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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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,

#2151

Philippe Lécrivain

#88000

Overall Influence

1941 - 2020 (79 years)

Philippe Lécrivain was a French Jesuit priest and historian. Biography Lécrivain was born in Le Blanc on 1 August 1941. He was ordained in the Diocese of Rennes in 1968, and joined the Society of Jesus in 1978 in Lyon.

#2152

Mario Javier Saban

#88480

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Mario Javier Sabán , is an Argentinian theologian of Sephardi origin. Early life Mario Javier Sabán was born on 12 February 1966. He has a B.L. by University of Buenos Aires. His father was a Turkish Jew who had immigrated in Argentina.

#2153

Willem van Asselt

#139706

Overall Influence

1946 - 2014 (68 years)

Willem J. van Asselt was a Dutch professor of historical theology and minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. He studied theology at the University of Utrecht, where he received a doctorate in 1988. He chaired the Classic Reformed Theology Workgroup at Utrecht from 1990 until his death. He became docent at Utrecht in 1993. He was appointed professor doctor in historical theology at ETF Leuven in 2008, where he founded the Institute of Post-Reformation Studies.

#2154

Denise A. Austin

#125678

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Denise A. Austin is an Australian Pentecostal historian, particularly focused on Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Austin is the Deputy Vice President of Research and Standards, and Professor of History at Alphacrucis College. She is also the Director of the Australasian Pentecostal Studies Centre.

#2155

Janina Hiebel

#128189

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Janina Hiebel is a German-born biblical scholar now residing in Australia who works at the University of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests are in the period of the Babylonian Exile, particularly the book of the prophet Ezekiel.

#2156

Piotr Nawrot

#132707

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Piotr Nawrot is a Polish Roman Catholic priest and musicologist, known for his work in the field of Latin American Baroque music. A native of Poznań, Nawrot joined the Divine Word Missionaries in 1974, achieving ordination in 1981, in the same year earning his degree from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. His first missionary assignment was to Paraguay, where he developed an interest in the reductions established by Jesuit priests in the 17th and 18th centuries. He enrolled in the Catholic University of America in 1986, taking a master's degree in music and a doctorate in musicology.

#2157

Jean-Pierre Jossua

#112753

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Jean-Pierre Jossua was a French writer and theologian. He was a member of the Dominican Order and spent his career writing, teaching, and researching. He was a professor of dogmatics at Saulchoir. Biography Jossua was born into a Jewish family from Thessaloniki and had to take refuge in Nice during the German occupation. His father was deported to Auschwitz, where he died in 1943. His mother, Marcelle , became a translator.

#2158

Oscar Lukefahr

#104814

Overall Influence

1939 - 2015 (76 years)

Oscar Lukefahr, C.M. was an American Catholic priest, theologian, writer, and Christian apologist. He is best known as the author of many introductory books and tracts on the subject of Catholicism, operating the Catholic Home Study Service from the Archdiocese of St. Louis. This service distributes free Catholic literature to thousands of RCIA students each year.

#2159

Albertus Klijn

#123580

Overall Influence

1923 - 2012 (89 years)

Albertus Frederik Johannes Klijn was a Dutch scholar of the New Testament and early Judaism and Christianity at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He was best known for his introductory work on the New Testament, and then later for his publications on early Christian apocryphal literature.

#2160

David Granfield

#124885

Overall Influence

1922 - 2010 (88 years)

The Reverend David Granfield was a Roman Catholic priest in the Order of Saint Benedict, associated with Saint Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D.C., and a professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. He is most well known as a canon lawyer for his exposition of the Catholic Church’s view on abortion. His text on the inner experience of law continues to be a resource at many law schools.

#2161

Vidar Leif Haanes

Vidar Leif Haanes

#95456

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Vidar L. Haanes is a Norwegian professor of Church- and Intellectual History and rector of MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo. Vidar L. Haanes was President of Universities Norway 2015-17, and member of the Council of European University Association. He is board member of Nordic University Cooperation and of Nordforsk under the Nordic Council of Ministers. He is chair of the board Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Haanes graduated from MF Norwegian School of Theology in 1985, was ordained 1986, Dr. Theol. 1998.

#2162

Herbert Richardson

#106863

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Herbert Warren Richardson is an American professor of theology, an ordained Presbyterian minister, and the founder of the Edwin Mellen Press, which describes itself as "a non-subsidy academic publisher of books in the humanities and social sciences."

