Johnson, Maria Poggi

PERSONAL:

Married; children: four. Education: Attended Oxford University and the University of Virginia.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Theology Department, Scranton University, St. Thomas Hall 357, Scranton, PA 18510. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Scranton University, Scranton, PA, professor of theology.

WRITINGS:

(Selector and author of introduction) John Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, W.B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 2004.

Strangers and Neighbors: What I Have Learned about Christianity from Living among Orthodox Jews, W. Publishing Group (Nashville, TN), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Logos, Pro Ecclesia, Anglican and Episcopal History, and Clio.

SIDELIGHTS:

Maria Poggi Johnson is a theology scholar whose research interests focus on the history of Christianity, particularly in Victorian England. She also studies how Christianity interacts and intermixes with art, literature, and culture. When Johnson and her family moved from her native Scotland to Scranton, Pennsylvania, she found herself living in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population. Their home was only a few blocks from two synagogues, and the neighborhood also contained a Hebrew day school. As a Christian, Johnson had not encountered many opportunities to learn about the Jewish faith, but interactions with her newfound neighbors enabled her to learn "more about Jewish belief, custom and herself than she ever imagined," commented Margaret Oines in Faithful Reader.

In Strangers and Neighbors: What I Have Learned about Christianity from Living among Orthodox Jews, Johnson "takes a look at her own faith through the les- sons learned from her Orthodox Jewish friends next door," Oines observed. Johnson recognizes that her "friendships with her neighbors have subtly reshaped her own Christian commitments," noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. She reflects, for example, on how the Jewish practice of reading the Torah along with Talmudic commentary reflects her own preference to study Christian scripture with a knowledgeable partner. To Johnson, Jewish dietary rules and food codes represent a coherent system of spirituality concerned with the body. Johnson and her family learn how to respectfully interact with another religion and culture while at the same time maintaining their own religious beliefs and cultural identities. Differences in holiday observances, dress, and language also help her see where Judaism and Christianity differ and where they are the same. Oines called Johnson's work a "reflection of how to understand instead of how to be understood."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, August 28, 2006, review of Strangers and Neighbors: What I Have Learned about Christianity from Living among Orthodox Jews, p. 47.

Today's Christian Woman, November-December, 2006, Lisa Ann Cockrel, review of Strangers and Neighbors, p. 51.

ONLINE

Faithful Reader,http://www.faithfulreader.com/ (June 14, 2007), Margaret Oines, review of Strangers and Neighbors.

University of Scranton Department of Theology Website,http://academic.uofs.edu/department/theology/ (June 14, 2007), brief biography of Maria Poggi Johnson.