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,

#1901

Emilio Castro

#76787

Overall Influence

1927 - 2013 (86 years)

Emilio Castro was a Methodist minister from Uruguay. He served as general secretary of the World Council of Churches from 1985 to 1992. Biography Emilio Castro was born on May 2, 1927, in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father was Chilean and his mother was Spanish.

#1902

Joanna Brooks

#31829

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Joanna Brooks is an American author and professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. Brooks is currently the associate vice president of faculty advancement and professor of English and comparative literature. She is a frequent media commentator on faith in American life, particularly in relation to her own Mormonism. Politico named her one of 2011's "50 politicos to watch" for her Twitter feed, @askmormongirl.

#1903

Tom F. Driver

#108585

Overall Influence

1925 - 2021 (96 years)

Tom Faw Driver was a theologian, preacher, lecturer, author, and peace activist. He is best known for his combined interest in theology, theater, and ritual studies. Tom F. Driver is also known for his numerous publications and lectures on similar topics, which range from academic and popular articles to sermons and books. These culminate in works that condemn war and advocate justice. Driver was also the photographer and director of two documentary films about the violence in Colombia, both of which were written and narrated in collaboration with his wife, historian Anne L. Barstow. Since hi...

#1904

Enrique Colom

#66578

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Enrique Colom Costa is a Spanish-born naturalised Chilean Catholic priest and theologian. Biography Enrique Colom was born in Alicante, Spain on 6 August 1941. He is an industrial engineer from the Technical University of Madrid, and a doctor in industrial engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Barcelona .

#1905

Jean-François Collange

Jean-François Collange

#141038

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Jean-François Collange is a French Lutheran pastor and professor of theology. He served as Lutheran pastor in Alsace and New Caledonia, before turning to exegetical studies, taking up a post of practical theology at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Strasbourg in 1981. He continued teaching at the faculty until 2000.

#1906

Michael Beasley

#105951

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Noel Michael Roy Beasley is a British Church of England bishop and epidemiologist. Since June 2022, he has been the Bishop of Bath and Wells; he was enthroned and started active ministry in that role in November 2022. From May 2015 to June 2022, he was Bishop of Hertford, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of St Albans. From 2003 to 2010, he worked at Westcott House, Cambridge, an Anglican theological college, first as chaplain and then as a tutor and the college's vice-principal. During this time, he was also an academic of Imperial College London. From 2010 to 2015, he was Director of Missio...

#1907

Anton Jamnik

#115123

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Bishop Anton Jamnik is a Slovenian Roman Catholic prelate who serves as a Titular Bishop of Vina and Auxiliary Bishop of Archdiocese of Ljubljana since 15 November 2005. Education Bishop Jamnik was born into a Roman Catholic family in the capital of Slovenia, but spent his childhood in a peasant family in the village of Videm, Dobrepolje of the historical region of Lower Carniola.

#1908

Domenico Bartolucci

Domenico Bartolucci

#111884

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

Domenico Bartolucci was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was the former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and was recognized in the field of music both as a director and a prolific composer. Considered among the most authoritative interpreters of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Bartolucci led the Sistine Chapel Choir in performances worldwide, and also directed numerous concerts with the Choir of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, including a tour of the former Soviet Union.

#1909

Halvor Bergan

#116050

Overall Influence

1931 - 2015 (84 years)

Halvor Bergan was a Norwegian theologian and priest. He served as the Bishop of the Diocese of Agder from 1983 until his retirement in 1998. Personal life He was born 8 August 1931 in Skien in Telemark county, Norway. He died on 3 May 2015.

#1910

Eleanor Humes Haney

#85101

Overall Influence

1931 - 1999 (68 years)

Eleanor "Elly" Humes Haney was an American feminist theologian and community activist. Personal Haney was born in Milford, Delaware, on December 30, 1931. She died on July 10, 1999, in Phippsburg, Maine.

