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,

#2001

Daniel I. Block

#109562

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Daniel Isaac Block is a Canadian/American Old Testament scholar. He is Gunther H. Knoedler Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Wheaton College. He was awarded a BEd , studied at Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen, 1968–1969University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, 1969Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, 1973School of Archaeology and Oriental Studies, University of Liverpool, 1982

#2002

Detlev Koester

#161618

Overall Influence

#2003

Alan Walker

#54023

Overall Influence

1911 - 2003 (92 years)

Sir Alan Edgar Walker was an Australian theologian, evangelist, social commentator, broadcaster and activist, and the Superintendent of Wesley Mission . Career Alan Walker was involved in the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. He was superintendent of the Methodist Wesley Mission, Pitt Street, Sydney, 1958–1978 and one of the founders of the National Christian Youth Convention in 1955 and Lifeline in 1963. He was first world director of evangelism for the World Methodist Council, 1978 to 1988. He was involved in founding the World Methodist Evangelism Institute in Atlanta, 1982.

#2004

Brian Harrison

#160062

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Brian W. Harrison OS is an Australian-born Roman Catholic priest and theologian. Harrison is a prolific writer on religious issues and an emeritus professor of theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico . He speaks Spanish fluently.

#2005

Gina Messina Dysert

#126244

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Gina Messina , previously known as Gina Messina-Dysert, is an American religious studies and women's studies scholar and activist. She gives particular attention to gender issues in religion. Messina is co-founder of Feminism and Religion, which she founded in 2011 with Caroline Kline, Xochitl Alvizo, and Cynthia Garrity Bond. Feminism and Religion is a project that explores the intersection between scholarship and the feminism in religion, community, and activism.

#2006

Mark Pretorius

#116824

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Mark Pretorius is an evangelical theologian, philosopher and metaphysician. He holds the following degrees: a BTh , a BTh Hons , an M.A. in biblical studies , and a PhD in systematic theology . Pretorius was a senior academic at the South African Theological Seminary, and currently a research associate in the department of systematic theology at the University of Pretoria.

#2007

Christa Mulack

#102798

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Christa Mulack was a German feminist theologian, educator and author. Life Christa Mulack was born and grew up in Hamburg. She studied Theology, Psychology, Sociology and Teaching sciences. While working as a teacher at a Gymnasium she received her doctorate in 1982 from the University of Dortmund . Her dissertation, entitled "Die Weiblichkeit Gottes" , was published as a book in 1983, and established Mulack's reputation as a feminist theologian. The topic is one on which she worked as a freelance author and teacher at several universities and theological academies after 1984.

#2008

Chris Ferguson

#123810

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Christopher Mackie Ferguson is a Canadian pastor, theologian and social justice advocate from the United Church of Canada. He served as general secretary of the World Communion of Reformed Churches from August 2014 through August 2021.

#2009

R. K. Harrison

#90739

Overall Influence

1920 - 1993 (73 years)

Roland Kenneth Harrison was an Old Testament scholar. Background and career Harrison studied at the University of London and taught at Clifton College, Bristol from 1947 to 1949, before his appointment as Hellmuth Professor of Old Testament Studies at Huron College, University of Western Ontario. In 1960 he became Professor of Old Testament Studies at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, where he stayed until his retirement in 1986.

#2010

Ronald F. Youngblood

#45475

Overall Influence

1931 - 2014 (83 years)

Ronald F. Youngblood was an American biblical scholar and professor of Old Testament. In addition to being one of the original translators of the New International Version of the Bible, he was the general editor for Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, and on the editorial team for the Zondervan NASB Study Bible, both of which earned the ECPA Christian Book Award for their respective publication years.

#2011

Oliver Davies

#105362

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Anthony Oliver Davies is a British systematic theologian. He has made contributions to the study of medieval mysticism , early medieval Welsh and Irish spirituality, and contemporary Systematic Theology. He presently works in the fields of neuroscience, theology and social transformation. Davies is the originator together with Paul Janz and Clemens Sedmak of ‘Transformation Theology’. Since 2004 he has held the chair of Christian Doctrine at King's College London, as a Roman Catholic layman. He is founding director of the Centre for Social Transformation at King's College London, which spec...

#2012

Gunnar Alksnis

#95614

Overall Influence

1931 - 2011 (80 years)

Gunnar Alksnis was a Latvian-American philosopher and theologian who was specialized in ethics and history of philosophy. Biography Alksnis was born as Gunārs Alksnis on July 1, 1931, in Riga, the capital of Latvia. His parents were John Edward Alksnis and Elza Alksnis. The Alksnis family came to the United States in 1949. In 1955 Gunnar Alksnis received a Bachelor of divinity degree. One year later he was ordained as a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at Trinity Church in Russell County, Kansas. He married Pauline Elizabeth Krug in 1957. The couple had two children, J...

