Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: gender history, women and American religion, twentieth century, nineteenth century, religion and pop culture history, celebrity culture and American history, Pentecostal history, religion and politics, televangelism, Paula White

About Me: Leah Payne (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is assistant professor of Theological Studies at George Fox University and Portland Seminary. She is also a senior fellow at the Louisville Institute and a Faculty Fellow at the William Penn Honors Program.

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. Her second book explores the development of political theology in American Charismatic Christianity. In 2015, she and three other colleagues received a Lilly Endowment, Inc. High School Youth Theology Initiative grant to cofound Theologia: The George Fox University Summer Theology Institute, which began in 2017. In 2017, she and four additional colleagues received a $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to create an Institute for Pastoral Thriving at Portland Seminary, which began in 2018. Her work analyzing religion and popular culture has appeared in The Washington Postand Christianity Today. She is also co-host of Weird Religion, a podcast about religion and popular culture.

Recent Publications: Popular:

“Why Foursquare’s Female Leaders Have It Harder Today: The Pentecostal denomination was founded by a woman nearly a century ago, but it has failed to elect another female president since,” Christianity Today, May, 2019.

“The Christian Conspiracies that Keep Evangelicals on Trump’s Side,” co-authored with Brian Doak, The Washington Post, October, 2018.

“Wild Wild Country Hits Close to Home,” Christianity Today, May, 2018.

“The Christian Sect that Has Always Cheered on Donald Trump,” co-authored with Erica Ramirez, The Washington Post, March 21, 2018.

Academic:

“Kim Davis and Paula White: Pentecostal Women and Attire,” in Marie Dallam and Benjamin Zeller (eds.), Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America. Columbia University Press, 2020.

“Bobs and the ‘Character of Our Citizenship’: Early Pentecostals, Women, and Public Life in the United States of America,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, forthcoming.

Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Media Coverage: Politics & Pentecostalism; Politics & evangelicalism; Gender and American religion

Expertise by Topic: Family, Gender, Material Culture, Politics, Technology, Women