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,

#1651

Paul Boafo

#77471

Overall Influence

Paul Kwabena Boafo is a Ghanaian theologian and minister who was elected as the twelfth Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church Ghana in 2018. He previously served as the Administrative Bishop of the Church. He is the first ordained minister to serve in both capacities in the episcopal history of the Ghanaian Methodist Church. Boafo also served as the Protestant Chaplain of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology .

#1652

André Manaranche

#104428

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

André Manaranche was a French priest, theologian, and spiritual writer. Biography Born into a peasant family from Auvergne who moved into the Paris suburbs, Manaranche felt called to the priesthood early on. He began his studies at a seminary in Versailles and was ordained on 29 June 1951. He was then sent to the Institut Catholique de Paris for higher studies, and defended a thesis titled Communauté et société dans l'Eglise, inspired by the works of Ernst Troeltsch.

#1653

Donald Nicholl

#78883

Overall Influence

1923 - 1997 (74 years)

Donald Nicholl was a British historian and theologian. A speaker of medieval Welsh, Irish and Russian, he published books on medieval and modern history, religion and a biography of Thurstan. He has been regarded as "one of the most influential of modern Christian thinkers".

#1654

Emmanuel Katongole

#82309

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Emmanuel Katongole is a Ugandan Catholic priest and theologian known for his work on violence and politics in Africa and theology of reconciliation. Biography Katongole was born in Malube, Uganda, to Anthony Bukerimanza and Magdalene Nyiraruhango. His father, a Tutsi, and his mother, a Hutu, were both originally from Rwanda but moved to Uganda in the 1950s.

#1655

Tjitze Baarda

#109321

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Tjitze Baarda was a Dutch professor of theology and Religious Sciences. He spent his career at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Utrecht University. He specialized in the four gospels of the New Testament.

#1656

Leo D. Lefebure

#63964

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Leo Dennis Lefebure is an American Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, university professor, and author. He is the inaugural Matteo Ricci S. J. Chair of Theology at Georgetown University.

#1657

Michael Alexander

#73847

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Michael Scott Alexander is an associate professor and Maimonides Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies in the religious studies department of the University of California, Riverside. He attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate and received his PhD in 1999 from Yale University.

#1658

Andrew Francis

#83069

Overall Influence

1946 - 2017 (71 years)

Andrew Francis was the Pakistani Catholic prelate who served as the Bishop of Multan from 2000 to 2014. Biography He was born in Adah, Pakistan on 29 November 1946. He was educated at St. Mary’s Convent school, Adah and St Francis High School, Lahore.

#1659

Herbert Berg

#79198

Overall Influence

Herbert Berg is a scholar of religion. Trained at the University of Toronto's Centre for the Study of Religion in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he is currently a Visiting assistant professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College. He previously taught as a professor in the Department of International Studies and the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and was the Director of the International Studies from 2011 to 2018. At UNCW, he has been recognized with the University of North Carolina Board of Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching , t...

#1660

Roy Clyde Clark

#73275

Overall Influence

1920 - 2014 (94 years)

Roy Clyde Clark was an American bishop of the United Methodist Church, elected in 1980. Early life Clark was born on July 24, 1920, in Mobile, Alabama. His father, C. C. Clark, was a Methodist minister in Gulfport, Mississippi.

#1661

Kristin De Troyer

#101749

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Kristin Mimi Lieve Leen De Troyer is an Old Testament scholar, theologian, writer and an professor who has taught at different universities such as the University of Salzburg, the University of St Andrews, and Claremont School of Theology. She is the author of many scholarly books and articles, an editor of several academic series, and a professor and researcher of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since the beginning of 2021, she serves as the Secretary of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

#1662

Erwin Bischofberger

#72344

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

Erwin Bischofberger, SJ was a Swedish Jesuit and medical practitioner. Life Bischofberger came from the Swiss Rhine Valley. He was ordained on 19 March 1961 in the Saint Eugenia Church in Stockholm to the priesthood and spent six years as a chaplain in Gothenburg. On 7 January 1968, he joined the Congregation of the Society of Jesus and in 1974 at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt became Doctor of Theology with the work 'The moral requirements of faith on fundamental ethics of John Henry Newman'.

