The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#5701
Elihu Grant
1873 - 1942 (69 years)
Elihu Grant was an American scholar and writer on Palestine. Grant was ordained Methodist minister in 1900, and between 1901 and 1904 he was superintendent of the American Friends Schoolss in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Returning to the US he was a professor of biblical literature at Smith College from 1907 to 1917, and thereafter at Haverford College until his retirement in 1938.
Go to Profile#5702
Otto Eissfeldt
1887 - 1973 (86 years)
Otto Eißfeldt, spelled alternatively Otto Eissfeldt, was a German Protestant theologian, known for his work on the Old Testament and comparative near-east religious history. His magisterial 860-page The Old Testament: An Introduction , giving a detailed literary-critical assessment of the history of the formation of each part of the Old Testament on the basis of the documentary hypothesis, has been called the "best of its kind".
Go to Profile#5703
Arnold Ehrhardt
1903 - 1965 (62 years)
Arnold Anton Traugott Ehrhardt was a German jurist and British theologian. Life Arnold was the son of Oscar Ehrhardt, a professor of surgery, and Martha, née Rosenhain, a school teacher from a Jewish family. He went to school in Königsberg and then studied law at Erlangen, Bonn, Berlin and Königsberg. After the First World War he served in the eastern border force and took part in the conflict with the Spartacists. He took his doctoral degree in 1926 in Königsberg and the following year became an assistant to in Göttingen and took his habilitation in civil and Roman law in 1929 in Freiburg. He lectured at the Goethe University of Frankfurt.
Go to Profile#5704
Peter Craigie
1938 - 1985 (47 years)
Peter Campbell Craigie was a British biblical scholar. Craigie was born in Lancaster and grew up in Edinburgh. He studied successively at the Edinburgh Academy, the Prairie College in Alberta, New College at the University of Edinburgh, St. John's College at the University of Durham, the University of Aberdeen, and McMaster University. He then taught at Carleton University, McMaster University, and the University of Calgary. He died as the result of a car crash in 1985.
Go to Profile#5705
Helmut Thielicke
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
Helmut Thielicke was a German Protestant theologian and rector of the University of Hamburg from 1960 to 1978. Biography Thielicke grew up in Wuppertal, where he went to a humanistic Gymnasium and took his Abitur in 1928. After this he began to study philosophy and theology in Erlangen, but soon had to undergo an operation on his thyroid. Despite the negative outcome of this operation , which were still causing complications 4 years later, he finished his studies and in 1932 he got his doctorate in philosophy with "Das Verhältnis zwischen dem Ethischen und dem Ästethischen" .
Go to Profile#5706
Johannes Quasten
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Johannes Quasten was a Roman Catholic theologian and scholar of patristics. Life Johannes Quasten was a Roman Catholic theologian and scholar of patristics. He studied Roman Catholic theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms University in Münster. In 1926 he was ordained priest. In 1927 he earned his graduate Degree with F.J. Dölger in Münster with a thesis on "Music and singing in the cults of the ancient pagan and early Christian times". Further studies followed in the years 1927-1929 in Rome at the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana. At the same time, he served as chaplain at the Campo Santo Teutonico or Teutonic Cemetery.
Go to Profile#5707
Douglas Clyde Macintosh
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Douglas Clyde Macintosh was a Canadian theologian. Biography Macintosh was born in Breadalbane, Ontario, on 18 February 1877 and received his undergraduate degree from McMaster University when it was in Toronto. In 1907 was ordained a Baptist minister and taught at Brandon College in Manitoba. In 1909 Macintosh received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago and joined Yale Divinity School, becoming an assistant professor of systematic theology.
Go to Profile#5708
Hubert Jedin
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Hubert Jedin was a Catholic Church historian from Germany, whose publications specialized on the history of ecumenical councils in general and the Council of Trent in particular, on which he published a 2400-page history over the years 1951–1975.
