Search People Result | Academic Influence

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,

#1251

Reinhard Gregor Kratz

#77934

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Reinhard Gregor Kratz is a German biblical scholar, historian of ancient Judaism, and Protestant theologian. He currently serves as professor of Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Göttingen, in Germany. In his various authorial, editorial, advisory, and administrative capacities, Kratz has had a sizeable impact on research into the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism.

#1252

James M. Houston

James M. Houston

#53287

Overall Influence

1922 - Present (102 years)

James Macintosh Houston is a British-born Canadian theologian and academic who was Professor of Spiritual Theology and the first Principal of Regent College in Vancouver. Biography Born on 21 November 1922, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Houston moved to Oxford in 1945 for doctoral studies in geography at the University of Oxford. He received his doctorate in . His thesis was titled The Social Geography of the Huerta of Valencia. Houston was a fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, where he served as a geography lecturer.

#1253

David Hollenbach

#23059

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J. is a Jesuit priest, professor, author, and moral theologian currently serving as the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is a consultant to the Jesuit Refugee Service and is the recipient of the John Courtney Murray Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1998.

#1254

Hmida Ennaifer

#79083

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Hmida Ennaifer or H'mida Ennaïfar is a Tunisian scholar and theologian. He was born into an aristocratic family of Tunis, originally from Iraq and settled in Sfax in 1714. He obtained a master's degree in Arabic letters and a Ph.D. from the University of Tunis Zaytuna and Sorbonne in Paris. In the 1970s, he was very active in Islamic circles in Tunis and provided a Friday sermon in the mosque in Halfaouine M'hamed Bey. He and Rached Ghannouchi and Abdelfattah Mourou, leaders of the Islamist movement in Tunisia, gave birth to the Movement of Islamic trend in 1981.

#1255

Wilfrid Harrington

#84133

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

Wilfrid John Harrington is an Irish Dominican priest. From Eyeries , County Cork, Ireland, Harrington was educated at Newbridge College, County Kildare, before entering the Dominican Novitiate in St. Mary's Priory, in Cork. He studied philosophy at St. Mary's Tallaght then the Dominican Studium, and completing a BA degree, before going to Rome. He studied theology at the Angelicum in Rome earning an Licentiate of Sacred Theology degree and biblical studies in Jerusalem at the École Biblique, earning a LSS degree, Pontifical Biblical Institute.

#1256

Boris Stark

#62414

Overall Influence

1909 - 1996 (87 years)

Boris Georgevich Stark was a Russian missionary and priest. Biography Boris Georgevich Stark was born on 15 July 1909 in Kronstadt, Russia. His father was admiral Georgy Karlovich Stark, commander of the Siberian fleet, who emigrated to France in 1922. Boris joined his father in Paris in 1925, when he was sixteen years old. He continued his education in France, graduating as electrical engineer from the Technical Institute in Paris. During his student years he was active in the Russian Students' Christian Movement and he abandoned his engineering career, studying theology and specializing in...

#1257

Donald Allchin

#67117

Overall Influence

1930 - 2010 (80 years)

Arthur Macdonald "Donald" Allchin , published as A. M. Allchin, was a British Anglican priest and theologian. He was librarian of Pusey House, Oxford, from 1960 to 1969, a residentiary canon of Canterbury Cathedral from 1973 to 1987, and programme director of the St Theosevia Centre for Christian Spirituality in Oxford from 1987 to 1996.

#1258

John E. McCarthy

#59589

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

John Edward McCarthy was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Austin in Texas from 1985 to 2001. Biography Early life John McCarthy was born on June 21, 1930, in Houston, Texas, to George McCarthy and Grace O'Brien McCarthy. The youngest of four children, he was just 18 months old when his father died. His mother struggled to support her family in the midst of the Great Depression.

#1259

Kari Vogt

#63724

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Kari Vogt is a Norwegian religious historian. She has written several books, and been a board member of the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression, and of the Norwegian chapter of PEN International.

#1260

James A. Martin

#54277

Overall Influence

1902 - 2007 (105 years)

James Aloysius Martin was an American Jesuit priest, professor and athletic director. Martin was the world's oldest Jesuit priest at the time of his death at the age of 105 at the Georgetown University Jesuit Residence in Washington, DC

#1261

Walter A. Elwell

#96916

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Walter Alexander Elwell is an evangelical theological academic. He is most noted for his editorial output numbering several evangelical standard reference works. He taught at Wheaton College, Illinois from 1975 to 2003 before retirement and is now professor emeritus of Bible and Theology at Wheaton College.