#1663

Daniel J. Lasker

Daniel J. Lasker

#66691

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Daniel Judah Lasker is an American-born Israeli scholar of Jewish philosophy. As of 2017, he is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Jewish thought at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Biography Born on April 5, 1949, in Flint, Michigan, United States, to Arnold and Miriam Lasker, he grew up in Orange, New Jersey, where his father served as a congregational Rabbi. As a teenager he was active in USY and served as chapter head and on the regional board. He received his B.A., M.A. and PhD from Brandeis University, all in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, he also was a visiting research student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

#1664

Ingolf U. Dalferth

#70765

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Ingolf Ulrich Dalferth is a philosopher of religion and theologian. His work is regarded as being on the methodological borderlines between analytic philosophy, hermeneutics and phenomenology, and he is a recognized expert in issues of contemporary philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of orientation.

#1665

Allen Brent

#65959

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

The Rev. Prof. Allen Brent is a scholar of early Christian history and literature. He is a Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, formerly Dean , was an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge in 1998–2010. At present he is Professor in Early Christian History and Iconography at King's College London where he is joint researcher , on a two year BARDA project: Early Christian Epigraphy and Iconography after Dölger. He is also Professore Invitato at the Augustinianum , Rome. He was formerly Principal Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Huddersfield, and has previously been Professor of History at James Cook University.

#1666

Samuel Ifor Enoch

Samuel Ifor Enoch

#89685

Overall Influence

1914 - 2001 (87 years)

Samuel Ifor Enoch was Professor of New Testament Studies and Principal of the Presbyterian United Theological College, Aberystwyth in Wales. Early life Samuel Ifor Enoch was born on 26 December 1914 at Ciliau Aeron, Cardiganshire, one of three sons of Jennie Enoch and J. Aeronydd Enoch. As a school boy in Ferryside in south Carmarthenshire Enoch grew up with serious breathing problems and he lost much of his grammar-school years due to recurring pneumonia. Enoch had pneumonia four times, once even surviving double pneumonia. Despite all this ill-health he continued to read and study and gaine...

#1667

Drorah Setel

#98088

Overall Influence

Drorah Setel is an American biblical scholar and feminist theologian from Buffalo, New York, who was formerly a rabbi at Temple Beth El in Niagara Falls, NY. She presently serves as rabbi to the Temple Emanu-El congregation at the Jewish Community Center in Brighton, a suburb of Rochester, New York.

#1668

Gerald Pillay

#53062

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Gerald John Pillay is a South African theologian and ecclesiastical historian. He was vice chancellor and rector of Liverpool Hope University in England from 2003 until the end of 2022. Early life and education Pillay was born on 21 December 1953 in Natal in South Africa. His ancestors had come from India to the then British colony of Natal, and he grew up in Durban under apartheid. He studied at the University of Durban-Westville , graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975, a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1978, and a Doctor of Theology degree in 1985. He also studied philosophic...

#1669

David Bashevkin

#88582

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

David Bashevkin is an American Orthodox rabbi, writer, adjunct professor, and podcast host. He serves as Director of Education at NCSY, an Orthodox Union youth group. Early life and education Bashevkin grew up in Lawrence, New York to parents who came from traditional Jewish backgrounds. He described his oncologist father and writer mother as being right-wing Modern Orthodox. As a child, he wrote letters to the editor of Wizard, a comic book industry magazine. After graduating from Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High School for Boys, Bashevkin studied in Israel's Yeshivat Sha'alvim, later attend...

#1670

Rik Torfs

#79133

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Henri Maria Dymphna André Laurent "Rik" Torfs is a Belgian canon law scholar and media personality. He is a former Senator for the Christian Democratic and Flemish party in the Belgian Federal Parliament and a former Rector of the Catholic University of Leuven.

#1671

Meehyun Chung

#70096

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Meehyun Chung is a professor of the United Graduate School of Theology in Yonsei University and serving as the first female chaplain of Yonsei University. She was the editor of Korean Journal of Systematic Theology .

