PASTOR BIOGRAPHY
Rev. Leah Rumsey is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and a doctoral candidate in Harvard's Committee on the Study of Religion, where she also serves as Assistant Director for Undergraduate Studies. Her dissertation studies religious education and theologies of literacy in the Coptic Orthodox Sunday School movement of the early 20th-century, asking questions about religious knowledge production and religious education as a practice of power. She has served as a teaching fellow for Harvard Divinity School’s Introduction to Ministry Studies course, the facilitator for the undergraduate thesis seminar in the Comparative Study of Religion, and a junior tutorial leader for students studying Christian ritual and church decline. She’s received numerous grants and fellowships to support Arabic language learning, conference travel, and archival research in Egypt and the United States.
Leah began her career in ordained ministry as College Chaplain and Director of Religious Life at Franklin College, an American Baptist-affiliated liberal arts college in central Indiana, where she was the first woman and first non-Baptist to hold this position. Since returning to Massachusetts to begin her PhD program, she has served as Minister for Faith Formation at the Second Church in Newton and has provided supply coverage at churches and chaplaincy programs in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. For the past year, she has served as the Stated Supply Pastor at Nashua Presbyterian Church.
Leah received a B.A. in English, Religion, and International and Area Studies from Kalamazoo College in Michigan and an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School. She completed one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan and has also taken coursework at the American University in Cairo and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. When she's not at church, teaching, or working on her dissertation, you can find Leah working in her garden or hanging out with her pet turkey Gandalf, her dog Daisy, her cats Kitty 1 and Kitty 2, and a flock of laying chickens and turkeys.
Leah began her career in ordained ministry as College Chaplain and Director of Religious Life at Franklin College, an American Baptist-affiliated liberal arts college in central Indiana, where she was the first woman and first non-Baptist to hold this position. Since returning to Massachusetts to begin her PhD program, she has served as Minister for Faith Formation at the Second Church in Newton and has provided supply coverage at churches and chaplaincy programs in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. For the past year, she has served as the Stated Supply Pastor at Nashua Presbyterian Church.
Leah received a B.A. in English, Religion, and International and Area Studies from Kalamazoo College in Michigan and an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School. She completed one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan and has also taken coursework at the American University in Cairo and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. When she's not at church, teaching, or working on her dissertation, you can find Leah working in her garden or hanging out with her pet turkey Gandalf, her dog Daisy, her cats Kitty 1 and Kitty 2, and a flock of laying chickens and turkeys.