Dictionary of
Unitarian &
Universalist
Biography
Reverend Karen G. Johnston is a Unitarian Universalist minister who has served First Parish Church of Groton and The Unitarian Society, a Unitarian Universalist Congregation in East Brunswick, NJ, as well as Village Church in Cummington, MA. Ordained in 2016, she is a graduate of the Cooperative Master of Divinity program between Hartford Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School. A Unitarian Universalist since 1995 when she joined the Unitarian Society of Northampton & Florence in Northampton, Massachusetts, Karen grew up in Oregon, where generations of her family farmed in the Hood River Valley.
She holds a Master of Social Work degree from Smith College School for Social Work (1995) and a Bachelor of Arts from Hamilton College (1989). A published poet, she is also the adoptive mother of two now young adult children. Karen credits the seeds of her interest in the intersection between history, the dismantling of white supremacy, and Unitarian Universalist faith to the influence of her older brother, an academic historian, and to Steve Strimer, a grassroots historian of the Underground Railroad, the utopian Northampton Association of Education and Industry, and the Free Congregational Society of Florence.
Articles:
Joshua Young
