Dr. Xavier L. Johnson earned his Doctor of Ministry in Ministry Development from Virginia Theological Seminary and holds both a Master of Arts in Theological Studies and a Master of Arts in Teaching. He has held teaching appointments at Duke Divinity School and, most recently, at Earlham School of Religion at Earlham College where he was Director of Contextual Ministry Education and an Assistant Professor of Practical Theology. Currently, he serves as an Assistant Professor in the Practice of Preaching and Black Church Studies at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.

Dr. Johnson chairs the Social Justice Commission for the Ohio Baptist General Convention and works closely with the Ohio Council of Churches’ Death Penalty Abolition Committee. He is also a member of the Commission on Human Rights, Peace-building, and Reconciliation for the Baptist World Alliance.

His research interests converge at the intersection of clergy leadership, black religion, social justice, and preaching. He has published book chapters and written articles and papers for several publications and organizations, including the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, the World Council of Churches, the Baptist World Alliance, and the Lott Carey Foreign Missions Society.

He has lectured and presented papers at the Society for the Study of Theology, Soceitas Homiletica, the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, and was a workshop presenter at the Joe R. Engle Institute of Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2022.