Jonathan Lee Walton

Theologian and divinity school professor Jonathan Lee Walton was born on June 22, 1973 in Frederick, Maryland to Rose Marie Walton and John Henry Eugene Walton. Walton received his B.A. degree in political science from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996. Walton also earned both his M.Div. degree in Christian social ethics in 2002 and his Ph.D. degree in religion and society in 2006 from the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

While completing his Ph.D. degree, Walton worked as a lecturer in Princeton University’s Department of Religion and the program in African American Studies. After graduating in 2006, Walton moved to Riverside, California, where he served as an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside. Walton then joined Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an assistant professor of African American religions in 2010. In 2012, Walton was promoted to professor of religion in society, a role he held for seven years. During this period, Walton also served as the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. Walton became the presidential chair in religion and society and the dean of the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 2019. In 2023, Walton returned to his alma mater, the Princeton Theological Seminary, as its 8th president and a professor of religion and society. Throughout his career, Walton has published numerous academic articles, magazine articles, newspaper articles, and books, including Watch This!: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism with the New York University Press in 2009 and A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in Its World for Our World with Westminster John Knox Press in 2018.

Walton served on the board of directors for Atrium Health, the Humanities Advancement Council at Morehouse College, the National Advisory Board of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, and the American Academy of Religion’s AAR Nominations Committee, Religion, Media & Culture Group Steering Committee, and Afro American Religious History Group Steering Committee.

Walton has received numerous awards and honors including an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity degree from Wake Forest University in 2015 and the Benjamin Elijah Mays Distinguished Alumni Award in Religion from Morehouse College in 2016. Walton served as a resident fellow at the University of California, Riverside’s Center for Ideas and Society in 2007 and as a young scholar at Indiana University-Purdue University’s Center for Religion and American Culture from 2009 to 2011.

Walton and his wife, Cecily Cline Walton, have three children: Zora Neale, Elijah Mays, and Baldwin Cline.

Jonathan Lee Walton was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on April 21, 2023.