#1911

Clemens Mendonca

#128417

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Clemens Mendonca is an Indian theologian and Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Religion. She worked as Managing Director at the Institute for the Study of Religion. She later continued her career as a lecturer at the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences and has been an advisor for its theology department since 2004. She is currently the Director for the Institute for the Study of Religion and secretariat of the FABC-OEIA.

#1912

Antoine Joubeir

#102840

Overall Influence

1918 - 1994 (76 years)

Antoine Joubeir was an Archeparch of the Maronite Catholic Archeparchy of Tripoli in Lebanon. Life Antoine Joubeir was consecrated priest on November 8, 1942. On 12 July 1975 he was appointed by Pope Paul VI auxiliary bishop of Tripoli and Titular Archbishop of Apamea in Syria dei Maroniti. Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, Anthony Peter Khoraish, consecrated him bishop on August 23, 1975, supported by the co-consecrators Elie Farah, Archeparch of Cyprus and Bishop Joseph Merhi, MLM, Eparch of Cairo. After the death of his predecessor Antoine Abed the Archeparchy of Tripoli became vacant. Joubei...

#1913

Peter Ackroyd

#106136

Overall Influence

1917 - 2005 (88 years)

Peter Runham Ackroyd was a British Biblical scholar, Anglican priest, and former Congregational minister. From 1961 to 1982, he was the Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of London. He was also President of the Society for Old Testament Study in 1972.

#1914

Ulrich B. Schmid

#106077

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Ulrich B. Schmid is a German Protestant theologian and university teacher. Biography Ulrich Schmid is married and has a child. Education Schmid studied from 1982 to 1989 Protestant theology at the University of Tübingen and at Münster. The first ecclesiastical examination in 1989 was followed by a study of philosophy, ancient history and Byzantine studies in Münster from 1989 to 1992. From 1993 to 1995 followed the Vicariate and then in 1995 the 2nd ecclesiastical examination.

#1915

John F. Wippel

#79071

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

John Francis Wippel was an American Catholic priest of the Diocese of Steubenville. He was a leading authority on the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas. He won the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1981, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, and was named a Professor of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. At the time of his death, he was serving as the Theodore Basselin Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

#1916

Rosemary Jeffries

#79722

Overall Influence

Rosemary E. Jeffries is former President of Georgian Court University and Vice Chair of the New Jersey Presidents' Council Executive Board . A native of Ocean City, New Jersey, Jeffries holds a PhD in sociology from Fordham University, an M.A. in religious studies from Princeton Theological Seminary, an M.A. in public communications from Fordham, and a B.A. in art education from Georgian Court College.

#1917

Ruth Page

#128299

Overall Influence

1935 - 2015 (80 years)

Ruth Page was the first female principal of New College, Edinburgh . She had been teaching in New College since 1979, until her retirement in 2000. Her prominent work includes God and the Web of Creation and Ambiguity and the Presence of God .

#1918

Xavier Koodopuzha

#121721

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Dayaraya Xavier Koodapuzha Ramban Professor Emeritus of Paurastya Vidhya Peedam was born on 28 February 1934 in Chenapady, Kanjirappally. His parents are Joseph Chacko and Annamma Koodapuzha. After completing his primary schooling, he did his tertiary studies at the St. Berchmans College in Changanacherry. He joined Parel St. Thomas Seminary in the year 1951 and did priestly studies at the Propaganda Fide College in Rome. He received a doctorate in theology and a master's degree in philosophy from the Urban University in Rome and masters degrees in Oriental sciences and Oriental canon law from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

#1919

Ralph Waller

#84233

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Sir Ralph Waller KBE is Director of the Farmington Institute at Oxford, former Principal of Harris Manchester College, Oxford and a Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford . He is a British Methodist Minister.

#1920

Richard Burridge

#68904

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Richard Alan Burridge is a Church of England priest, biblical scholar and a former Dean of King's College London. Early life and education Burridge was born on 11 June 1955 to Alan Burridge and Iris Joyce Burridge . Burridge played guitar in the band Exousia in the 1970s, and continues to record as a solo artist. He was educated at University College, Oxford where he received an MA and the University of Nottingham where he read for a PhD. His doctoral thesis on the genre of the gospels was published in 1992 as What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography. It played a part i...