#2013

Patricia Cox Miller

#108007

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Patricia Cox Miller is the W. Earl Ledden Professor Emerita of Religion at Syracuse University. She researches religious imagination in late antiquity, religion and aesthetics in late antiquity, early Christian asceticism, women and religion in late antiquity, early Christian and pagan hagiography and ancient art.

#2014

Paul R. Cheesman

#99764

Overall Influence

1921 - 1991 (70 years)

Paul Robert Cheesman was an American academic and a professor of religion at Brigham Young University . Early life and education Cheesman was born in Brigham City, Utah, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . His parents died while he was young and he oversaw his own education. He received a bachelor's degree in education from San Diego State University. He received his master's degree in 1965 and doctorate in 1967, both in religious education at Brigham Young University.

#2015

Isabelle Graesslé

#58933

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Isabelle Graesslé is a French born theologian, feminist and former museum director, based in Geneva. In 2001 she was appointed moderator of ministers and deacons at the Protestant Church of Geneva. The position dates back to 1541 when it was created by John Calvin, but Graesslé, after 460 years, was the first woman to occupy it. In 2004 she was appointed the first director of the International Reformation Museum which opened the next year in Geneva, but she resigned the post in 2016. It was indicated that her departure followed disagreement about levels of funding.

#2016

Maryanne Confoy

#115664

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Maryanne P. Confoy RSC is an Australian religious Sister of Charity who has also been a teacher and scholar, working primarily in the areas of ministry and spirituality. Early life and education Maryanne Confoy was born on 15 April 1944. She joined the Sisters of Charity in Australia, an order established by Mary Aikenhead and whose members have been working in education, health and community care since they first arrived in Australia in 1838. Confoy completed a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne and went on to further postgraduate studies at Boston College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

#2017

Josef Fuchs

#52549

Overall Influence

1912 - 2005 (93 years)

Josef Fuchs was a German Roman Catholic theologian and Jesuit priest of the 20th century. Life Born 5 July 1912, Josef Fuchs was a German Jesuit priest, who taught at the Gregorian University in Rome for almost thirty years. In the 1950s, Fuchs's Natural Law and De Castitate were the standard texts for moral theology courses. Fuchs' theology focuses mostly on moral objectivity.

#2018

Suha Taji-Farouki

#97644

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Suha Taji-Farouki is a specialist in modern Islamic thought. Biography Taji-Farouki completed a BA in Classical Arabic and Islamic Studies with Persian at Durham University in 1987. She obtained her PhD in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Politics from the University of Exeter in 1993.

#2019

Michael Homan

#114299

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Michael Mathias Homan was a Professor of Theology and Department Head at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. He attended the University of Nebraska Omaha , and the University of California San Diego where he majored in Hebrew Bible and minored in Near Eastern Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern History and Religion. Homan taught courses in Hebrew Bible, Hebrew language, ancient Near Eastern religion, and a course about the cemeteries of New Orleans.

#2020

David Laird Dungan

#123930

Overall Influence

1936 - 2008 (72 years)

David Laird Dungan was an American scholar of Christianity. He served as Distinguished Professor of the Humanities and Emeritus Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He also was a scholar of the synoptic problem.

#2021

David Lochhead

#124763

Overall Influence

1936 - 1999 (63 years)

David Morgan Lochhead was born in Montreal, where he attended McGill University. En route to his degrees in science, theology and philosophy of religion, he also studied at Union College, and in Oxford and Chicago. Ordained in 1962, he served two United Church parishes in Quebec and Ontario. At an unusually early stage in his career, David was named to that role of "teacher of the church" which he never relinquished, holding posts at St. Paul's College, Waterloo, Coughlan College, St. John's, Newfoundland, and from 1978 at Vancouver School of Theology. These were the institutions that served as his base; the world of religious thought and life was his parish.

#2022

Inés Talamantez

#110119

Overall Influence

Inés M. Talamantez was an ethnographer and scholar of religion. She was professor of religious studies at University of California, Santa Barbara . She was an expert on Native American religion and philosophy.

#2023

Charles Davis

#73902

Overall Influence

1923 - 1999 (76 years)

Charles Alfred Davis was an English theologian and priest, and Professor of Theology at St Edmund's College, Ware, later Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. In 1966, he caused considerable controversy in both the Catholic and Anglican communities by publicly leaving the Catholic Church on the basis of what he said at the time was an "intellectual rejection of the Papacy."

#2024

David F. Holland

David F. Holland

#101065

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

David Frank Holland is an American professor and historian. He is currently the John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History and Interim Dean of Harvard Divinity School. He was previously a director of graduate studies in religion at Harvard University and an associate professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

#2025

Musa al-Qarni

#85891

Overall Influence

1954 - 2021 (67 years)

'Musa al-Qarni was a Saudi Arabian mufti, who once advised Osama bin Laden. Views Al-Qarni: ["The uproar and the chaos that we see today in the human race – the killing, the acts of aggression, the rape, the robbery, and the disgrace of honor – what causes this is that the banners which are hoisted high are those of the Jews, the Christians, and other religions and faiths, and not the banner of 'There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is Allah's Messenger.'

