WHO IS ELIZABETH JOHNSON, CSJ
Public domain.
“No language about God will ever be fully adequate to the burning mystery which it signifies. But a more inclusive way of speaking can come about that bears the ancient wisdom with a new justice.” — Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ (1)
Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Theology at Fordham University in the City of New York, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, an award winning author, the first woman receive the doctorate in theology from a Roman Catholic pontifical university, and the recipient of fifteen other honorary doctoral degrees in theology, divinity, and the humane letters. Before all of those accolades, however, Elizabeth Johnson is a friend of God.
The first daughter of an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn, Johnson was raised in the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and was taught from an early age by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood. Inspired by the indefatigable witness of her teachers, Johnson entered the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood and trained as a teacher. Johnson completed her graduate theological studies at Manhattan College and continued to teach, both in high schools and eventually at St. Joseph’s College, the undergraduate institution of her religious community. When the time came for doctoral work in 1977, Johnson elected to attend the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, one of the first women permitted to enroll in that program. She would graduate from CUA in 1981.
Two experiences during Sister Elizabeth Johnson’s doctoral studies set the stage for her later theological work. The first was on October 7th, 1979 when Pope John Paul II gave an address to a gathering of women religious at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. The pontiff was greeted formally by Sister Theresa Kane, RSM, then-president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the umbrella organization representing the majority Catholic Sisters and nuns in the United States. Kane’s greeting—which drew both praise and protest alike from the assembled body and the general public—included an impassioned plea for the pope to bring women into all levels of ministry in the Roman Catholic Church. Johnson describes this experience as “the day [she] became a feminist in the Church.”
The second experience was much less pleasant, though nevertheless formative. On December 2, 1980, three American nuns and a lay woman were murdered by a government death squad in El Salvador for their work with the poor and oppressed. This happened just ten months after the murder of Oscar Romero, then Archbishop of El Salvador, while celebrating the Eucharist. “The spark of their lives has moved me to do theology in like spirit, attentive to the struggles and hopes of those most in need and under the threat of violence,” said Johnson while accepting a leadership award from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. (2)
Johnson’s position in the contemporary theological world is as a feminist theologian. Throughout her whole career and in nearly every publication she has made, Johnson attempts to highlight a diversity of approaches to understanding God within the framework of Christian orthodoxy, especially from the perspective of those who are marginalized in the Church and in the world. Her first book was a work of Christology titled Considered Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (Crossroad, 1990). Her seminal text—the one which launched her career and shaped her academic trajectory—was She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Crossroad, 1992.) Other key texts include Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints (Continuum, 1998), Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (Continuum, 2003), and Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (Bloomsbury, 2014.)
Her book Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in Theology of God (Continuum, 2007) received much attention both from the academic community and from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. In Quest, Johnson provides a fairly comprehensive survey of approaches to understanding God, all of them based on the lived experiences of certain groups of people with divine names appropriately attributed. For example, the chapter focusing on the varied experiences of women is styled ‘God Acting Womanish’ and the chapter focusing on the experiences of Black people and their liberation is called ‘God Who Breaks Chains.’ Johnson describes the book as endeavoring to “present new insights about God arising from people living out their Catholic faith in different cultures around the world.” While the international theological community received Quest for the Living God with critical appreciation and praise, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Doctrine Committee issued a formal condemnation of the book and counseled that theological faculty ought not use the book as assigned reading in their courses. The Bishops’ committee wrote, “The book does not take the faith of the Church as its starting point. Instead, the author employs standards from outside the faith to criticize and to revise in a radical fashion the conception of God revealed in Scripture and taught by the Magisterium.” (3) The chairman of the Bishops’ doctrine committee at the time, Donald Cardinal Wuerl of Washington, suggested that the formal response from the bishops would not have been necessary had Johnson sought an imprimatur prior to publishing Quest. The imprimatur is a formal license to print and is usually issued by a Roman Catholic bishop. The current Code of Canon Law suggests, but does not require, authors writing about doctrinal issues seek an imprimatur before publishing on the market. Johnson responded to the Bishops’ committee with her own formal response, locating her work within Christian orthodoxy and the vocation of a theologian in the Church. The Catholic Theological Society defended and affirmed Johnson and sales of her book skyrocketed in response to what was perceived as an unfair attack by the hierarchy.
Johnson’s theological work is always grounded in the lived experience of real people and especially those whose voices have not traditionally been heard. In setting the stage for an essay encouraging the use of feminine language to describe God, Johnson writes, “The starting point for this case is a discerning attention to women’s experience of themselves and of God, today occurring around the world in new way…Insofar as the experience of self is profoundly intertwined with the experience of God, growth or diminishment in one conditioning the other, women’s awakening to their own human worth is a new event in the religious history of humankind. It occasions an experience of God as beneficent toward the female and an ally of women’s flourishing.” (4)
Johnson, CSJ, Elizabeth, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad, 1992.)
Johnson, CSJ, Elizabeth. 2014. “Remarks for Leadership Award Dinner.” Transcript of a speech delivered at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Nashville, TN, August 15, 2014. https://religionnews.com/2014/08/17/let-female-speculate-full-text-sister-elizabeth-johnsons-talk-lcwr/
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Committee on Doctrine, Statement on Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God by Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, 24 March, 2011.
Johnson, CSJ, Elizabeth. “A Theological Case for God-She.” Commonweal, January 29, 1993, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/theological-case-god-she
