By Beckie Supiano

Jonathan L. Walton is fascinated by the ways African-American faith groups helped draw the United States closer to its promise of equality. It's a big part of why he became a religion scholar and social ethicist. Part of his work in his new job at Harvard Divinity School is to figure out "in what ways, right now, even unrecognizable ways, is this still going on, and/or where we're falling short."

Mr. Walton recently became an assistant professor of African-American religions at the divinity school, accepting the second of two such positions the school sought to fill at the same time, in part, to offer better resources to its Ph.D. students.

The field of African-American religious studies has traditionally focused on black-liberation theology, which argues that justice for the poor and oppressed is at the core of the gospel message. But the field has expanded to include religions besides Christianity and the beliefs of the descendants of Africans dispersed to countries beyond the United States. At Harvard Divinity School, the study of African-American religions is an important part of the study of American religions over all, one of the school's longtime strengths.

Ann D. Braude, a senior lecturer on American religious history, attended the campus interviews of candidates for the position, though she was not on the search committee. When it came to Mr. Walton, "I was very impressed by his feel for the black church in combination with his critical approach to ethics and popular culture," she says.

Before joining Harvard, Mr. Walton, 37, was an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside. He earned his Ph.D. and master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his bachelor's from Morehouse College. His research is on the intersection of religion, media, and culture, and his first book, published last year, explored televangelism in the black church. Traditionally, black-liberation theologians have been dismissive of televangelists, Mr. Walton says. He wanted to look at how the televangelists use and don't use liberation theology, based on their understanding of what it means.

At Riverside, Mr. Walton worked primarily with undergraduates; at Harvard, he will mostly work with graduate students. It's a change he's excited about: "Working with students who have backgrounds in the field of American religions will allow me to focus my teaching in particular sorts of ways that will be beneficial to my research."

The divinity school offers several courses of study. There are two main master's programs, one geared more toward students who will go on to become scholars and the other more for those preparing for careers in ministry. Mr. Walton is especially looking forward to teaching that last group, he says. "To be in conversation and in some ways train persons who are preparing to go out and serve their communities, I find that to be a very rewarding aspect of the job." That way, Mr. Walton says, he feels he is contributing to the groups he studies, instead of "just taking."

Mr. Walton was ordained in a Baptist church and served on the ministry staffs of several congregations before entering his doctoral program. He believes that part of his background has made him more sensitive to the people he interacts with as a scholar and a social ethicist.

Mr. Walton's work is "innovative" in that he looks beyond the traditional source documents of theological studies to television broadcasts and audio recordings, says Amy M. Hollywood, a professor of Christian studies at the divinity school, who chaired the search committee.

And Mr. Walton is open to different forms of media when it comes to sharing his work as well. He writes for Religion Dispatches, a daily online magazine "highlighting a diversity of progressive voices" that is based at Emory University, and he is a regular commentator and resident ethicist on The Tavis Smiley Show on the radio. To Mr. Walton, using such platforms and engaging with a wide audience is a natural part of being an academic. "I think all scholars are public intellectuals," he says.

That commitment to being a public intellectual was appealing, says Dan McKanan, a senior lecturer in divinity who was on the search committee. So was Mr. Walton's ability to ground his work as an ethicist in a historical context. While Mr. Walton says he would never claim to be a historian, he also doesn't want to practice a kind of ethics that is detached from reality.

"When folks think of ethics, it tends to be a kind of conception that one is simply concerned with normative claims, the should and the ought," he says. "I try to ground my ethical evaluation in what is, and locate how communities interpret the good, the right, and the fitting."