Terrence L. Johnson is the Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School. His research interests include African American political thought, ethics, American religions, and the role of religion in public life. Johnson's interdisciplinary research agenda is historical, critical, and constructive. He weaves together African American religions, political theory, and American history to paint broad conceptual schemes for imagining religion, democracy, ethics, liberalism, justice, and freedom.

He is the author of Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue (2022, with Jacques Berlinerblau); We Testify with Our Lives: How Religion Transformed Radical Thought from Black Power to Black Lives Matter(2021); and Tragic Soul-Life: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy (2012). He is currently completing a manuscript entitled The Law of Race and Public Religions: Talking Book Traditions and the Limits of Originalism, which is under contract with Columbia University Press.

Johnson serves as co-editor of the Duke University Press Series "Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People," the editor of the “Race, Religion, and Politics” book series at Georgetown University Press, and co-editor of the Harvard Theological Review. He is also a member of the Corporation of Haverford College.

Along with writing scholarly articles, Johnson has written for or appeared on CBS This Morning, Salon, NPR, and the Literary Hub.

A graduate of Morehouse College, Johnson received his M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University.