Go to Profile#5709
Umberto Cassuto
1883 - 1951 (68 years)
Umberto Cassuto, also known as Moshe David Cassuto , was an Italian historian, a rabbi, and a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and Ugaritic literature, in the University of Florence, then at the University of Rome La Sapienza. When the 1938 anti-Semitic Italian racial laws forced him from this position, he moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#5710
Merrill C. Tenney
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
Merrill Chapin Tenney was an American professor of New Testament and Greek and author of several books. He was the general editor of the Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, and served on the original translation team for the New American Standard Bible.
Go to Profile#5711
Edward Musgrave Blaiklock
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Edward Musgrave Blaiklock was chair of classics at the University of Auckland from 1947 to 1968, and champion of Christian apologetic literature in New Zealand from the 1950s until his death in 1983.
Go to Profile#5712
J. Gresham Machen
1881 - 1937 (56 years)
John Gresham Machen was an American Presbyterian New Testament scholar and educator in the early 20th century. He was the Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary between 1906 and 1929, and led a revolt against modernist theology at Princeton and formed Westminster Theological Seminary as a more orthodox alternative. As the Northern Presbyterian Church continued to reject conservative attempts to enforce faithfulness to the Westminster Confession, Machen led a small group of conservatives out of the church to form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. When the northern Presbyterian chur...
Go to Profile#5713
Norman Porteous
1898 - 2003 (105 years)
Norman Walker Porteous was a noted theologian and writer on Old Testament issues, and the last surviving military officer of the First World War. Education Porteous entered the University of Edinburgh as first bursar in 1916, but his studies were interrupted by World War I service in France, where he served as a subaltern in the 13th Battalion, The Royal Scots.
Go to Profile#5714
Alexander Schmemann
1921 - 1983 (62 years)
Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann was an influential Orthodox priest, theologian, and author who spent most of his career in the United States. Born in Estonia to émigrés from the Russian Revolution, he grew up primarily in France, where there was a large émigré community in Paris. After being educated there in both Russian and French schools and universities, from 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris. That year he immigrated with his family to New York City to teach at Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. In 1962 he was selected as dean of the Seminary, serving in this position until his death.
Go to Profile#5715
William F. Badè
1871 - 1936 (65 years)
William Frederic Badè , perhaps best known as the literary executor and biographer of John Muir, was a versatile scholar of wide interests. As an archaeologist, he led the excavation of Tell en-Nasbeh in Palestine, now believed on the basis of his work to be the biblical city of Mizpah in Benjamin. He was also an ordained Moravian minister, a professor of ancient languages, a theologian and bible scholar, a mountaineer, a conservationist and a naturalist. Born and raised in Minnesota, he studied at Moravian College and its seminary as well as other universities. He served on the faculties of Moravian Theological Seminary and then the Pacific School of Religion.
Go to Profile#5716
Oswald Thompson Allis
1880 - 1973 (93 years)
Oswald Thompson Allis was an American Presbyterian theologian and Bible scholar. Biography He was born in 1880 and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton Theological Seminary. He received a master's degree from Princeton University and a doctorate from the University of Berlin. Later, Allis received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Hampden Sydney College in 1927.
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Herbert Henry Gowen
1864 - 1960 (96 years)
Herbert Henry Gowen was an Anglican missionary and orientalist who wrote on the history of China and Japan and was long associated with the University of Washington. Early life and education Herbert Gowen was born in Yarmouth, England and earned a B.A. degree from St. Augustine's College in 1886. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England the same year.
Go to Profile#5718
Steven Schwarzschild
1924 - 1989 (65 years)
Steven S. Schwarzschild was a rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and editor. Biography Schwarzschild was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and grew up in Berlin. He escaped to the United States with his family in 1939.
Go to Profile#5719
L. Harold DeWolf
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Lotan Harold DeWolf , usually cited as L. Harold Dewolf, was an American Methodist minister and professor of systematic theology at Boston University where he was Martin Luther King Jr.'s "primary teacher and mentor".
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Joachim Begrich
1900 - 1945 (45 years)
Joachim Begrich was a German biblical scholar and theologian born in Predel, a hamlet now belonging to Elsteraue in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. He was the son of a pastor and the son-in-law of Old Testament scholar Hermann Gunkel .