#1921

David Syme Russell

#84383

Overall Influence

1916 - 2010 (94 years)

David Syme Russell was a British theologian and author, former Principal of Rawdon College, Leeds, and General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. Early life and career David Syme Russell was born in Glasgow in 1916. His father was a joiner, working on the River Clyde. As a child, Russell showed promise as a footballer and completed trials for the Scottish schoolboys' side and at Queen's Park. Heavily involved with Cambuslang Baptist Church, he later recounted that he knew even as a child that he would end up in ministry.

#1922

Pamela Klassen

#73432

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Pamela E. Klassen is a Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, co-appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. In 2019, Klassen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

#1923

Dorothy Lee

#112383

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Dorothy Ann Lee is an Australian theologian and Anglican priest, formerly dean of the Trinity College Theological School, Melbourne, a college of the University of Divinity, and continuing as Frank Woods Distinguished Professor of New Testament. Her main research interests include the narrative and theology of the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John, spirituality in the New Testament, the Transfiguration and Anglican worship.

#1924

William Roscoe Estep

#92175

Overall Influence

1920 - 2000 (80 years)

William Roscoe Estep was an American Baptist historian and professor. He was an authority on the Anabaptist movement. Career and life Estep was professor of Church history emeritus at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1954 until his retirement in 1990, however he continued to teach until 1994. During that time, he wrote numerous works on subjects including Baptist and Anabaptist history, religious liberty and world missions. He also was involved in several church organisations including the American Society of Church History; the Conference on Faith and History ; Southern Baptist...

#1925

David W. Graves

#85803

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

David W. Graves is an American educator and theologian who serves as a General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene. Education and family Graves was educated at Olivet Nazarene University and received a Master of Divinity degree from Nazarene Theological Seminary. Graves received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Olivet Nazarene University. Graves and his wife, Sharon, have four grown children.

#1926

Jacob K. Olupona

#31519

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jacob Kehinde Olupona is a Nigerian-born American professor, writer, and scholar of religious studies. He is a professor of African Religious Traditions at the Harvard Divinity School with a joint appointment as Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Olupona was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2023.

#1927

Ross Brann

#150647

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Ross Brann is an American religion historian, currently the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies at Cornell University. Published works The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain

#1928

John Taylor

#100404

Overall Influence

1914 - 2001 (87 years)

John Vernon Taylor was an English bishop and theologian who was the Bishop of Winchester from 1974 to 1985. Education and family Taylor was born in Cambridge – while his father was Vice Principal at Ridley Hall – and educated at St Lawrence College . He read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, then read theology and trained for the ministry at St Catherine's Society and Wycliffe Hall at Oxford, and the Institute of Education.

#1929

Serene Jones

#116059

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Lynda Serene Jones is the President and Johnston Family Professor for Religion and Democracy at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. She was formerly the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and chair of gender, woman, and sexuality studies at Yale University.

#1930

Lisa Sowle Cahill

#104781

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Lisa Sowle Cahill is an American ethicist, and J. Donald Monan Professor at Boston College. She first became known in the 1980s with her studies on gender and sexual ethics, but now she has extended her work to social and global ethics. Lisa Sowle Cahill's work focuses on an attempt to discuss the complexity of moral issues while lowering tensions about theological disagreements between the Church and society.

#1931

Christopher Byworth

#118708

Overall Influence

1939 - 2017 (78 years)

Christopher Henry Briault Byworth was an English Anglican priest, liturgist, and biblical scholar. Having held parish appointments in the dioceses of Chelmsford, Manchester, London and Norwich, he was Warden of Cranmer Hall, Durham, from 1979 to 1983. He then returned to parish ministry, serving for the rest of his career in the Diocese of Liverpool. As a liturgist, he co-authored the first, though illegal, modern English eucharistic liturgy for the Church of England in 1968, and was then involved in writing or contributing to a number of new services such as one for celebrating the birth of a child without baptism.

