Leah Payne, PhD
PhD, Vanderbilt University

Dr. Leah Payne joined George Fox University's William Penn Honors Program, College of Christian Studies and Portland Seminary - where she directs the Center for Pentecostal-Charismatic Theology Practice - in the fall of 2016.

Prior to her appointment as assistant professor of Christian studies, Payne taught at Portland Seminary as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Louisville Institute (2014-2016). An alumna of George Fox University (BA), Vanderbilt Divinity School (MTS) and Vanderbilt University (MA; PhD), her research and teaching interests include American religious innovation, religion and popular culture, gender, race, and class construction, hermeneutics, and performance theory.

Her first book,   Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century  (Palgrave, 2015) won the 2016 Pneuma:   The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies  Book Award, and her second book explores the development of political theology within American Pentecostalism. In 2015, she and three other colleagues received a Lilly Endowment, Inc. High School Youth Theology Initiative grant to co-found   Theologia: The George Fox University Summer Theology Institute  beginning in 2017.

In her spare time, Payne blogs about coffee, television and religious studies at   leahpayne.blogspot.com.

Academic Background

PhD,  Vanderbilt University; MA,   Vanderbilt University; MTS,   Vanderbilt University; BA,  George Fox University

Expertise and Research Interests

American religious innovation, religion and popular culture, gender, race, and class construction, hermeneutics, and performance theory

Research Bibliography

Published works