#1262

Kevin T. Kelly

#62035

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

The Rev. Dr. Kevin T. Kelly was a British Roman Catholic priest and moral theologian. Kelly was born in Crosby, just north of Liverpool, England on 27 June 1933, to Patrick and Winifred Kelly from Northern Ireland. Kelly has been a pioneering priest and theologian, nurturing a compassionate approach to Catholic morality from the 1960s down to the present day. In his academic and pastoral work, he has tackled some of the most pressing issues facing the Church today - human conscience, HIV-AIDS, divorce and second marriage, bioethics, sexual ethics and pastoral theology in general.

#1263

Mary C. Boys

#62084

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Mary C. Boys , a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, is an American scholar specializing in religious studies. Currently, Boys is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. At Union, Boys served as the Dean of Academic Affairs for many years. She was formerly Professor of Religious Education at Boston College, where she served for 17 years.

#1264

Marcelo González Martín

Marcelo González Martín

#54491

Overall Influence

1918 - 2004 (86 years)

Marcelo González Martín was a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. González Martín was born in Villanubla, Valladolid Province as the son of Marcelo González, a small merchant; and Costanza Martín. He was educated at the Seminary of Valladolid and the Pontifical University of Comillas.

#1265

Ellsworth Kalas

#77413

Overall Influence

1923 - 2015 (92 years)

J. Ellsworth Kalas was a president and a professor of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He also served as pastor for 38 years in the Wisconsin and Ohio Conferences of the United Methodist Church and was associated for 5 years with the World Methodist Council.

#1266

John D. Faris

#77793

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

John Denver Faris is an American Chorbishop of the Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch, serving the Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. He is a canon lawyer of the Eastern Catholic Church, and an expert called upon for dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Christian Churches.

#1267

Konrad Raiser

#49202

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Konrad Raiser is a former General Secretary of the World Council of Churches . Biography Born in Magdeburg, Germany on 25 January 1938, Raiser spent his childhood in Schwerin, Göttingen and Bad Godesberg. After graduating from high school in Tübingen in 1957, Raiser spent six months working in a steel mill in Dortmund, in a programme organised by his church, the Evangelical Church in Germany .

#1268

Steven Croft

#53708

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Steven John Lindsey Croft is a Church of England bishop and theologian specialising in mission. He has been Bishop of Oxford since the confirmation of his election on 6 July 2016. He was the Bishop of Sheffield from 2008 until 2016; previously he was Archbishops’ Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions, a joint Church of England and Methodist initiative. He falls within the open evangelical tradition of Anglicanism.

#1269

Niels-Erik Andreasen

#61523

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Niels-Erik Andreasen was the president of Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, from 1994 to 2016. Work Born in Fredensborg, Denmark, Andreasen lived in Denmark for his first 19 years. He then studied at Newbold College, England, for three years and immigrated to the United States in 1963.

#1270

Moshe David Tendler

Moshe David Tendler

#9591

Overall Influence

1926 - 2021 (95 years)

Moshe David Tendler was an American rabbi, professor of biology and expert in medical ethics. He served as chairman of the biology department at Yeshiva University. Biography Moshe David Tendler was born in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City on August 7, 1926. He received his B.A. degree from New York University in 1947 and a master's degree in 1950. He was ordained at the Yeshiva University-affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in 1949, and earned a Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia University in 1957.

#1271

James Haire

#70429

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

The Reverend Professor Ian James Mitchell Haire AC KSJ is a theologian and Christian minister of religion. He is emeritus professor of Theology of Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia and past executive director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture. He was formerly the fourth president of the National Council of Churches in Australia and the ninth president of the Uniting Church in Australia.

#1272

Ivor Davidson

#42299

Overall Influence

Ivor J. Davidson is a British theologian and academic administrator. Davidson held chairs in Systematic and Historical Theology at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he was based from 1997 until 2009, and the University of St Andrews, 2009–16. He is an Honorary Professor in Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

#1273

Osvaldo Lira

#56843

Overall Influence

1904 - 1996 (92 years)

José Luis Osvaldo Lira Pérez SS.CC. was a Chilean priest, philosopher and theologian who wrote more than 10 books on topics related to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as Ortega y Gasset and Juan Vázquez de Mella. He devoted most of his life to teaching in different universities, and had as many followers as opponents.

#1274

Isadore Twersky

Isadore Twersky

#49226

Overall Influence

1930 - 1997 (67 years)

Isadore Twersky was an Orthodox rabbi and Hasidic Rebbe, and university professor who held the position as Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University, a chair previously held by Harry Austryn Wolfson. Twersky was an internationally recognized authority on Rabbinic literature and Jewish philosophy. He was especially known as an international expert in the writings and influence of the 12th-century Jewish legalist and philosopher Maimonides, and Abraham ben David, the Rabad of Posquieres.

