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Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,

#2551

Bernard Nsayi

#161063

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Bernard Nsayi was the Roman Catholic bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nkayi, Republic of the Congo. Nsayi was ordained to the priesthood in 1971. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Nkayi from 1990 to 2001. He died in 2021.

#2552

Jutta Burggraf

#184513

Overall Influence

1952 - 2010 (58 years)

Jutta Burggraf was a German Catholic theologian. Burggraf taught at the University of Navarra, where she wrote books and did research. She was a numerary member of Opus Dei.

#2553

Giorgio Otranto

#107503

Overall Influence

1940 - 2023 (83 years)

Giorgio Otranto was an Italian historian, specialized in the history of early Christianity. Life and career Born in Corigliano Calabro, the son of a tailor, Otranto graduated in Classical Literature at the University of Bari.

#2554

Maurus Reinkowski

#191959

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Maurus Reinkowski is a historian of the Ottoman Empire and Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Basel. Works Maurus Reinkowski, Düzenin Şeyleri, Tanzimat'ın Kelimeleri: 19. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Reform Politikasının Karşılaştırmalı Bir Araştırması, Çeviren: Çiğdem Canan Dikmen, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2017, 351 shf.,

#2555

Gabriel Vanel

#117195

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

Gabriel Marie Étienne Vanel was the Roman Catholic archbishop of the Archdiocese of Auch, France. Ordained to the priesthood in 1949, Vanel was named bishop in 1970 and resigned in 1996. Notes

#2556

John Sears Tanner

#174122

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

John Sears Tanner is a former president of Brigham Young University-Hawaii . He was the 10th president of BYU-Hawaii, serving from 2015 to 2020. He previously served as first counselor in the General Sunday School Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , as president of the church's Brazil São Paulo South Mission and as Academic Vice President of Brigham Young University . Tanner is married to Susan W. Tanner, a former general president of the LDS Church's Young Women organization.

#2557

John Barwick

#154381

Overall Influence

John Barwick was an English theologian. Life Barwick took his name from Berwick, where he appears to have been born or brought up. From Berwick he seems to have removed to the Franciscan schools at Oxford, at which university he became a Doctor of Theology, and is enumerated as the twenty-second reader of divinity belonging to that order in the early years of the fourteenth century. He appears to have studied at Paris likewise; for we are told by Dempster and Bale that he also went by the name of Breulanlius; and this Breulanlius is mentioned towards the end of the fifteenth century by the al...

#2558

Jean Margain

#173726

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Jean Margain was a French Hebraist. He is known by his Semitic and Samaritan studies. Life Education Margain got his Doctor of Arts in 1988 with his thesis Les particules dans le Targum samaritain de Genèse-Exode: jalons pour une histoire de l'araméen samaritain at Université Paris III.

#2559

Sissel Undheim

#191232

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Sissel Undheim is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen. She is an expert on gender and sexuality in the late Roman period, New Age religion, and the didactics of religion. Education Undheim received her PhD from the University of Bergen in 2011. Her doctoral thesis was entitled Sanctae virginitates: Sacred and Consecrated Virginities in Late Roman Antiquity.

#2560

Eduard Nielsen

#192235

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Eduard Mikael V. Nielsen was a Danish theologian. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1956 to 1991. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1987.

#2561

Dino Abazović

#170488

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Dino Abazović is a sociologist and Full Professor at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Biography He studied sociology at the Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo where he graduated in 1999. He earned his post-graduate degree from the same institution in 2005 with a thesis on the sociological determination of religious nationalism. In 2009 he earned his PhD with a thesis on the subject of Bosnian Muslims between secularization and desecularization. In 2012 he was named Centennial Professor and head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at the Faculty of...

#2562

John Meehan

#177659

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

John Meehan SJ is a Canadian Jesuit priest, historian and academic. He is Director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He was president and vice-chancellor of the University of Sudbury in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada from September 2019 until 2021. He was formerly rector of the Church of the Gesù in Montreal and president of Campion College in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

#2563

Anne van der Meiden

#160920

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Anne van der Meiden was a Dutch theologian, translator, and professor at Utrecht University. He translated the bible into Tweants dialect.

