Perkins faculty member Priscilla Pope-Levison has been selected as the recipient of the Wesleyan Theological Society’s annual Lifetime Achievement Award. She will receive the award at a Society banquet on Friday, March 14, at Baylor University. Dr. Pope-Levison is Research Professor of Practical Theology at Perkins School of Theology at SMU, and she is the third woman to earn this honor.
The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes individuals for outstanding service to the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition over a lifetime. Since its inception in 1994, the award has been given to 
distinguished scholars and theologians, including Randy Maddox, Billy Abraham, William Greathouse, James Earl Massey, and Donald Dayton. Any Wesleyan Theological Society member can be nominated, then the recipient is chosen by the Executive Committee under the direction of the Society’s president.
Society leaders cited Pope-Levison’s leadership in the organization as well as her contributions to the field of Wesleyan-Holiness scholarship as reasons for her selection for the award.
“Priscilla’s impact has made this year’s selection an easy decision,” said Justus H. Hunter, PhD, (GPRS, 2015), Society president and Associate Professor of Church History at United Theological Seminary. “She served on the Executive Committee and as president of the Society in 2018. She has made major contributions to both Women’s Studies and Evangelism, alongside extensive service to the church and academy.”
During her three-year term in executive leadership of the Society, Pope-Levison led the planning for one annual meeting and presided over another meeting in which she also gave her presidential address, titled “Negotiating ‘Andromania’ and Other Disputed Borders in the Wesleyan Deaconess Movement.”
“This is the second time the Society has honored Priscilla,” said Steven Hoskins, the Society’s promotional secretary and Professor of Church History at Trevecca Nazarene University’s School of Theology and Christian Ministry. “Her book, Building the Old Time Religion: Women Evangelists in the Progressive Era (NYU Press, 2014), won the Society’s Smith-Wynkoop Book Award in 2015 and remains a standard in the field.”
Hoskins also noted that Pope-Levison has delivered several landmark papers and is recognized as a leading scholar in Wesleyan-Holiness studies.
This is the second career-spanning award for Pope-Levison, who also received the Distinguished Service Award in 2022 from the General Commission on Archives and History for her ground-breaking research into the lives of the United Methodist denomination’s pioneers, especially women in evangelism, and for significant academic contributions to the ministry of memory of The United Methodist Church.
Pope-Levison joined Perkins School of Theology in 2015 as Associate Dean for External Programs and Professor of Ministerial Studies. Since 2019, she has served as co-Principal Investigator of two initiatives, the Thriving Congregations Grant and the Strengthening Congregational Ministries with Youth Initiative Grant, both supported by grants totaling nearly $2 million from the Lilly Endowment Inc. She is also the author of Models of Evangelism (Baker Academic, 2020) and the upcoming No Man’s Land: The International Methodist Deaconess Movement, 1874-1918 (Wesleyan and Methodist Exploration Series, Cascade Books).
Pope-Levison expressed deep appreciation for the award, noting the Society’s unique role in uniting Wesleyan scholars across denominational lines.
“It’s the one organization where the entire Wesleyan family participates across denominations—including the Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), the United Methodist Church, and the Global Methodist Church,” she said. “It fosters friendships and academic collaboration among scholars who otherwise might not be connected. I’m extremely honored to receive this recognition from such a distinguished and inclusive group.”