An evening conversation with James Turner Johnson (Washington, D.C.)

Rutgers University

Tuesday, March 3, 2015  |  TBD  |  TBD

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This event is the third in a four part series titled “God & Geopolitics: Religion and National Security in an Era of Instability.” The first talk featured Professor William Inboden on September 25th and the second was held on December 2nd with Dr. Mary Habeck and Dr. Paul D. Miller as the respondent.

James Johnson’s area of responsibility within the Department of Religion is the field of ethics in the major western religious traditions: Christianity (both the Catholic and the Protestant traditions), Judaism, and Islam. The major focus of his research and writing has been on the subjects of war, peace, and the practice of statecraft as treated in the Christian and Islamic traditions, and he teaches a 300-level course on this subject every year. He has also written on the subject of sexuality and teaches a course on sexuality in the Christian and Jewish traditions every year. His other teaching includes a 200-level course called “Love as Ethic and Idea,” which follows and analyzes the idea of love in western Christian ethics and theology, using this as a window on the nature of the western Christian traditions, what is distinctive about them, and how they differ importantly. The last undergraduate course he offers every year is a 400-level seminar on topics that change from year to year; in recent years the focus has been on aspects of the thought of the great Christian theologian of the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine of Hippo. Finally, starting in the fall of 2013, as part of our new M.A. program he will be teaching a course called “Just War and Jihad,” focused on major texts in the development of these two ethical traditions on war, peace, and statecraft.