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Almost 40 years ago, Professor William Stacy Johnson made a momentous decision, the most difficult he says he ever made. It was the decision to leave the practice of law in his native North Carolina and pursue ministry within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). That decision turned him from a “somewhere” person into an “anywhere” person, someone willing to move anywhere to pursue his commitment to the teaching ministry of the PC (USA). For the last 23 years Johnson’s “anywhere” has been Princeton Theological Seminary, where he has been a fixture in the Theology Department and an active contributor to and sometime chair of the Religion and Society Program. Generations of students remember him fondly as “Dr. J.”
At the first faculty meeting of 2021, however, Johnson rose to make an unexpected announcement. As he played a few bars from James Taylor’s 1968 song, “Carolina in My Mind,” a collective gasp arose from his faculty colleagues who knew well his Carolina affinities. “He’s leaving,” one of them whispered. And sure enough, Johnson announced that at the end of the 2021-22 academic year he and his wife Louise, MDiv ’76, would be retiring to their newly renovated house in James Taylor’s own childhood hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Given his many years in Princeton, this decision to return to his “somewhere” roots struck Johnson as almost as difficult as leaving North Carolina in the first place. Speaking at a retirement reception this past spring, Johnson declared, “I am grateful today for the Seminary, because some of the greatest joys of my life happened here,” as tears welled in his eyes. He reminisced about meeting Louise while he was speaking at a Seminary Board of Trustees meeting a year after arriving in Princeton, and about relishing the life of the mind in the Princeton Seminary classroom as the first college graduate in his family. He also credited Louise with being a vital partner in his teaching ministry, which is not surprising given that she herself is not only a Princeton Seminary graduate and ordained minister who served PC (USA) pastorates in Memphis, Princeton, and Lawrenceville, but also one who served 15 years on the Princeton Seminary Board of Trustees (12 of those as its first female officer) and three years as administrator of the Seminary’s “Faithful Practices” Lilly Grant. Between them, Stacy and Louise have a combined 41 years of service to Princeton Seminary.
One way their partnership played itself out was in enduring relationships with students, often forged during the student parties they hosted each semester — at least before the days of COVID-19. It was not unusual for their colonial home to bustle with 50, 75, and sometimes even 90 students, some of them attending with significant others and children. Johnson also brought a similar sense of connection and occasional mirth to the classroom. For example, struck by how serious students behaved around professors at Princeton Seminary, he mischievously arrived in class one day during his first semester wearing a chicken suit. “When I walked into class, students were deferential and sat there like that was normal,” he recalls. As he proceeded to lecture on Charles Darwin and then engage the class in questions and answers in his “chicken” personae, students finally managed to loosen up a bit.
Johnson formed close bonds with many students over the years. At his retirement celebration, Johnson chose not a faculty member but a former student, Rev. Grier Booker Richards, MDiv ’09, to sum up his career. Booker Richards described Johnson as relating to his students as a “coach” relates to their players, cheering them on and having their backs. She spoke specifically of the theological grounding Johnson had bequeathed to her during her time as a student and how that has paid dividends in her ministry. She also spoke appreciatively of Johnson as a mentor and friend.
This sentiment is echoed by others. “I would not be where I am now without Stacy,” says Derek Wu, MDiv ’22, who begins his PhD in ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley this fall. After meeting Johnson as his advisor at the orientation dinner, Wu took Socrates and Jesus, Radical Christianity, and Niebuhr and King with Johnson and then later served as a mentor for Johnson’s Life Together course for entering students at the Farminary.
“Stacy would teach like Socrates and Jesus, and to this day I follow his principles of entertaining multiple hypotheses and asking truth-bearing questions,” Wu says.
Two questions Johnson posed to students in every class he taught were these: First, “Why Christianity?” And second, “Which version of Christianity do we wish to inhabit going forward?” To help students wrestle with these overarching questions, he would also ask them more specifically: “Why are we making the Apostle’s Creed mandatory but the Sermon on the Mount optional?” He posed these same questions to his faculty colleagues. “How do we move beyond the stained-glass Jesus and rediscover the badass Jesus?”