#2026

Robert J. Banks

#112504

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Robert John Banks is an Australian Christian thinker, writer and practitioner. He is a biblical scholar, practical theologian and cultural critic, as well as an innovative educator and church planter.

#2027

Peter Flint

#80046

Overall Influence

1951 - 2016 (65 years)

Peter W. Flint was involved in research of the Dead Sea Scrolls for over 20 years. He was one of the 70 official members of the Dead Sea Scrolls editors worldwide. As the controversy of publishing of the Dead Sea Scrolls escalated, in 1987 he moved from South Africa to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana where he took a doctoral fellowship and began to study under Eugene Ulrich, the chief editor of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls and one of the central figures of the controversy. In 1997, Flint finished publishing the Psalms Scrolls: the second largest portion of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls.

#2028

Herbert Basser

#91162

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Herbert W. Basser is a Canadian scholar of religion and a Jewish theologian known for his work Studies in Exegesis: Christian Critiques of Jewish Law . Biography In 1963, he graduated from Yeshiva University with a Bachelor of Arts in French literature. After several years as a mathematics teacher, he continued his studies at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada earning a Master of Arts in 1979 and a Ph.D. in 1983.

#2029

Raymond Helmick

#89272

Overall Influence

Raymond Helmick, SJ was an American Jesuit, peacemaker, theologian and author. Helmick worked as a professor at Boston College and the Boston Theological Institute. Helmick travelled around the world as an emissary for peace. Helmick founded the US Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East.

#2030

George Pirkhamer

#119117

Overall Influence

George Pirkhamer was a Roman Catholic theologian and prior at Nuremberg, Germany in the 15th century. See also

#2031

Steven Tainer

#73135

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Steven A. Tainer is a respected scholar and instructor of contemplative traditions. He is a logician, philosopher, teacher and writer with an extensive background in philosophy of science, mathematical logic and Asian contemplative traditions. One of the central themes of his work involves how different ways of knowing can be compared, contrasted, and/or integrated.

#2032

Ehrhart Neubert

#70648

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Ehrhart Neubert is a retired German Evangelical minister and theologian. During its final decade he emerged as an opponent of the East German one-party dictatorship, becoming a member of the League of Evangelical Churches in the German Democratic Republic . Since the collapse of the East German political regime in 1989/90 he has participated prominently on committees and as an author seeking to understand and evaluate it.

#2033

Jonathan Tran

#136944

Overall Influence

Jonathan Tran is a Vietnamese-American theologian, and currently holds the George W. Baines Chair of Religion at Baylor University. Biography Originally from Southern California, Tran received his BA from University of California, Riverside and his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Duke Divinity School where he studied under Stanley Hauerwas. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology and holds the George W. Baines Chair of Religion in the Department of Religion at Baylor University, where he researches and teaches theology, ethics, and identity theory.

#2034

Geoffrey King

#64641

Overall Influence

Geoffrey King was an English Protestant theologian, a Fellow and Regius Professor of Hebrew at King's College, Cambridge. He was among the First Westminster Company charged by James I of England with the translation of the first 12 books of the King James Version of the Bible.

#2035

James Atkinson

#116523

Overall Influence

1914 - 2011 (97 years)

James Atkinson was an English Anglican priest, biblical scholar, and theologian specialising in Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. He was Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield from 1967 to 1979, Canon Theologian of Sheffield Cathedral from 1970 to 1993, and Director of the Centre for Reformation Studies in Sheffield from 1983 to 2006.

#2036

Peter C. Hodgson

#92046

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Peter Crafts Hodgson is an American theologian and the Charles G. Finney Professor of Theology, Emeritus, at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University, where he taught from 1965 to 2003. He is considered to be one of the world's foremost translators of the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a 19th-century German philosopher.

#2037

Edward Fasholé-Luke

#76165

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Edward W. Fasholé-Luke is a Sierra Leone Creole Anglican theologian. Biography Born in 1934 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Fasholé-Luke received a BA in general studies from Fourah Bay College . He went for further studies in the United Kingdom, pursuing a BA in theology from St John's College, Durham and being ordained an Anglican priest in Durham. He then completed a PhD in theology from King's College, Aberdeen , studying with Andrew Walls in the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World and writing a PhD thesis on "The Doctrine of the Church in the Writings of St. Cyprian...

#2038

Kathleen Williams

#115268

Overall Influence

Kathleen Williams is an Australian Sister of Mercy and a theologian at the University of Divinity. Education Kathleen Margaret Williams RSM has completed a Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Education , a Master of Theological Studies and a Doctor of Theology.

