. Johnston, (New York: Facts on File, 2011).

Johnson, Karen J. “African Americans,” in Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History, Volume 4, 1878-1920, ed. Robert D. Johnston (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2010).

Johnson, Karen J. “Women and AIDS,” in American Women’s History: An Encyclopedia edited by Hasia Diner (New York: Facts on File, 2012).