Leah Payne, PhD
Associate Professor of American Religious History
Research and teaching interests
- American religious innovation
- Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianties
- Religion, politics, and popular culture
- Gender, race and class construction
- Ritual and performance theory
Leah Payn is associate professor of American religious history at Portland Seminary, and principal investigator for the Institute for Pastoral and Congregational Thriving at Portland Seminary, a Lilly Endowment, Inc.-funded initiative.
She holds a PhD from Vanderbilt University, and her research explores the intersection of religion, politics and popular culture. Payne's recently published book, (Oxford University Press), won the 2024 Christianity Today book of the year for History and Biography.
Her first monograph, (Palgrave, 2015), won the 2016 Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies Book Award. Payne co-hosts , a Public Radio Exchange (PRX) podcast about Christian rock and its listeners, which won the American Academy of Religion's first-place award for Best In-Depth Multimedia Journalism.
She also hosts Spirit & Power, an Axis Mundi Media podcast about politics and Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, and is co-creator of , a religion and pop culture podcast. Payne's scholarship and teaching have been supported by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), the Louisville Institute, and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology & Religion.
Her writing and research has appeared in The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, Harper's Magazine, The Economist, and Christianity Today.
Academic Background
PhD, ; MA, MTS, ; BA, 性视界传媒
Expertise and Research Interests
American religious innovation; Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianities; religion, politics, and popular culture; gender, race, and class construction, ritual and performance theory