#2163

Donald Merrifield

Donald Merrifield

#79518

Overall Influence

1928 - 2010 (82 years)

Donald Paul Merrifield was an American Jesuit who served as the 11th president of Loyola University of Los Angeles. He became the first president of Loyola Marymount University president upon Loyola University's merger with Marymount College in 1973 and remained as the school's president until 1984. Under Merrifield, Loyola Marymount went through a period of rapid expansion in which thirteen new buildings were constructed on the main campus.

#2164

Christopher Rowland

#82890

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Christopher Charles Rowland is an English Anglican priest and theologian. He was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1991 to 2014. Life Rowland was born on 21 May 1947 in Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and was educated at Doncaster Grammar School. He then studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and for ordination in the Church of England at Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

#2165

Roland Frye

#58193

Overall Influence

1921 - 2005 (84 years)

Roland Mushat Frye was an American English literature scholar and theologian. Career Frye was born in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1943 he interrupted his studies to enlist in the United States Army and fought at the Battle of the Bulge, winning a Bronze Star.

#2166

Iwan Dacko

#130650

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Iwan Dacko is a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, was personal secretary of Patriarch Josyf Cardinal Slipyj, a close collaborator and Chancellor of Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Lubachivsky, President of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine, a long-time member of the Joint International Commission and its Coordinating Committee for the theological dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

#2167

Simon Oliver

#107539

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Simon Andrew Oliver is a British Anglican priest, theologian, and academic. He was formerly Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Nottingham, he is now the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham. Oliver is also on staff with the Centre of Theology and Philosophy.

#2168

Huston Smith

#173575

Overall Influence

#2169

G. Porter Taylor

G. Porter Taylor

#105051

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Granville Porter Taylor is the sixth and immediate past Episcopal Bishop of Western North Carolina. In March 2015 he announced his intent to retire. He was succeeded as bishop by the Rt. Rev. José Antonio McLoughlin. Taylor was appointed for a two-year term as Assisting Bishop in 2020 for the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

#2170

Jochem Douma

#97286

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Jochem Douma was a Dutch theologian and ethicist. He was ordained in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands , having studied at its Theological College in Kampen and at the University of Amsterdam. He served as a pastor before being appointed as Professor of Ethics at Kampen in 1970, where he served until his retirement in 1997.

#2171

John of Caesarea

#168060

Overall Influence

John of Caesarea, also called John the Grammarian, was a sixth-century Byzantine priest and theologian. His biography is unknown, nor is the origin of his name, either Caesarea Palaestina or Caesarea Mazaca. He is usually considered the first Neo-Chalcedonian writer. He may be the same person as John the Orthodox, author of Dialogue with a Manichaean.

#2172

Ruben Zimmermann

Ruben Zimmermann

#116907

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Ruben Zimmermann is a German Theologian, New Testament Scholar and Ethicist, currently Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. Biography and education Zimmerman received his PhD at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg in 1999, and his Habilitation at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich in 2003. From 2005–2009, he was Professor for Biblical Studies at Bielefeld University; since then he is Professor for New Testament and Ethics at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz.

#2173

Kirsteen Kim

#157810

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Kirsteen Kim is a British theologian and Professor of Theology and World Christianity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. Her research interests are Korean Christianity, Pneumatology, and world Christianity.

#2174

ʻAlí-Muhammad Varqá

#86340

Overall Influence

1912 - 2007 (95 years)

ʻAlí-Muhammad Varqá was a prominent adherent of the Baháʼí Faith. He was the longest surviving Hand of the Cause of God, an appointed position in the Baháʼí Faith whose main function is to propagate and protect the religion on the international level.

#2175

Kevin Reed

#129620

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Kevin Bruce Reed is an American Presbyterian author, theologian, and publisher. Reed grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended the Richardson, Texas public schools. He left Dallas in August 1973, to attend Moody Bible Institute, in Chicago, Illinois, where he graduated with a diploma in Bible and theology in 1976. He later studied at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he graduated with a B.A. in English.

#2176

Heidrun E. Mader

#28519

Overall Influence

Heidrun E. Mader is a German Protestant theologian and historian of early Christianity and its literature, and a professor at the University of Cologne, Germany, holding a chair of Biblical Literature and its Reception History.