#1672

J. A. Thompson

#76470

Overall Influence

1913 - 2002 (89 years)

John Arthur Thompson was an Australian Old Testament scholar and biblical archaeologist. Thompson studied at the University of Queensland, the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge, gaining degrees in science, the arts, and theology. For a number of years he taught chemistry and physics. He taught at the University of Melbourne's School of Middle Eastern Studies , and the Baptist Theological College of New South Wales . He was the first director of the Australian Institute of Archaeology in Melbourne, from 1947. During 1950–51 he was an honorary Fellow of the American School...

#1673

Roland J. Teske

#73261

Overall Influence

1934 - 2015 (81 years)

Roland J. Teske, S.J. was a Roman Catholic priest member of the Jesuit order. Teske was also a medievalist and philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Marquette University. He published several books about medieval philosophy and theology, and translated and prepared English translations of their work, specializing in St. Augustine's philosophical and religious views and the work of the later philosopher William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris.

#1674

Walter Klaiber

#124022

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Walter Klaiber is a theologian, bishop of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Germany and was until the beginning of March 2007 Chairman of the Working Group of Christian Churches in Germany. Bibliography

#1675

Christfried Berger

#68833

Overall Influence

1938 - 2003 (65 years)

Christfried Berger was a Protestant theologian in the German Democratic Republic and subsequently, in Germany following reunification. He was a leading ecumenist. Life Berger was born in Posen, at that time a major industrial city in the heart of eastern Germany. After 1945 the family lived in Thuringia, now part of the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, which eventually became East Germany. Berger studied Protestant Theology at Berlin's Humboldt University between 1956 and 1961.

#1676

Eric W. Gritsch

Eric W. Gritsch

#99358

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Eric W. Gritsch was an American Lutheran ecumenical theologian and Luther scholar. Early life and student years Gritsch was raised in a Lutheran pastor's family in Bernstein im Burgenland in Austria. His family was deeply affected by the Anschluss and the Second World War. His father died on a death march as a Russian prisoner of war, but Gritsch himself, who had been drafted into a Werwolf group, escaped capture by posing as a gypsy boy. He returned to Bernstein and graduated with Matura in 1950. The same year, he matriculated at the University of Vienna to study Protestant theology. In 1954 he received a Fulbright scholarship and came to Yale University for the academic year 1954/55.

#1677

Scott G. Brown

#80806

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Scott Gregory Brown is a private scholar of Christian Origins, who earned his degree from the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Brown wrote a Ph.D-dissertation about the Secret Gospel of Mark , which he believes is genuine. He rejects the title, "Secret Gospel of Mark," assigned to this gospel by its discoverer, Morton Smith, calling it a bad translation of "mystikon euangelion" , which does not imply strict secrecy and is a description rather than a title. Since Brown considers this title conceptually misleading, he urges scholars to adopt the less loaded tit...

#1678

Kenneth Grayston

#89539

Overall Influence

1914 - 2005 (91 years)

Kenneth Grayston was a British theologian. He is the author of Dying, We Live. A New Inquiry into the Death of Christ in the New Testament . Grayston was born in Sheffield, and was raised and educated in south London. He studied chemistry at St John's College, Oxford, then theology at Wesley House, Cambridge. He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1942. In 1944, he was appointed assistant director of broadcasting at the BBC, moving from there to become a tutor in New Testament at Didsbury Theological College, then a lecturer at the University of Bristol. He held the post of professor of theology there from 1965 until 1979.

#1679

Arenda Haasnoot

Arenda Haasnoot

#103507

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Arenda Haasnoot is a Dutch theologian and preacher in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands . From 2007 to 2010 she was the Vice Chairman of the General Synod, the supreme governing body of the PKN. She is currently preacher at the Reformed Church, Rijnsburg.

#1680

Rainer Riesner

#95800

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rainer Riesner is a German pastor and theologian. He was ordained pastor in 1980, he has taught theology since 1998, with a focus on the New Testament, at TU Dortmund University. Since 1986 he has been married to Cornelia Riesner, a medical doctor. They have four children.

#1681

Elżbieta Adamiak

#91664

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Elżbieta Adamiak is a Polish Roman Catholic theologian. Since 2016, she has been Professor of Fundamental Theology and Dogmatics at the Institute for Catholic Theology at the University of Koblenz-Landau.