#1275

Roel van den Broek

#38241

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Roelof "Roel" van den Broek is a Dutch religious scholar. He was a professor of Religious History of the Hellenistic period at Utrecht University between 1979 and 1991. He subsequently was a professor of history of Christianity until his retirement in 1997.

#1276

Jon Paulien

#76638

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Jonathan K. Paulien is a Seventh-day Adventist theologian. Biography Paulien has a BA from Atlantic Union College, and an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Andrews University. His doctoral thesis, Decoding Revelation’s Trumpets: Literary Allusions and Interpretation of was completed in 1987. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked as a Seventh-day Adventist church pastor for several years in New York City.

#1277

Thomas Worcester

#62954

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Thomas Worcester is an American academic and university administrator. He served on the faculty of College of the Holy Cross and is the 11th President of Regis College, Toronto. Biography Worcester was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont. He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1977 and received his master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and the Weston School of Theology. He also obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1983 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1991.

#1278

Donald Hagner

#73819

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Donald Alfred Hagner is an American theologian, currently the George Eldon Ladd Professor Emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary. He was born in 1936 in Chicago of a Polish mother and Swedish father and was educated at Northwestern University , Fuller Theological Seminary and the University of Manchester, UK . He served in the US Navy from 1958-62.

#1279

Myron Augsburger

#55730

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Myron Augsburger is an American Mennonite pastor, professor, theologian, and author. He is the former president of both Eastern Mennonite College and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

#1280

Mary Jo Leddy

#68278

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Mary Jo Leddy, is a Canadian writer, speaker, theologian and social activist. Leddy is widely recognized for her work with refugees at Toronto's Romero House. In 1973, she was the founding editor of the Catholic New Times. She is the author of the books "Say to the Darkness We Beg to Differ" , Reweaving Religious Life: Beyond the Liberal Model , At the Border Called Hope: Where Refugees are Neighbours

#1281

Charles Winquist

Charles Winquist

#58932

Overall Influence

1944 - 2002 (58 years)

Charles Edwin Winquist was the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, and is known for his writings on theology, contemporary continental philosophy and postmodern religion. Before he assumed his position at Syracuse University, he taught religious studies at California State University, Chico, from 1969 to 1986.

#1282

Mark L. Poorman

#67468

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Mark L. Poorman is an American theologian, ethicist, and academic administrator who formerly served as the twentieth president of the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, United States. Poorman was inaugurated as president of the University of Portland on September 26, 2014.

#1283

David C. Parker

#80612

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

David Charles Parker OBE was the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology and the Director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. His interests include New Testament textual criticism and Greek and Latin palaeography.

#1284

Rebecca Ann Parker

#86275

Overall Influence

Rebecca Ann Parker is an American theologian, author, and former President of Starr King School for the Ministry, the first woman to serve as the permanent head of an accredited U.S. theological school.

#1285

Annette Merz

#77814

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Annette Brigitte Merz is a German Protestant theologian and biblical scholar, on the faculty of the University of Utrecht. Merz has conducted vigorous research into the historicity of Jesus and is best known for her 1996 book with Gerd Theissen, The Historical Jesus, a widely used textbook translated into six languages. In the book, Merz and Theissen "assert that the Christian sources portray both positive and negative assessments of temple sacrifice and that Jesus, near the end of his life, deliberately created a rite to displace such sacrifices" and argue that "significant sayings of Jesus ...

#1286

David VanDrunen

David VanDrunen

#48470

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

David M. VanDrunen is the Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California. VanDrunen was the 2004 recipient of the Acton Institute's Novak Award, a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in 2009, and a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for the 2016–2017 academic year.

#1287

Anthea Butler

#38683

Overall Influence

Anthea Deidre Butler is an African-American professor of religion and chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies, where she is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought.

#1288

Michael Bonner

#82238

Overall Influence

1952 - 2019 (67 years)

Michael Bonner was a Jewish scholar of Islamic studies. He received his PhD in Near Eastern studies from Princeton in 1987. He was a professor of medieval Islamic history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he served as chair of the department of Near Eastern Studies from 2010 to 2019. In addition to his monographs, he published dozens of scholarly articles and translations.

#1289

George W. Knight III

#84377

Overall Influence

1931 - 2021 (90 years)

George William Knight III was an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He was a theologian, author, preacher, churchman, and adjunct professor of New Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina. Formerly, he was the founding Dean and Professor of New Testament at Knox Theological Seminary. Prior to his appointment at Knox Theological Seminary, he taught New Testament and New Testament Greek at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. As a pastor, he planted Covenant Presbyterian Church in Naples, Florida and has served nu...

