Princeton Seminary Professors Retire

In the 2021-2022 academic year, Princeton Theological Seminary professors Sally Brown, William Stacy Johnson, and Bruce McCormack retired. Please join us in honoring their lasting contributions to our community and the academy!

Elizabeth M. Engle Professor of Preaching and Worship

Sally A. Brown, PhD ’01, joined the faculty of Princeton Seminary in 2001 and served for 20 ½ years. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Brown brought more than 20 years of parish and non-parish pastoral experience with her to her academic career. She continued to preach and teach at local congregations during her tenure with Princeton Seminary. Her academic and research interests included the impact on contemporary preaching theory and practice of feminist/womanist, postliberal, and poststructuralist biblical interpretation; the challenges of interpreting the cross as a redemptive symbol in a world of violence; and the relationship between preaching and ecclesial formation, particularly ethical formation.

Brown taught preaching and worship as well as a PhD seminar in theories of interpretation and constructive practical theology. She greatly enjoyed Introduction to Preaching, where she helped countless students develop their own preaching styles and skill sets. She encouraged clergy and lay persons alike to look for God’s redemptive activity in our world as a force moving humanity toward a more loving and just future.

In September 2021, Brown delivered the opening convocation address for Princeton Seminary. Watch “For Mercy’s Sake: Becoming Agents of Redemptive Provocation” below. She retired in December 2021.

Arthur M. Adams Professor of Systematic Theology; Member, Religion and Society Committee (Chair, 2011-2017, 2021-2022)

W. Stacy Johnson joined the Princeton Seminary faculty 23 years ago in 1999. An ordained Presbyterian minister and a lawyer, his tenure at Austin Seminary and Princeton Seminary spanned a total of 30 years. On the one hand, his courses were grounded in the confessional tradition of the Reformed churches, including a regular course he offered on the theology of John Calvin. On the other hand, Johnson pushed the boundaries of received tradition, always raising constructive theological questions and incorporating materials from philosophy, from the social sciences, and from Christianity’s most ardent critics. Throughout his career, he taught a regular course on the challenges of post-Holocaust thought, and later post-9/11 perspectives. More recently, he began teaching courses on environmental theology and ethics, on re-thinking Christianity, and on the abolitionist and non-conformist legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His concern to nurture the public witness of the church was embodied in his most popular course, on comparing and contrasting the theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr. Johnson’s skill in asking thought-provoking questions taught students not just to master the subject matter at hand, but to cultivate new ways of thinking that would equip them to engage in transformative leadership in the church and the world.

Johnson served the wider church in many capacities, including teaching and preaching in congregations across the country. For a number of years he wrote for and served on the board of The Presbyterian Outlook. From 2001 to 2006 he served on the Presbyterian Church (USA) Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, which was charged with discerning the church’s Christian identity in the 21^st century. From 2003 to 2007 he co-chaired (with Peter Ochs) a Jewish-Christian-Muslim group at the Center of Theological Inquiry, in which participants practiced honoring one another’s traditions by engaging their respective sacred texts. For two decades he was a member of the Workgroup for Constructive Theology. Johnson’s important book, A Time to Embrace: Same-Sex Relationships in Religion, Law and Politics (2006; 2^ndedition, 2012), established a framework for dialogue among diverse viewpoints, while also arguing for his own position that committed same-sex relationships should be consecrated by religious communities, legitimated in law, and welcomed fully within our democratic republic. For over a decade, he has served as an advisor for the “Next Church” organization in the PC(USA). In response to today’s rapid exodus of young people from the church, he has been challenging both colleagues and students to continually address the questions: (1) Why Christianity? (2) Which version of Christianity? And (3) How do the versions we now inhabit promote — or fail to promote — the things that matter most for living justly, wisely, and well? He hopes to continue speaking and writing about these concerns in retirement.

Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology, Director of the Center for Barth Studies, Chair of the Department of Theology

Bruce McCormack, PhD ’89, began teaching at Princeton Seminary in 1991. A Presbyterian, McCormack’s major scholarly interest is in the history of Reformed doctrinal theology, with an emphasis on the 19^th and 20^th centuries, from Schleiermacher and Hegel through Karl Barth. His courses covered Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre and the doctrine of atonement in Christian tradition. His book Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 (1995) earned high praise from prodigious literary critic George Steiner in The Times Literary Supplement, leading The Board of the Evangelical Church of the Union in Germany to award McCormack the international Karl Barth Prize in 1998. In 2004, he received an honorary doctorate by the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany in recognition of his scholarship on Barth.

In 2012, McCormack was appointed the executive director of the Center for Barth Studies. Kait Dugan, the Center’s managing director, says “McCormack’s groundbreaking book Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 changed the trajectory of Barth studies in the English-Speaking world. His strong contribution to the field of Barth studies cannot be overstated.”

A member of the Karl Barth-Stiftung in Basel, Switerzland, McCormack is North American editor of the Zeitschrift fuer Dialektische Theologie, published in Holland.