The Summer Institute for Global Charismatic-Pentecostal Studies

Dr. Leah Payne (Vanderbilt University, 2013) is associate professor of American religious history at Portland Seminary and a 2023–2024 public fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Her research traces the ascent of global Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.

Payne’s public-facing work has appeared in The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today. Her first book, Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), won the 2016 Book Award from Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. Her second book, God Gave Rock & Roll to You: a History of Contemporary Christian Music (Oxford University Press, 2024) shows how Contemporary Christian Music shaped evangelicalism in America and beyond.

As a companion to God Gave Rock & Roll to You, Payne co-hosts “Rock That Doesn’t Roll: The Story of Christian Rock,” a John Templeton Foundation-funded Public Radio Exchange (PRX) podcast that explores the profound effect CCM had on 1990s and early aughts American public life and evangelicalism in the United States through stories of its fans.

The Rev. Younghoon Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. He has attended Yoido Full Gospel Church since childhood and began his ministry in 1978. In 2008, after serving for 30 years in many leadership contexts—including as director and executive pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, senior pastor of prominent Full Gospel churches overseas, and in various executive leadership positions in seminaries—Rev. Lee was selected by vote to succeed Dr. Yonggi Cho and become the senior pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church. Rev. Lee and his wife, Inja Baek, have one daughter named Grace.

Dr. Helen Jin Kim is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Candler School of Theology, where she teaches courses such as History of Christianity in America and Asian American Religious History. Her research globally contextualizes US religions, with attention to Korean transnationalism, and in 2024, her book Race for Revival won Outstanding Achievement in History from the Association of Asian American Studies. Kim completed her MDiv and PhD at Harvard as a William R. Hutchison Presidential Fellow, and she received her BA from Stanford in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Dr. Lloyd D. Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion and Core Faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He is the co-editor of Oneness Pentecostalism: Race, Gender and Culture (2023), editor of Latin American and U.S. Latinx Religion in North America (2023), and author of Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (2022). He is the winner of the 2024 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise, and his scholarship on Pentecostalism, Catholicism, the Sanctuary Movement, and material religion has been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, American Religion, Perspectivas, and MAVCOR and various edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook on Latinx Christianity, Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics since 1945, and Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts, to name a few. He serves on the council of the American Society of Church History and co-chairs the History of Christianity Unit of the American Academy of Religion.

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (PhD, University of Birmingham) is President and Baeta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostalism at Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, Ghana. He is the author of four books on Pentacostalism in an African context, including Pentecostalism in Africa: Experiences from Ghana’s Charismatic Ministries (Fortress Press, 2021).

Nimi Wariboko (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at Boston University School of Theology and coeditor of Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. A transdisciplinary thinker, Dr. Wariboko examines and energizes past and present ideas in relation to the possibilities of future human flourishing. The five pillars of his scholarship are economic ethics, Christian social ethics, African social traditions, Pentecostal studies, and philosophical theology.

Puanani Calvillo is a proud Samoan Filipina spiritual director, personal trainer, facilitator and educator. Her work centers liberative spirituality and movement (fitness) care for communities of color. She holds a master’s degree in teaching, a certification in spiritual direction from Still Harbor, and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. Puanani meets with seekers in the context of one-on-one or group sessions, and partners with churches and organizations to facilitate group spiritual direction and retreats.

Jess Russ is a creative specialist at Integrity Music.

Dacari Middlebrooks, author & digital creator
Dr. Marcia Clarke, Society for Pentecostal Studies
Dr. Dara Delgado, managing editor of Pneuma, Allegheny College
Dr. Emmanuel Lartey, Candler School of Theology
Dr. Lois Olena, Society for Pentecostal Studies
Dr. Devaka Premawardhana, Emory University
Dr. Jonathan Calvillo, Candler School of Theology
Dr. Steven Félix-Jäger, Life Pacific University
Dr. James Abbington, Candler School of Theology
Dr. Eric Williams, Duke Divinity School
Rev. Mike O’Brien, worship leader and consultant