PRRI Affiliated Scholar Leah Payne is an award-winning historian and Professor of American Religious History at Portland Seminary.
She holds a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University and her research explores the intersection of religion, politics, and popular culture. Payne is author of God Gave Rock & Roll to You: a History of Contemporary Christian Music (Oxford University Press, 2024), the 2024 Christianity Today book of the year for History and Biography, and Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Payne is an Evangelical Studies Program Fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, and her current projects trace the ascent of transnational Pentecostal and Charismatic political ideologies in American public life. She is creator and host of Spirit & Power, an Axis Mundi Media podcast about politics and Pentecostal and charismatic Christians recognized by the Religion Communicators Council for outstanding work in the communication of religion issues. Payne also co-hosts Rock That Doesn’t Roll, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX) podcast about Christian rock and its listeners, and is co-creator of Weird Religion, a religion and pop culture podcast. Her writing and research has appeared in outlets such as The Washington Post, BBC Radio, NBC News, Religion News Service, Harper’s Magazine, The Economist, and Christianity Today.