#2177

Ignace Abdo Khalifé

#146257

Overall Influence

1914 - 1998 (84 years)

Ignace Abdo Khalifé, SJ was the first Eparch of the Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Saint Maron of Sydney in Australia. Life Ignace Khalife joined the SJ and received his ordination to the priesthood on 24 August 1943.

#2178

Herbert Leuninger

#56056

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Herbert Leuninger was a German Catholic priest and theologian. He was a human rights activist for asylum in Germany, a co-founder and speaker of the organisation Pro Asyl, helping refugees, and a member of the board of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. He is remembered as a "loudspeaker" of refugees.

#2179

Declan Marmion

#111923

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Declan Marmion is an Irish Marist priest and theologian. He is currently Professor of Theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. Biography Training as a Marist priest, he was educated at the University of Passau, Germany, and the Milltown Institute, Dublin. Marmion also studied at Heythrop College, University of London, All Hallows College, Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin and the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

#2180

Ishak Haleva

#75499

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Ishak Haleva is the current Hakham Bashi of Turkey. Haleva was the deputy to David Asseo for seven years and became the new chief rabbi after he died in 2002. He has been a member of the Presidium Council of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States.

#2181

Agnes Abuom

#78182

Overall Influence

1949 - 2023 (74 years)

Agnes Regina Murei Abuom was a Kenyan Christian organisational worker who served as moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches since 2013. She was the first woman and the first African to hold this post. She represented the Anglican Church of Kenya.

#2182

Mitsuo Aoki

#89444

Overall Influence

1914 - 2010 (96 years)

Mitsuo Aoki, nicknamed Mits was an American theologian. He was born on a sugar-cane plantation near Hawi on the Island of Hawaii, and lived there until graduating high school. He then relocated to Honolulu for University training, and converted to Christianity from Buddhism. He studied at the Chicago Theological Seminary and the Union Theological Seminary. At the beginning of World War II, Aoki was living in the mainland US, and was subsequently escorted by FBI agents to Hawaii, rather than placed into Japanese American internment camps as were mainland persons of Japanese Ancestry.

#2183

Bert Beverly Beach

#85806

Overall Influence

1928 - 2022 (94 years)

Bert Beverly Beach was a Swiss-born American Adventist theologian, university teacher, author and philanthropist. He was Secretary General of the International Association for Religious Freedom in the 1990s.

#2184

Geoffrey Jarrett

#132060

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Geoffrey Hylton Jarrett is a retired Australian Roman Catholic bishop who served as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lismore. Formerly an Anglican priest, Jarrett converted to the Catholic Church in 1965. He was ordained a priest in Sydney on 14 May 1970 by the Archbishop of Hobart, Guilford Clyde Young.

#2185

Harald Riesenfeld

#135663

Overall Influence

1913 - 2008 (95 years)

Ernst Harald Riesenfeld was a Swedish theologian and Bible scholar, best known for his exegesis of the New Testament. Biography Riesenfeld was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, to Ernst Riesenfeld and Johanna née Johansson; his family moved back to Sweden when he was a child. He later studied at Uppsala University and after receiving his master's degree in philosophy began to study theology. From 1942 to 1945, he was head of the Uppsala Student Union. After receiving his doctorate in 1947, he became a docent in New Testament exegesis with his dissertation . He then began to preach in Loka, Örebro County.

#2186

Stephen D. Ricks

#60362

Overall Influence

Stephen David Ricks is a professor of Hebrew at Brigham Young University and an author and co-author of several books and articles defending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its teachings.

#2187

Ulrich Woronowicz

#102478

Overall Influence

1928 - 2011 (83 years)

Ulrich Woronowicz was an East German Protestant theologian and writer. Life Woronowicz was born in Schimonken in Kreis Sensburg in East Prussia. He was the son of Karl Woronowicz, a pastor of the Confessing Church. He grew up in Stallupönen where he attended the Volksschule and the Gymnasium. From 1944 he was a member of the naval reserve in Memel and Swinemünde. In 1946 he took his Abitur in Rendsburg.

#2188

Peter Maser

#136206

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Peter Maser is a German protestant church historian. Life Peter Maser was born in Berlin at the height of the Second World War. He grew up at Bad Kösen in the Soviet occupation zone, relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic . His mother fled from Berlin during the closing months of the war in order to escape the bombardment of the city and he became separated from her. Identified as a war orphan he was adopted by Lorenz and Elisabeth-Charlotte Bertheau: their views in many ways provided the intellectual basis for his own adult life. Lorenz Berthea...

