Contributor

Andre E. Johnson

Andre E. Johnson serves in the department of Communication at the University of Memphis. He is also Senior Pastor of Gifts of Life Ministries in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dr. Andre E. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Memphis. He teaches classes in African American Public Address, Rhetoric Race and Religion, Media Studies, Interracial Communication, Rhetoric and Popular Culture, and Hip Hop Studies. He also serves as Senior Pastor of Gifts of Life Ministries in Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently editing the works of AME Church Bishop Henry McNeal Turner under the title The Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner (Edwin Mellen Press). He has already published the first five volumes, and the sixth one is set for publication in 2017. In addition to collecting the writings of Bishop Turner, Dr. Johnson is also the author of The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition (2012) that won the National Communication Association (NCA) 2013 African American Communication and Culture Division Outstanding Book Award. He is the editor of Urban God Talk: Constructing a Hip Hop Spirituality (2013) both with Lexington Books. He also serves as the founder and managing editor of the popular Rhetoric Race and Religion Blog hosted on the Patheos family of blogs. Dr. Johnson has presented academic papers at national, regional, and state conferences winning awards at each level, has published essays in the Black Theology Journal, The New York Times, Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric and The Journal of African American History. He holds membership in several national, regional and state associations in the areas of Communication, History, African American Studies and Religious Studies. In addition to his work on Bishop Turner, Dr. Johnson maintains an eclectic research agenda. Ongoing research projects explore the nexus between rhetoric, theology and the Bible, religion and politics, the religious rhetoric of Barack Obama, religion and media and more recently, the rhetoric of Donald Trump.