By Michael Hall
A new year has brought new leadership to the Capps Center.
Greg Johnson, a former professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado, earlier this month became the new director of the Walter Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life.
Johnson has also served on the boards of directors for the Center of the American West and the American Academy of Religion.
Johnson says part of what attracted him to UC Santa Barbara was the Religious Studies department’s international reputation for innovation and boundary pushing.
“The scholars here collectively have been pushing in new directions in how we think about the study of religion — looking at material culture, media, political issues, and so forth,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “[They go] beyond the traditional confines of the study of religion focused on sacred texts or doctrine, moving to the intersection of the social sciences and humanities.”
The Capps Center was founded in 2002 to promote a public understanding of religion and discussions about how we can utilize the humanities to better understand those concerns.
The Center’s namesake, Walter Capps, was a professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara from 1963 until 1996. His course “Religion and the Impact of Vietnam” was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes. In 1996, he was elected to the House of Representatives and he passed away the following fall.
Today, the Capps Center offers programs for students to get involved with local nonprofit groups, fellowships for graduate students interested in cultural literacy, and courses and lectures on topics ranging from biomedical ethics to religion and politics.
Johnson began his career at the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelors from the department of religious studies and his masters and Ph.D. from the Divinity School.
During his studies in Chicago, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which required federally-funded museums and other institutions to return human remains and cultural items to the tribes and groups from which they came. Johnson believes the law’s passing shaped his specific anthropological approach to his field.
“I came to realize that the law treats religious claims as evidence —how native peoples talk about their ancestors and remains,” he recalled. “So I began to pay attention to how native people make use of religious claims to gain legal leverage and protections.”
Since then, Johnson has authored dozens of articles, essays, and blogs about the intersection of United States law and the sacred practices of indigenous people. His research takes him all around the world, from Hawaii to Norway, and, unlike some desk-bound scholars, Johnson isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.
Johnson joined Native American activists in 2016 to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. Demonstrations like these were a large reason why outgoing Capps Center director Kathleen Moore is so impressed by him.
“He’s a scholar activist,” Moore said of Johnson. “He knows it not only from an academic sense, but he knows it from having experience living alongside the activists.”
After a brief tenure as an assistant professor of religious studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, Johnson moved to the University of Colorado, where he taught religious studies and served on the boards of the Center of the American West and the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies.
And now, he says, the “cutting edge” culture of UCSB’s religion department has drawn him further west. “One can’t operate in religious studies without having a real sense of what’s happening here,” he said of his new academic home at UCSB.
As a bonus, the move allows Johnson to be closer to his two sons, who live in Palo Alto and Yosemite respectively. He’s also excited about the nature and landscape in the Santa Barbara area.
“As a rock climber from Colorado, it’s always been about mountains and rocks. And most of my field work is in Hawaii, so I’m also an ocean guy,” Johnson said.
While describing Capps Center programming as already “robust,” Johnson hopes to make it even more so by focusing on student engagement. As director, a top priority for him is increasing the number of undergraduate research opportunities for students interested in religious studies.
“I want to draw students into my own research. I want to figure out which of my colleagues have room for undergraduates in what they do,” he said. “It’s not part of the humanities model to bring students into our research. We’re kind of solo operators. But that needs to change.”
He also plans more outreach to the rest of the university “to draw in students and other faculty, having them ask ‘What is the Capps Center doing this week, and how can we get involved?’”
More broadly, Johnson wants the Capps Center to further engage the public on urgent concerns such as the environment and “the collapse of democracy.”
“If we’re not dealing with the fundamental issues, we have failed,” he said. “The Capps Center has been positioned for a long time to be a go-to place for these concerns. Let’s make it so.”
Johnson is aware that many of these urgent issues tend to be highly partisan. But he believes he can adhere to the Capps Center’s bipartisan, nonsectarian ideals.
“I have to find my dancing shoes, no question. These things are political,” he said. “The question is how do we enfranchise multiple points of view? We can stake our own claims to positions. The question is how do we engage others and draw them into conversation. I’m not allergic to dispute or debate — these are actually things I want to foster.”
Mostly though, he wants to get UCSB undergraduates involved. “I’m eager for people to reach out to me with ideas or just to be in conversation,” Johnson said.
Michael Hall is a fourth year Film and Media Studies major. He is a Web and Social Media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.