#1290

Willem Hendrik Velema

#91277

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Willem Hendrik Velema was a Dutch professor, pastor and theologian. He was a member of the Christian Reformed Churches. Life and work Wim Velema was born in Drachten in 1929 as a son of the pastor Hendrik Velema . His brothers Jan and Koen were also pastors. After high school he studied theology and obtained his doctorate in 1957 at the VU University Amsterdam on the dissertation The Holy Spirit with Abraham Kuyper. He started his career as a pastor in Eindhoven and then he worked in Leiden. In 1966 Velema was appointed professor of New Testament courses. He did this until Johannes Pieter Versteeg was appointed Professor of New Testament in 1969.

#1291

Per Beskow

#58054

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Per Erik Beskow was a Swedish biblical scholar, theologian, church historian, patrologist and associate professor at Lund University. Biography Per Beskow was born on December 23, 1926, as son of the postmaster Erik Janzon and Elsa Nygren. He belonged to the Beskow family through his grandmother Anna Beskow.

#1292

Michel René Barnes

Michel René Barnes

#44995

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Michel René Barnes has been, since May, 2018, Associate Professor emeritus of Historical Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He focuses on Latin and Greek Patristic Theology, in particular, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo, and pneumatological development in the early church. He now works as principal research fellow at the "Augustine Agency", a privately financed research library outside Milwaukee .

#1293

Catherine Keller

Catherine Keller

#65836

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Catherine Keller is a contemporary Christian theologian and Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University's Graduate Division of Religion. As a constructive theologian, Keller's work is oriented around social and ecological justice, poststructuralist theory, and feminist readings of scripture and theology. Both her early and her late work brings relational thinking into theology, focusing on the relational nature of the concept of the divine, and the forms of ecological interdependence within the framework of relational theology. Her work in process theology draws on the relational on...

#1294

Annette Kurschus

Annette Kurschus

#73645

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Annette Kurschus is a German Protestant theologian and pastor. She was Praeses of the Protestant Church of Westphalia from 2012 until 2023, in November 2015 she became Vice-President of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany . She was President of the Council of the EKD from 2021 until 2023.

#1295

Mark Dyer

#90524

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

James Michael Mark Dyer was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem from 1982 to 1995. Early life Dyer was born on June 7, 1930, in Manchester, New Hampshire, the son of James M. Dyer and Anna Mahoney, both of Irish descent. He was baptised as a Roman Catholic in the Church of St Anne in Manchester, New Hampshire, on June 21, 1930. He was educated at St Joseph's Cathedral High School and graduated in 1948. During the Korean War, he served in the US Navy. He was discharged on November 18, 1954, and studied at the American College of the University of Louvain in Belgium, where he studied contemporary philosophy between 1957 and 1959.

#1296

Robert H. Smith

#68293

Overall Influence

1932 - 2006 (74 years)

Robert Harry Smith was a Lutheran clergyman, theologian, prolific author and lecturer on the Bible's New Testament, and dean of a Lutheran seminary in exile in the early 1980s. Smith was one of 40 faculty members from the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod's Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri who walked out in 1974 in a theological dispute that ended with the ousting of Concordia's president, John Tietjen, who disagreed with a literal reading of the Bible.

#1297

Jodi Magness

#51852

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Jodi Magness is an archaeologist, orientalist and scholar of religion. She serves as the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She previously taught at Tufts University.

#1298

Mike Yaconelli

#98558

Overall Influence

1942 - 2003 (61 years)

Mike Yaconelli was a writer, theologian, church leader and satirist. Co-Founder of Youth Specialties, a training organization for Christian youth leaders, and The Wittenburg Door , a satirical magazine, Yaconelli was also the pastor of a small church in Yreka, California - "the slowest growing church in America" as he called it. He and wife Karla used to share their time between Yreka and the Youth Specialties offices in El Cajon, California.

#1299

Philip King

#88608

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Philip J. King was an American Roman Catholic priest, historian, and archaeologist. Life King was born in Newton, Massachusetts. He graduated in 1945 from Saint John's Seminary in Boston. King was ordained to the priesthood on May 4, 1949 by Archbishop Richard Cushing of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. He earned higher degrees: a Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1954 from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., a Licentiate of Sacred Scripture in 1957 from Pontifical Biblical Institute, and a Doctor of Sacred Theology 1959 from Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. King also served in several parishes in the Boston Archdiocese.

#1300

Ira F. Stone

#33448

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Rabbi Ira F. Stone is a leading figure in the contemporary renewal of the Musar movement, a Jewish ethical movement. Career Stone was ordained as a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1979, and proceeded to serve congregations in Seattle and Philadelphia while also teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He served as rabbi of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia from 1988 until his retirement in 2015. Stone became the founding director of the Center for Contemporary Mussar in 2017.

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