#1932

Wilhelm Heinrich Neuser

#135302

Overall Influence

1926 - 2010 (84 years)

Wilhelm Heinrich Neuser was a German Protestant theologian, church historian, professor and a leading scholar in John Calvin research, a founder of International Congress on Calvin Research. Biography Neuser, a son of the Evangelical Reformed pastor and later Superintendent Wilhelm Neuser, studied after graduating from the Protestant Theology at the Georg August University of Göttingen, University of Basel and at the Church College Bethel. In 1951 he passed his first ecclesiastical examination and then joined the Vicariate. After completing the vicariate, he received his doctorate in Doctor...

#1933

Simon Barrow

#81675

Overall Influence

Simon Barrow is a practical theologian, commentator, journalist, NGO consultant, adult educator and trainer who is director of the religion and society think tank Ekklesia. Simon Barrow is the creator of Employer Brand concept and consultant. Simon Barrow was Chairman and founder of the consultancy People in Business which he sold to a private equity owned US group in August 2007. He retired to focus on his new interests in 2012. The first academic paper on the Employer Brand was written by Tim Ambler, Grand Metropolitan Senior Research Fellow at London Business School and Simon Barrow and was published in 1996 in the Journal of Brand Management.

#1934

Elizabeth Templeton

#128095

Overall Influence

1945 - 2015 (70 years)

Elizabeth Anne Templeton was a Scottish freelance theologian and educationalist. Early life and education Templeton was born 8 June 1945 in Drumoyne in Glasgow. Her father was a clerk, who became a teacher and was a conscientious objector and mother a primary school teacher in Govan.

#1935

Donald Foster Hudson

#114201

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

Donald Foster Hudson was a British missionary in India and the author of Teach Yourself New Testament Greek. History Hudson was born in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, England on 29 April 1916 to John and Kate. He was enlisted for overseas missionary work with the BMS World Mission and was sent for theological studies to the Regent's Park College, Oxford. He became ordained as a Baptist minister on 6 July 1940 and sailed for India the same year.

#1936

Anna L. Peterson

#92364

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Anna L. Peterson is an American scholar of religious studies who is currently a professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida, where she has worked since 1993. Her research variously concerns religion in Latin America and ethics—including religious ethics, Christian ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics and social ethics. She is the author of five monographs: Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion ; Being Human ; Seeds of the Kingdom ; Everyday Ethics and Social Change ; and Being Animal .

#1937

Eduardo Eliseo Martín

#129072

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Eduardo Eliseo Martín is an Argentine prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Since 2014, he is the current Archbishop of Rosario and was the Bishop of Villa de la Concepción del Río Cuarto from 2006 to 2014.

#1938

Richard Shaull

#90206

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Millard Richard Shaull was an American theologian, author and a Presbyterian missionary noted for his support for pedagogical thinking in Latin America. Biography Shaull was born November 24, 1919, in Felton, Pennsylvania, to Millard and Anna Shaull. He earned a B.A. from Elizabethtown College in 1938, and a Th.B. and Th.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. He served as a missionary to Colombia and later taught ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary until he retired in 1980, in addition to serving with the World Student Christian Federation.

#1939

Timothy F. Sedgwick

#109407

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Timothy Foster Sedgwick is an American Episcopal ethicist. In addition to being the Clinton S. Quin Professor of Christian Ethics at Virginia Theological Seminary, he has served since 2007 as Vice President and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs.

#1940

Robert Kennedy

#119147

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Robert Edward Kennedy is an American Jesuit priest, professor of theology, psychoanalyst and Zen rōshi in the White Plum lineage. Life and career Kennedy joined the Jesuits on August 8, 1951. At the end of a long spiritual and academic training he was ordained a priest in Japan in 1965. He studied with Yamada Koun in Japan in the 1970s. He was installed as a Zen teacher of the White Plum Asanga lineage in 1991 and was given the title Roshi in 1997. Kennedy studied Zen with Yamada Roshi in Kamakura, Japan, Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernard Glassman Roshi in New York City. Glassman Roshi installed Kennedy as a sensei in 1991 and conferred inka in 1997, making him a roshi .