“Every organization needs someone to ask challenging questions,” said Jacqueline Lapsley, MDiv ’94, dean and vice president of Academic Affairs and professor of Old Testament, in a tribute to Johnson at the spring faculty retirement reception. “You always ask the challenging questions. And it is often just the question that needs to be asked.”
Lapsley highlighted Johnson’s contributions to gender equity in faculty compensation, as well as to governance through his leadership in the “meta-committee” which redesigned the governance structure of the faculty.
Johnson’s penchant for asking critical questions and applying them to real-world situations was forged during his first career, which was being a lawyer. After studying history and philosophy at Davidson College, he graduated from Wake Forest Law School and practiced corporate law for several years. “I enjoyed the law — and loved it. But I didn’t love it in quite the same way or for the same reasons as my colleagues. They lived and breathed and slept law,” says Johnson, but he had interests that pulled him in another direction. So he pivoted to divine law at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. “The legal way of thinking is still my natural first way of thinking,” he says. “That’s one reason I appreciate Calvin” — who like Johnson studied law before turning to theology, a fact Johnson explores in his book, John Calvin: Reformer for the Twenty-First Century.
Upon completing his Master of Divinity and ordination requirements, his presbytery debated whether it was legitimate to ordain this lawyer-turned-theologian to doctoral studies. A naysayer complained that Johnson’s sermons sounded like academic lectures, but others in the presbytery disagreed, arguing — partly in seriousness and partly in jest — that since he was heading to doctoral work at Harvard, he should be ordained as an “evangelist.” “I’ll have to say I failed in my calling as an evangelist to Harvard,” joked Johnson. “But if we think of our calling as simply an obligation to bear witness, I did seek to do that.”
In a career with many momentous decisions, one of the most consequential was Johnson’s decision to set aside his other research projects in order to concentrate on his book, A Time to Embrace: Same Sex Relationships in Religion, Law, and Politics. It was first published in 2006, some years before the PC (USA) became LGBTQ-affirming. A revised edition came out in 2012.
“The church needs this book!” proclaimed renowned Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann. “Paying careful attention to biblical, theological, legal, and political aspects of same-gender relations, William Stacy Johnson offers the most comprehensive resource available.” “Nothing less than a tour de force,” declared The Christian Century. Many believe the book reframed the debate in the PC (USA), though Johnson sometimes took heat and paid a price for his advocacy. “What is the point of having tenure,” Johnson mused, “unless you know how to use it?”
Johnson also served for five years on the PC(USA) task force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, which among other things dealt with the fallout over LGBTQ inclusion. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, he also served as a co-chair of the Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue group located at the Center of Theological Inquiry.
In another risky decision, Johnson turned down a tenure track teaching position upon leaving Harvard at a major university to take a non-tenure track position at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas. It was there that he edited the book of which he says he is proudest — the unpublished papers of H. Richard Niebuhr. His interest in both the Niebuhr brothers was a constant element in his teaching and scholarship.
Johnson’s dissertation was titled God the Center of Theology: A Reinterpretation of Karl Barth, which became a book that Bruce McCormack, PhD ’89, reviewed before they became colleagues who retired together this spring. McCormack, the Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology Emeritus, commented that Johnson is “an astute observer” of theology who “shows an intimate acquaintance with leading trends in postmodern philosophy.”
At this year’s Commencement, Johnson was given the honor of carrying the mace, a symbol that points beyond the Seminary to the reason the Seminary exists. “When you see me carrying the mace at graduation,” Johnson said to his younger faculty colleagues, “know that I am carrying the mace for you. For you are the future.” Or, as the final stanza of James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind” puts it: “Gone, I’m gone, I’m gone, Say nice things about me ‘cause I’m gone South now, Carry on without me, I’m gone….”
