Sarah Kathleen Johnson
Associate Professor | Faculy of theology
Profile
Sarah Kathleen Johnson is Associate Professor of Liturgy and Pastoral Theology, Director of Undergraduate Studies (Certificate, 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鈥檚 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
- Proclaiming the Word of God in the Liturgy: Homiletics
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.
Special Issue
Kim Sun, Hyung Jin (Pablo) and Sarah Kathleen Johnson, eds. Decolonial Discipleship as an Intercultural Church. Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology (Spring 2026).
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淭he Lived Liturgical Experience of Non-Catholic Participants in the Roman Catholic Mass: Tactical Ecumenism in Overlapping Ritual Systems.鈥 Journal of Global Catholicism (forthcoming).
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淓valuating the CCLI Top 100 (and Beyond): An Ecumenical Roundtable,鈥 Journal of Congregational Song (forthcoming).
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, Anneli Loepp Thiessen, and Mykayla Turner. 鈥淒oes the Battle Belong? Complexifying Anabaptist Approaches to Violent Language in Contemporary Worship Music,鈥 Journal of Congregational Song (forthcoming).
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen and Joshua Zentner-Barrett. 鈥淕erminal Ritual: Ceramic Feathers and Social Transformation in Canadian Churches.鈥 Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies 41 (2025): 21-43.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, Audrey Seah, and Erik Sorensen. 鈥淭he Cow and the Canoe: Ritual Responses to Crisis in Rwanda and Canada.鈥 Journal of Global Catholicism 9.3 (2025): 30-77.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Nathan Chase. 鈥淥ccasional Religious Practice in Early Christianity.鈥 Questions Liturgiques 104.3-4 (2024): 129-154.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淓volving Liturgy and Enduring Hybridity: An Ecumenical Ethnographic Study of Four Pandemic Holy Weeks.鈥 Ecclesial Practices 11.2 (2024): 107-127.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淟ooking and Listening for Lived Theologies of Truth and Reconciliation: Learning from a Diffuse Art Installation in the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.鈥 Toronto Journal of Theology 40.2 (2024): 176-192.
Graber, Katie, Anneli Loepp Thiessen, and Sarah Kathleen Johnson. 鈥淐entring Relationship: The Necessity and Complexity of Worshiping with Songs and Prayers with Connections to Indigenous Communities.鈥 Conrad Grebel Review 41.1 (2023): 18-52.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Anneli Loepp Thiessen. 鈥淐ontemporary Worship Music as an Ecumenical Liturgical Movement.鈥 Worship 97 (2023): 204-229.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淔ree Church Worship: Renewed from Within and Beyond.鈥 Liturgy 37.4 (2022): 40-46.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淐risis, Solidarity, and Ritual in Religiously Diverse Settings: A Unitarian Universalist Case Study.鈥 Religions 13.7 (2022): 614.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen, and Adam M. L. Tice. 鈥淥ur Journey with Just and Faithful Language: The Story of a Twenty-First-Century Mennonite Hymnal.鈥 The Hymn 73.2 (Spring 2022): 17-27.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淥nline Communion, Christian Community, and Receptive Ecumenism: A Holy Week Ethnography during COVID-19.鈥 Studia Liturgica 50.2 (2020): 188-210.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淗ubmaier鈥檚 Milk Pail: Anabaptist Baptism, Rituals of Resistance, and Liturgical Authority.鈥 Worship 93 (2019): 300-322.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淧oured Out: A Kenotic Approach to Initiating Children at a Distance from the Church.鈥 Studia Liturgica 49.2 (2019): 175-194.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淭rinitarian Worship for a Radical Church?鈥 Invited response to John D. Rempel, 鈥淎n Impossible Task: Trinitarian Theology for a Radical Church?鈥 Conrad Grebel Review 37.2 (2019): 171-179.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淥n Our Knees: Christian Ritual in Residential Schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.鈥 Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 47.1 (2018): 3-24.
Bear, Carl, and Sarah Kathleen Johnson. 鈥淢edieval Hymns on Modern Lips: An Analysis of Medieval Texts and Tunes in Twenty-First-Century Protestant Hymnals.鈥 The Hymn 69.1 (2018): 10-16.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淢eeting Mystery in Mennonite Worship: Presence as Absence Empowers Ethics.鈥 Worship 84.3 (2010): 253-274.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淭he 鈥楽hared Convictions鈥 of Mennonite World Conference in Developmental Context and Ecumenical, Anabaptist, and Global Perspective.鈥 Conrad Grebel Review 27.1 (2009): 36-56.
Other Articles and Chapters
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淓xploring an Ecumenical Feast of Creation: A Free Church Perspective and Attending to the Experience of Ordinary Worshipers.鈥 Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy (2025): 23-27.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淭radition and Hope: A Mennonite Chain of Memory.鈥 Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 25.1 (2024): 14-20.
Johnson, Sarah Kathleen. 鈥淒omination, Resistance, Solidarity: An Analysis of Power in the Making of a Mennonite Worship Book.鈥 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. 鈥淚ntroduction: Liturgical Authority in Free Church Traditions.鈥 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. 鈥淭he Problem of Mennonite Worship Leadership becoming 鈥榃omen鈥檚 Work.鈥欌 Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 23.1 (2022): 23-32.
Bear, Carl, and Sarah Kathleen Johnson. 鈥淪inging with the Early and Medieval Church through Voices Together.鈥 Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 23.1 (2022): 75-84.