Go to Profile#5721
Herbert Brook Workman
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Herbert Brook Workman was a leading Methodist and secretary of the Wesleyan Methodist Secondary Schools Trust when they took over Elmfield College in 1928. Workman was born in London and educated at Kingswood School and Owens College, Manchester. He entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1885 and served as a circuit minister in England and Scotland until 1903 when he was appointed principal of Westminster College. In 1930 he was elected president of the Wesleyan Conference.
Go to Profile#5722
Sigmund Mowinckel
1884 - 1965 (81 years)
Sigmund Olaf Plytt Mowinckel was a Norwegian professor, theologian and biblical scholar. He was noted for his research into the practice of religious worship in ancient Israel. Life Mowinckel was born at Kjerringøy in 1884 and was educated at the University of Oslo . His early research interests was the study of the Old Testament, and Assyriology. In the years 1911-13 he made study trips to Copenhagen, Marburg and Giessen. At Giessen he came into contact with Hermann Gunkel and was inspired by Gunkels understanding of the Old Testament as literature, as well as his traditio-historical method.
Go to Profile#5723
N. P. Williams
1883 - 1943 (60 years)
Norman Powell Williams , known as N. P. Williams, was an Anglican theologian and priest. Educated at Durham School and at Christ Church, Oxford, he enjoyed a succession of appointments at that university: Fellow of Magdalen , Chaplain of Exeter , Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church . In 1924 he was Bampton lecturer.
Go to Profile#5724
Irving Francis Wood
1861 - 1934 (73 years)
Irving Francis Wood was an American biblical scholar. Professor Wood was born at Walton, New York. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1885 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and taught at Jaffna College, Ceylon, until 1889. Wood then studied for his Bachelor of Divinity degree at Yale and completed it in 1892, the same year he met and married his wife, Katherine Hastings. Katherine bore him two children, Constance and Edna, who both went to get collegiate degrees. He taught for a short time at the University of Chicago before taking a job as a professor of Biblical literature and comparative religion at Smith College in 1893.
Go to Profile#5725
Johan Herman Bavinck
1895 - 1964 (69 years)
Johan Herman Bavinck was a Dutch pastor, missionary and theologian. Family Bavinck was born in Rotterdam as the second son of Reverend Coenraad Bernardus Bavinck. He attended the Marnix Gymnasium there. Both his father and his grandfather Jan Bavinck were pastors. His uncle was Herman Bavinck, pastor and Professor of Dogmatics at the theological school in Kampen and at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. In 1922 Bavinck married Tine Robers. Their children were Koert, Ben and Ineke.
Go to Profile#5726
Leo Baeck
1873 - 1956 (83 years)
Leo Baeck was a 20th-century German rabbi, scholar, and theologian. He served as leader of Reform Judaism in his native country and internationally, and later represented all German Jews during the Nazi era. After the Second World War, he settled in London, in the United Kingdom, where he served as the chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. In 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry was established, and Baeck was its first international president. The Leo Baeck Medal has been awarded since 1978 to those who have helped pre...
Go to Profile#5727
Sidney B. Sperry
1895 - 1977 (82 years)
Sidney Branton Sperry was one of three scholars who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who began the scholarly and systematic study of the Book of Mormon in the mid-20th century — the other two being John L. Sorenson and Hugh W. Nibley. Sperry was also a leading Latter-day Saint scholar of the Bible.
Go to Profile#5728
Albert C. Knudson
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Albert Cornelius Knudson was a Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and the school of liberal theology known as Boston personalism. Biography Albert Cornelius Knudson was born on January 23, 1873, in Grand Meadow, Minnesota. He was the son of Asle Knudson and Synnove Knudsen , both of whom were immigrants from Norway. The family subsequently moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Asle Knudson regularly traveled by train to Grand Meadow to minister at the Danish-Norwegian Methodist Church until shortly before his death in 1939.
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Donald Macpherson Baillie
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
Donald Macpherson Baillie was a Scottish theologian, ecumenist, and parish minister. Life Raised in the Calvinist tradition, Baillie studied at University of Edinburgh and then at the University of Marburg, where he was influenced by the theologian Wilhelm Herrmann. After some time as a Church of Scotland parish minister, he wrote Faith in God and its Christian Consummation . This led to his appointment as a professor of divinity at St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, where he spent the remainder of his life.