#1941

Anne E. Patrick

Anne E. Patrick

#89787

Overall Influence

1941 - 2016 (75 years)

Anne Estelle Patrick, SNJM , was an American Catholic religious sister, theologian, and professor. She was an active member of the Catholic Theological Society of America, the International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology, the Society of Christian Ethics, and the National Assembly of Women Religious.

#1942

John Baker

#80644

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

John Austin Baker was a Church of England bishop, Bishop of Salisbury from 1982 until his retirement in 1993. Early life He was the only child born to George Austin Baker and his wife Grace Baker. Though his father was a company secretary, three uncles and an aunt had taken holy orders. He was educated at Marlborough College and Oriel College, Oxford. He was awarded the degrees Oxford Master of Arts and Master of Letters .

#1943

Stanisław Nagy

#86544

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Stanisław Kazimierz Nagy, SCI was a Polish member of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a cardinal. He was born in 1921 in Bieruń, Silesia, Poland, to a Hungarian father and Polish mother. In 1937 he became a member of the Dehonian Congregation and was ordained a priest in 1945. He was a rector in Kraków-Płaszów, in Tarnów and a professor at the Catholic University of Lublin.

#1944

Darrell J. Doughty

#100217

Overall Influence

1936 - 2009 (73 years)

Darrell Jennings Doughty was an American biblical scholar who taught New Testament and Early Christianity at Drew Theological Seminary for 35 years. Doughty is associated with the revival of Dutch radicalism, along with Hermann Detering and Robert M. Price. He was an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church.

#1945

Manlio Simonetti

#63111

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

Manlio Simonetti was an Italian scholar of Patristics and the history of Biblical interpretation. Biography Simonetti was born in Rome on 2 May 1926. His early studies were in Classics at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 1959 he became Professor of Ancient Christian Literature at the University of Cagliari, a post he held until 1969. In that year he became Professor of the History of Christianity at the Sapienza, a chair he held for three decades. He also taught at the Salesian Pontifical University and was an instructor at the Augustinianum from its founding in 1971 until 2016. He was ma...

#1946

Gerard Mussies

#110806

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Gerard Mussies is a retired senior lecturer in the New Testament Hellenistic background at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He taught biblical Greek and studied the Greek-Roman background of the New Testament.

#1947

Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Robert Hamerton-Kelly

#67191

Overall Influence

1938 - 2013 (75 years)

Robert Gerald Hamerton-Kelly was a Christian theologian, ordained United Methodist pastor, ethics scholar, and author and editor of several books on religion and violence. He served as Dean of the Chapel at Stanford Memorial Church at Stanford University for 14 years and was on the faculty of the university for more than 30 years. A leading advocate of the work of René Girard's theory of mimetic desire, Hamerton-Kelly co-founded several organizations dedicated to the study of the theory and edited several important texts about it.

#1948

Mary L. Coloe

#95958

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Sister Mary Coloe is an Australian religious sister and New Testament biblical scholar who specializes in the Gospel of John. She is a member of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, a Roman Catholic religious order dedicated to teaching and service to the poor. She is a professor at Yarra Theological Union, in Box Hill, Victoria, Australia.

#1949

James W. Knight

#105423

Overall Influence

1925 - 2005 (80 years)

James Wade Knight was a Cumberland Presbyterian minister. He served as that denomination's first Director of Ministry and was the Executive of Kentucky Synod. James Wade Knight was born January 9, 1925, in Guthrie, Kentucky. His parents, Eric Grady and Alice Elmine McElroy Knight, were members of the Arlington Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Erin, Tennessee. He was educated in the public schools of Todd County, Kentucky, and Houston County, Tennessee. He graduated from Bethel College and from the Cumberland Presbyterian Theological Seminary . He did further graduate study at Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and North Texas State University in Denton, Texas.

#1950

Peter Raymond Draper

#136048

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Peter Raymond Draper is Professor of Nursing Education and Scholarship and former Director of the Teaching Excellence Academy at the University of Hull. He is also a Self-Supporting Minister in the Church of England.

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