#1682

Giuseppe Pittau

#53259

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

Giuseppe Pittau was a Roman Catholic titular archbishop. Born in Villacidro, Italy, Pittau was ordained to the priesthood for the Society of Jesus on 18 March 1959. He earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1963. On 28 July 1998 Pope John Paul II appointed Pittau titular archbishop of Castro di Sardegna and secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education and Pittau was ordained on 26 September 1998. He was also rector of Sophia University in Tokyo, and of the Gregorian University in Rome. On 25 November 2003, Pittau retired. Pittau died on Friday 26 December 2014. Before his service i...

#1683

Joseph Gelfer

#73833

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Joseph Gelfer is a British author and academic. He is noted for his academic analysis of spiritual and religious topics and masculinity. His book 2012: Decoding the Countercultural Apocalypse attracted considerable media attention.

#1684

Hans Werner Debrunner

#69796

Overall Influence

1923 - 1998 (75 years)

Hans Werner Debrunner was a Swiss German historian and theologian whose work mainly covered mission history, West Africa and the African diaspora. He also carried out academic research on history relating to missiology in northern, eastern and southern Africa. Upon his death in 1998, his private library and archive were donated to the Carl Schlettwein Foundation. The "independent, self-contained collection" comprises more than 3100 books and single journal issues on his area of specialty, published mostly in the first half to mid-twentieth century. Furthermore, Debrunner’s academic archives a...

#1685

Colin Slee

#75282

Overall Influence

1945 - 2010 (65 years)

Colin Bruce Slee, OBE was a priest in the Church of England, most notable for his final position as Dean of Southwark Cathedral from 1994 until his death. A friend of Desmond Tutu and Rowan Williams, Slee's churchmanship was liberal and Anglo-Catholic. He gave his backing to Jeffrey John's nomination as a bishop in 2003 and was opposed to the use of the hymn "Jerusalem" in church.

#1686

David G. Buttrick

#97240

Overall Influence

1927 - 2017 (90 years)

David G. Buttrick was an American Presbyterian minister who later joined the United Church of Christ and became the Drucilla Moore Buffington Professor of homiletics and liturgics at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

#1687

Nigel G. Wright

#99865

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nigel Goring Wright is a British Baptist theologian. Early life and education Wright was born on 13 May 1949 in Manchester and joined the Baptist church at the age of fifteen. He attended the University of Leeds, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in modern languages. He further gaining a BD degree from the University of London. He earned a Master of Theology degree from the University of Glasgow in 1987 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1994 from King's College, London.

#1688

Alexander Filipović

Alexander Filipović

#32949

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Alexander Filipović is a German ethicist, focusing on media and the digital transformation. He is a professor for media ethics at the Munich School of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Media Ethics and Digital Society. Filipović serves as co-editor of the media science journal Communicatio Socialis and coordinates the German media ethics network Medienethik.

#1689

Roman Malek

#82905

Overall Influence

1951 - 2019 (68 years)

Roman Malek was a Polish-born German professor and sinologist. Biography Born in Bytów, Polish People's Republic, Malek entered the Society of the Divine Word in 1969. He studied philosophy, theology, and comparative religions, completing a doctorate in Sinology and a Habilitationsschrift on the Chinese theologian Wu Leichuan , both at the University of Bonn. Malek was a professor of philosophy and religious sciences at SVD Saint Augustin University of Philosophy and Theology and a sinology professor at the University of Bonn.

#1690

Celia Deane-Drummond

#82185

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Celia Deane-Drummond is director of the Laudato Si’ Research Institute and senior research fellow in theology at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. She is also honorary visiting professor in theology and science at the University of Durham, UK and was professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame from 2011 to 2019. She teaches systematic theology in relation to biological science - especially evolution, ecology, genetics; bioethics - especially sustainability, ecotheology, and public theology.

#1691

Frederick R. McManus

Frederick R. McManus

#100484

Overall Influence

1923 - 2005 (82 years)

Frederick Richard McManus was an American Catholic priest and academic, who served as a peritus on the liturgy at the Second Vatican Council. He presided at the first English Mass in the United States in 1964 in St. Louis, Missouri.