#2039

Jerry Pillay

#102287

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Jerry Pillay is a Reformed pastor, member of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, professor of theology at the University of Pretoria where he heads the Department of History and Ecclesiology and is Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He was elected president of the World Communion of Reformed Churches in 2010 and, in June 2022, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches , to take office on 1 January 2023.

#2040

Ellen Leonard

#108595

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

Ellen Margaret Leonard was a Canadian systematic theologian and Roman Catholic religious sister. She published three books on figures important in Roman Catholic modernism, and wrote about feminist and ecological Christologies. She served as the president of the Canadian Theological Society from 1989 to 1990. She entered the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph after high school and worked as a teacher and administrator, prior to earning her PhD and joining the Faculty of Theology at University of St. Michael's College. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Michael's College in 2014.

#2041

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

#77494

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher is an American Hebrew Bible scholar and author. He is Professor of Theological Studies and Director of New Zealand Study Abroad Programs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and is frequently quoted on the History Channel's religious programs.

#2042

Petar Vrankić

#131865

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Petar Vrankić is a German and Croatian church historian. Biography Vrankić was born in Glavatičevo near Konjic in SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the time part of Yugoslavia. He studied theology at the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Split and continued his education in Rome. Together with Želimir Puljić he was ordained a priest in 1974. After gaining licenciate in theology in 1976, Vrankić studied church history and related studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he earned his PhD in 1980.

#2043

David Ninov

#95891

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

David is an Eastern Orthodox titular Bishop of Dremvit and Auxiliary Bishop of the Eparchy of Skopje of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Formerly, he was titular Bishop of Stobi of the Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric, an autonomous church under the supreme jurisdiction of Serbian Orthodox Church. While bishop of Stobi, he was also administrator of the Eparchy of Strumica.

#2044

Karol Madaj

#85893

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Karol Madaj is a Polish board game designer. Best known for Kolejka, he has designed games for Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, the Polish Humanitarian Organisation, and the National Centre for Culture. In 2013, he was awarded Poland's Gold Cross of Merit for services in the development of historical awareness.

#2045

Franz Grave

#106087

Overall Influence

1932 - 2022 (90 years)

Franz Grave was a German Catholic prelate who served as auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Essen from 1988 until his retirement in 2008. Grave was focused on intercultural dialogue with Latin America, and projects aimed at fighting unemployment and helping young people in difficult situations.

#2046

Patrick Gaffney

#119624

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Patrick Daniel Gaffney is an American anthropologist, academic, translator, member of the Congregation of Holy Cross and the current Vice-Chancellor of Notre Dame University Bangladesh. Education and career He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago and has taught at the University of Notre Dame, USA, since 1980. For his academic work, he received Kaneb Teaching Award in 2001, and Reinhold Niebuhr Award in 2002. A polyglot fluent in Arabic, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and a competent reader in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Gaffney translated Renaissance of the East by Hans Fortmann in 1972 and With Open Hands by Henri Nouwen in 1973 from Dutch into English.

#2047

Christa Blanke

#82682

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Rev. Christa Blanke-Weckbach is a German Lutheran theologian and animal welfare activist. She is the founder of the European animal protection organisation Animals' Angels. From 1995 to 1998 she chaired the animal welfare advisory board of the government of Hesse.

#2048

Ilse Härter

#138136

Overall Influence

1912 - 2012 (100 years)

Ilse Härter was a centenarian German Lutheran theologian. On her thirty-first birthday, in 1943, she was one of the first two women to be ordained in Germany. Life Provenance and early years Ilse Härter was born in Asperden, a small village to the south of Kleve, and positioned within walking distance of the Dutch border. She was the second of her parents' three daughters. The family was not a particularly religious one, and Härter's career choice surprised her parents. She was asked about this later, and recalled a funeral ceremony for an aunt at which the celebrating minister had reassured those present that after three days the dead aunt would be resurrected.

#2049

Gerald McKenny

#108702

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Gerald McKenny is an American theologian, currently the Walter Professor at University of Notre Dame. Education B.A., Wheaton College 1979M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1982Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1989

#2050

Jack Shaver

#116732

Overall Influence

1918 - 2001 (83 years)

Michael John Victor Shaver , known as Jack Shaver, was a theologian and clergyman of the United Church of Canada. Life and career Shaver was born in Fort William, Ontario in 1918 – the second son of the Rev. and Mrs. James M. Shaver. When he was two years old, his father succeeded J.S. Woodsworth as Superintendent at All Peoples' Mission – first a Methodist, and then a United Church institution in the north end of Winnipeg. The family lived in the manse next door to the Mission, serving the immigrant population of the region in the spirit of the social gospel movement. Shaver graduated from United College and was ordained by Manitoba Conference on July 23, 1942.

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