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Martin Dibelius
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Martin Franz Dibelius was a German Protestant theologian and New Testament professor at the University of Heidelberg. Dibelius was born in Dresden, Germany, on September 14, 1883. Along with Rudolf Bultmann he helped define a period in research about the historical Jesus characterized by skepticism toward the possibility of describing Jesus with historical certainty. In this capacity he is often regarded as an early pioneer of New Testament form criticism, a highly analytical review of literary forms within the New Testament. After studying at multiple universities, he eventually ended up as a teacher of New Testament exegesis and criticism at Heidelberg University.
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Hugo Gressmann
1877 - 1927 (50 years)
Hugo Gressmann was a prominent Old Testament scholar in Protestant Germany and a friend and associate of the eminent scholar Hermann Gunkel. He was a member of the history of religions school. Early life He was born on 21 March 1877 in Mölln, in the Province of Schleswig-Holstein.
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Jakob Jocz
1906 - 1983 (77 years)
Jakób Jocz was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and studied in Germany, England, and Scotland. He received his Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He contributed to many professional journals and wrote four other books of Old Testament study and systematic theology. Jocz was ordained in the Anglican Church, and served for many years as Professor of Systematic Theology at Wycliffe Seminary, Toronto.
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James I. McCord
1919 - 1990 (71 years)
James I. McCord was a president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He also won the 1986 Templeton Prize. 150 Years of Princeton Theological Seminary In 1962, as President of Princeton Theological Seminary, McCord hosted the Princeton Theological's 150-year anniversary festivities.
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J. Vernon McGee
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
John Vernon McGee was an American ordained Presbyterian minister, pastor, Bible teacher, theologian, and radio minister. Biography Childhood, education, and early ministry McGee was born in Hillsboro, Texas, to itinerant parents, John McGee and Carrie McGee . His father held many jobs, his last one being an engineer at a cotton mill in Oklahoma, where he died in 1918 when Vernon was 14 years old. After his father's death, Vernon's family relocated to Tennessee. Before entering the ministry, Vernon worked as a bank teller.
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Justin Popović
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Justin Popović was a Serbian Orthodox theologian, archimandrite of the Ćelije Monastery, Dostoyevsky scholar, writer, anti-communist advocate and critic of the pragmatic church ecclesiastical life.
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Lyman Beecher
1775 - 1863 (88 years)
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became writers or ministers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.
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Otto Pfleiderer
1839 - 1908 (69 years)
Otto Pfleiderer was a German Protestant theologian. Through his writings and his lectures, he became known as one of the most influential representatives of liberal theology. Biography Pfleiderer was born at Stetten im Remstal in Württemberg. From 1857 to 1861 he studied at the University of Tübingen under Ferdinand Christian Baur, and afterwards in England and Scotland. He then entered the ministry, became tutor at Tübingen, and for a short time held a pastorate at Heilbronn . In 1870 he became chief pastor and superintendent at the University of Jena and soon afterwards professor ordinari...
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Frank Sheed
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Francis Joseph Sheed was an Australian-born lawyer, Catholic writer, publisher, speaker, and lay theologian. He and his wife Maisie Ward were famous in their day as the names behind the imprint Sheed & Ward and as forceful public lecturers in the Catholic Evidence Guild.
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Louis Ginzberg
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Louis Ginzberg was a Russian-born American rabbi and Talmudic scholar of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, contributing editor to numerous articles of The Jewish Encyclopedia , and leading figure in the Conservative movement of Judaism during the early 20th century. He was born in Kaunas, Vilna Governorate and died in New York City.
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Francisco Suárez
1548 - 1617 (69 years)
Francisco Suárez, was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement. His work is considered a turning point in the history of second scholasticism, marking the transition from its Renaissance to its Baroque phases. According to Christopher Shields and Daniel Schwartz, "figures as distinct from one another in place, time, and philosophical orientation as Leibniz, Grotius, Pufendorf, Schopenhauer and Heidegger, all found reason to cite him as a source of inspiration and influence."