#1692

S. Scott Bartchy

#99463

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

S. Scott Bartchy is a New Testament scholar and member of The Context Group, a group of biblical scholars committed to using social-scientific interpretative methods. He is also a member of The Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas . Bartchy is Emeritus Professor of Christian Origins and the History of Religion in the Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, where he taught from 1981 until his retirement in 2013. At UCLA, Bartchy was integral to the founding of the Center for the Study of Religion and served as its director for many years.

#1693

Frank Griffel

#107112

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Frank Griffel is a professor of Islamic studies at the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. Biography Griffel earned his PhD in 1999 from the Free University of Berlin after studying philosophy, Arabic literature, and Islamic studies at institutions in Germany, Damascus, Berlin, and London. He was a research fellow at the Orient Institute of the German Oriental Society in Beirut, Lebanon. He joined Yale in 2000, where he teaches courses on Islamic intellectual history, theology and philosophy , and how Islamic intellectuals respond to Western modernity.

#1694

Arne Palmqvist

#85223

Overall Influence

1921 - 2003 (82 years)

Per Olof Arne Palmqvist, . was a Swedish theologian, Bishop of the Diocese of Härnösand between 1967 and 1975 and of the Diocese of Västerås between 1975 and 1988. After studies at Uppsala University Palmqvist became Licentiate of Divinity in 1950, Doctor of Divinity in 1955 and docent of ecclesiastical history in 1955. He was ordained as priest in the Church of Sweden 1956 in Uppsala. From 1959 teacher at the Stockholm Institute of Theology where he was prorector from 1965. Elected as bishop of the Diocese of Härnösand in 1967. He left this position after being elected as bishop of the Diocese of Västerås in 1975.

#1695

Pamela Cooper-White

Pamela Cooper-White

#75716

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Pamela Cooper-White is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor Emerita and Dean Emerita of Psychology and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She was previously the Ben G. and Nancye Clapp Gautier Professor of Pastoral Theology, Care and Counseling at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA and Co-Director of the Atlanta Theological Association's Th.D. program in Pastoral Counseling. She is an ordained Priest in the Episcopal Church 1992–present . She was the Fulbright-Freud Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis in Vienna, Austria 2013–14.

#1696

Andrew Dutney

#93314

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Reverend Professor Andrew Fergus Dutney is a Christian scholar, writer, and musician. He is a Professor within the College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University. He is the former principal of Uniting College for Leadership and Theology and a past President of the Assembly of the Uniting Church. He was installed in the position of president on 15 July 2012 on the first day of the Uniting Church's 13th triennial assembly meeting in Adelaide, handing over 12 July 2015 to Mr Stuart McMillan. His installation service took place before around 3000 people at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

#1697

Matthias Wolfes

#95851

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Matthias Wolfes is a German Protestant theologian. Biography and activities In 1998 he earned a PhD in systematic theology from the University of Heidelberg , Prof. Wolfgang Huber was his doctoral advisor. In 2002 he received another PhD degree under supervision of Prof. Michael Salewski . In 1999 he was ordained a minister of the Protestant Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, which is a United church .

#1698

Tony Jones

#100117

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Tony Jones is a leader in the Christian emerging church movement, a theologian, and an author. Personal life Jones grew up near Edina, Minnesota, and graduated from Edina High School in 1990. He later graduated from Dartmouth College and attended both Fuller Theological Seminary and Princeton University, pursuing a doctorate from the latter. Jones divorced his first wife, Julie McMahon, in 2009. In July 2011, Jones wedded Courtney Perry in a religious marriage, but not legally by the laws of Minnesota or the United States in solidarity with non-heterosexual couples who could not wed: "It was...

#1699

Granger E. Westberg

#73802

Overall Influence

1913 - 1999 (86 years)

Granger E Westberg was a Lutheran clergyman and professor best known for his book, Good Grief, and for creating the parish nurse program, now an international movement called faith community nursing. Westberg was a pioneer in exploring and encouraging the interrelationship of religion and medicine and in fostering holistic health care. He held the first joint appointment in medicine and religion at a major university .

#1700

Victor H. Matthews

#100075

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Victor Harold Matthews is an American Old Testament scholar. He is Dean of the College of Humanities and Public Affairs and professor of religious studies at Missouri State University. Matthews was born in Joplin, Missouri. He obtained a PhD at Brandeis University. In 2015, the fourth edition of Matthews' book, The Cultural World of the Bible, was published.

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