#2189

Gladys Parentelli

#138709

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Gladys Ethel Parentelli Manzino is a Uruguayan feminist theologian and photographer who has lived in Venezuela since 1969. A representative of Latin American ecofeminism, she was one of three Latin American women appointed by Pope Paul VI as observers at the Second Vatican Council.

#2190

Juan Tusquets Terrats

#61703

Overall Influence

1901 - 1998 (97 years)

Juan Tusquets Terrats was a Catalan priest, author of the best selling book Orígenes de la revolución española. Turned into a fierce antisemite and even fiercer antimasonic hate speaker during the Spanish Second Republic, he became one of the main disseminators of the "contubernio judeomasónico" conspiracy theory in that period.

#2191

Roger R. Keller

#80782

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Roger R. Keller was a professor of religion at Brigham Young University . He retired in the summer of 2012. Keller is a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints having been at times both a Presbyterian and a Methodist minister prior to joining the LDS Church.

#2192

Ralph Bohlmann

#143290

Overall Influence

1932 - 2016 (84 years)

Ralph Arthur Bohlmann was the ninth president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod , serving four terms from 1981 until 1992. Bohlmann graduated from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, in 1956 and was ordained on June 29, 1958, in Des Moines, Iowa, by his father, the Rev. Arthur E. Bohlmann. He later received his Ph.D. from Yale University.

#2193

James William McClendon Jr.

#151350

Overall Influence

1924 - 2000 (76 years)

James William McClendon Jr. was a Christian theologian and ethicist in the Anabaptist tradition, though he preferred the term 'baptist' with a lower-case 'b'. He was married to philosopher Nancey Murphy, who is a senior faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary.

#2194

Peter Manley Scott

#136450

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Peter Manley Scott is a British theologian and Samuel Ferguson Professor of Applied Theology & Director of the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester. He is best known for his research on political theology. Scott is the Chair of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment.

#2195

Raymond Mupandasekwa

Raymond Mupandasekwa

#167956

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Raymond Tapiwa Mupandasekwa was installed as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Chinhoyi on 7 April 2018. He is the first black bishop of Chinhoyi Diocese. The first black African Redemptorist bishop in Zimbabwe, Africa and the whole Congregation of the Redemptorists.

#2196

Nóirín Ní Riain

#132814

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Nóirín Ní Riain is an Irish singer, writer, teacher, theologian, and authority on Gregorian Chant . She is primarily known for spiritual songs, but also sings Celtic music, sean-nós and Indian songs. Nóirín plays an Indian harmonium , shruti box and feadóg . She was Artist-in-Residence for Wexford and Laois. She performs with her sons Eoin and Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin under the name A.M.E.N. and gives workshops about "Sound as a Spiritual Experience".

#2197

Josef Imbach

#124532

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Josef Imbach is a controversial Swiss Catholic theologian and Franciscan friar. He studied theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Theological Faculty of St. Bonaventure in Rome 1967-1973 and from 1975 to 2002 was a professor of fundamental theology there.

#2198

Antons Justs

#119897

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Antons Justs was a Latvian Roman Catholic bishop. Justs was born in Latvia and was ordained to the priesthood in 1960. After serving in Virginia in the U.S., he served as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jelgava, Latvia, from 1996 to 2011.

#2199

David John Bird

David John Bird

#109687

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

David John Bird is dean emeritus of the historic Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, the oldest church structure in continuous use in San Jose. He is a parish priest who reads and writes poetry and is particularly fond of Alfred Lord Tennyson. As a theologian, he emphasizes a liberal, compassionate, and inclusive approach and is devoted to ecumenism. Bird promotes Christian unity and is published in this field; since 2002, he has served on the national Committee of The Episcopal Church-United Methodist Church Dialogue.

#2200

A. C. Solomon Raj

A. C. Solomon Raj

#141525

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

A. C. Solomon Raj is the seventh successor of Frank Whittaker and eighth Bishop in Medak of the Protestant Church of South India Society and shepherds the Diocese from the Cathedra of the Bishop housed in the CSI-Medak Cathedral in Medak Town, Telangana, India. On 12 October 2016, the Church of South India Synod headquartered in Chennai, appointed Solomon Raj to assume the ecclesiastical Office of the Bishopric of Medak and was consecrated the next day on 13 October 2016 at the CSI-St. George's Cathedral, Chennai, ending four years of sede vacante in the Diocese of Medak which was without a ...

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