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Albert Benjamin Simpson
1843 - 1919 (76 years)
Albert Benjamin Simpson , also known as A. B. Simpson, was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance , an evangelical denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism that has been characterized as being Keswickian in theology.
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Mesrop Mashtots
361 - 440 (79 years)
Mesrop Mashtots was an early Medieval Armenian linguist, composer, theologian, statesman, and hymnologist in the Sasanian Empire. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. He is best known for inventing the Armenian alphabet AD, which was a fundamental step in strengthening Armenian national identity. He is also considered to be the creator of the Caucasian Albanian and Georgian alphabets by a number of scholars.
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William Law
1686 - 1761 (75 years)
William Law was a Church of England priest who lost his position at Emmanuel College, Cambridge when his conscience would not allow him to take the required oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch, King George I. Previously, William Law had given his allegiance to the House of Stuart and is sometimes considered a second-generation non-juror. Thereafter, Law continued as a simple priest and when that too became impossible without the required oath, Law taught privately and wrote extensively. His personal integrity, as well as his mystic and theological writing greatly influenced the evangelical movement of his day, as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as the writer Dr.
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Hasan al-Basri
642 - 728 (86 years)
Abu Sa'id ibn Abi al-Hasan Yasar al-Basri, often referred to as Hasan of Basra for short, or as Hasan al-Basri, was an ancient Muslim preacher, ascetic, theologian, exegete, scholar, judge, and mystic. Born in Medina in 642, Hasan belonged to the second generation of Muslims, all of whom would subsequently be referred to as the tābiʿūn in Sunni Islamic piety. He became one of "the most celebrated" of the tābiʿūn, enjoying an "acclaimed scholarly career and an even more remarkable posthumous legacy in Islamic scholarship."
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Loraine Boettner
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Loraine Boettner was an American theologian, teacher, and author in the Reformed tradition. He is best known for his works on predestination, Roman Catholicism, and Postmillennial eschatology. Biography Boettner was born on March 7, 1901, in Linden, Missouri. His father, William Boettner, was a Christian school superintendent and had been born in Schwartzenhazel, Germany. He attended his father's church until he was eighteen, when he then joined his mother's church, the Centennial Methodist Church. Boettner attended the Lone Cedar and Fairview elementary schools, before going to Tarkio High School.
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Johann Arndt
1555 - 1621 (66 years)
Johann Arndt was a German Lutheran theologian who wrote several influential books of devotional Christianity. Although reflective of the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy, he is seen as a forerunner of Pietism, a movement within Lutheranism that gained strength in the late 17th century.
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Constantin von Tischendorf
1815 - 1874 (59 years)
Lobegott Friedrich Constantin Tischendorf was a German biblical scholar. In 1844, he discovered the world's oldest and most complete Bible dated to around the mid-4th century and called Codex Sinaiticus after Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, where Tischendorf discovered it.
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Zayd ibn Ali
695 - 740 (45 years)
Zayd ibn ʿAlī , also spelled Zaid, was the son of Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin, and great-grandson of Ali ibn Abi Talib. He led an unsuccessful revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate, in which he died. The event gave rise to the Zaydiyya sect of Shia Islam, which holds him as the next Imam after his father Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin. Zayd ibn Ali is also seen as a major religious figure by many Sunnis and was supported by the prominent Sunni jurist, Abu Hanifa, who issued a fatwa in support of Zayd against the Umayyads.
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Joseph Seiss
1823 - 1904 (81 years)
Joseph Augustus Seiss was an American theologian and Lutheran minister. He was known for his religious writings on pyramidology and dispensationalism. Life Seiss was born in Graceham, Frederick County, Maryland, to an agricultural family; his interest in religious studies reportedly began in childhood. Seiss was confirmed at age 15 as a member of the Moravian Church, and determined to pursue the ministry. Beginning in 1839, Seiss enrolled at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania for a year or two of studies, but completed his theological courses by private study. He was licensed to preach in 1842 by the synod of Virginia, and ordained to a Lutheran ministry in 1844.
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Heinrich Bullinger
1504 - 1575 (71 years)
Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
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