Spring 2020 Faculty Lecture Features Dr. Leah Payne
Reported by Alyssa Derania
Photography by George Fox University
On March 3, Leah Payne presented her lecture, “Contemporary Christian – How the Entertainment Business Shaped Evangelical Theology in the U.S.A.,” for George Fox University (GFU)’s Spring 2020 Faculty Lecture. The lecture took place in Hoover Academic Building’s Kershner Lecture Hall.
The GFU Faculty Lecture Series has been a biannual tradition since 1955, honoring over 100 academic professionals in that time span. Hosted by the Faculty Development Committee, Payne is the latest academic professional in this 65-year tradition.
Payne is an assistant professor of theological studies at Portland Seminary, a historian of Christianity in America, a faculty fellow in the William Penn Honors Program, and a George Fox University alumnus. She was the recipient of the 2018-19 Faculty Achievement Award for Graduate Research and Scholarship.
Payne has published eleven scholarly articles as well as contributed to Christianity Today and The Washington Post. In 2016, Payne published her first book, “Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century.” Along with her colleague, Brian Doak, Payne co-hosts Weird Religion, a podcast on religion and popular culture.
Payne began her lecture with a quirky game of Who’s Who, intermingling traditional philosophers like A.W. Toser and Paul Tillich with entertainers like Carman and the Power Team, to broach the idea that contemporary Christian music is a nontraditional form of expressing theology.
“In the late 20th century, the entertainers that you saw intermingled with traditional church leaders and theologians shaped the theological outlook of evangelicals as much in the US if not more than traditional forms of theological transition like things we get from denominations, pastors, Sunday school literature, and, of course, the historic academic discipline of Christian theology,” Payne said.
Payne is researching how American evangelicals were shaped by the contemporary Christian music business, with a concentration on the era between the early twentieth century and 2012.
She revealed that her research stemmed from more than mere passing interest. Her past career in the heart of the Christian music business (Nashville, Tennessee) paired with her academic background in music, history, and theological studies, made her the perfect candidate to explore the subject.
To research how ordinary Christians were impacted by the rise and fall of this industry, Payne is utilizing several approaches. She is exploring how the industry established and maintained itself by studying the trade organizations and business models, as well as studying statistics taken from the industry’s top magazine, CCM. She and her research assistant are cataloguing all the raw data from the CCM issues between 1980 to present.
Payne is also gathering data orally by interviewing people who were or are involved with the industry, taking their experiences and comparing them with the historical data. She is particularly interested in how these experiences may have been shaped by external influences, such as themes popular during the Cold War and other popular written media.
Payne’s expressive lecture style and passion for her subject made it seem she had only begun speaking before the hour was up.
After the lecture, I sat down with Payne to further explore her research and interests. I inquired how Payne’s interest shifted from women in ministry, which was explored in her first book, “Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century,” to the contemporary Christian music industry. Payne explained that her overarching research interest is in how American Christians experiment and interact with media to express their faith. In the early twentieth century, women used media to create new forms of religious expression, concreting their place in ministry.
Payne explained that the contemporary music industry is in decline partly due to its reliance on royalties and unending battle with streaming technology. At its peak, booming music festivals were held and grassroot church bands toured across America. Today, three conglomerates hold 99.9% of the business.
“I hope that the fact that there are market and industry changes in contemporary Christian music doesn’t deter aspiring artists from making good art,” Payne said, “because that is always a worthwhile endeavor as a human being and for yourself and for others… I would love for them [GFU students] to just think about how they can make good art.”