#2564

Ardeth G. Kapp

#79099

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Ardeth Greene Kapp was the ninth Young Women general president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1984 to 1992. Early life Ardeth Greene was born on March 19, 1931, in Cardston, Alberta, to Edwin Kent Greene and Julia Leavitt Greene. Shortly after her birth her family moved to Glenwood, Alberta. She was baptized into the LDS Church on April 4,1939 in the Cardston Temple. In 1947, she underwent life-threatening surgery due to an ear infection.

#2565

Edvard Kovač

#129680

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Fr. Edvard Kovač is a Slovenian theologian, philosopher and author. He is a member of the Order of Friars Minor and professor at the University of Ljubljana Theological Faculty and the Catholic University of Toulouse.

#2566

Daniel Smokler

#145251

Overall Influence

Rabbi Daniel Smokler is the Chief Innovation Officer of Hillel International . He received a B.A. in History of Art Cum Laude with distinction from Yale University, where he received the Walter Louis Erich Memorial Prize as the outstanding student in the History of Art. In 1997, Smokler founded Jews in the Woods, a multi-denominational gathering of college students for learning, prayer and reflection on social issues. He spent several years after college working as a union organizer. Smokler received his rabbinic ordination from Rabbis Zalman Nechemia Goldberg and Yaakov Moshe Poupko in 2006....

#2567

Barhadbshabba of Hulwan

#188398

Overall Influence

Barḥadbshabba of Ḥulwān was a 7th-century theologian and Christian bishop of the Church of the East who wrote many religious works and a history of the School of Nisibis which is of historical interest.

#2568

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn

#130505

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn is a Danish theologian, Søren Kierkegaard scholar and former director of Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen. He has written and edited a number of books on Kierkegaard, and was editor of Index til Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, bind XIV-XVI . He was Director of the Danish Bible Society from 1980 to 1993.

#2569

Richard of Campsall

#191317

Overall Influence

Richard of Campsall was an English theologian and scholastic philosopher, at the University of Oxford. He was a Fellow of Balliol College and then of Merton College. He is now considered a possible precursor to the views usually associated with William of Ockham.

#2570

Friedrich Eduard König

1846 - 1936 (90 years)

Friedrich Eduard König was a German Lutheran divine and Semitic scholar. Biography He was born at Reichenbach im Vogtland and was educated at the University of Leipzig . Afterwards, he worked as a religious instructor at the Royal Realgymnasium in Döbeln and at the Thomasschule zu Leipzig . He then became a lecturer and an associate professor of theology at the University of Leipzig. In 1888 he became a full professor at Rostock and in 1900 at the University of Bonn, where, as a theologian attacking Panbabylonism, he became involved in the so-called "Babel-Bible Dispute".

#2571

Albrecht Dieterich

Albrecht Dieterich

1866 - 1908 (42 years)

Albrecht Dieterich was a German classical philologist and scholar of religion born in Hersfeld. Academic background He studied at the Universities of Leipzig and Bonn, where at the latter he was a student of Hermann Usener , who in 1899 became Dieterich's father-in-law. In 1888 he earned his doctorate, and three years later received his habilitation in Marburg with a dissertation on Orphism. Afterwards he traveled to Italy and Greece for research purposes. In 1895 he returned to Marburg as an associate professor, and two years later succeeded Eduard Schwartz as chair of classical philology at the University of Giessen.

#2572

Alfred Rahlfs

1865 - 1935 (70 years)

Alfred Rahlfs was a German Biblical scholar. He was a member of the history of religions school. He is known for his edition of the Septuagint published in 1935. Biography He was born in Linden near Hanover, and studied Protestant Theology, Philosophy, and Oriental Languages in Halle and Göttingen, where he received a Dr. Phil. in 1887. His professional career developed in Göttingen, where he was Stiftsinspektor , Privatdozent , Extraordinarius , and Professor for Old Testament . He retired in 1933 and died in Göttingen.

#2573

Friedrich Brunstäd

1883 - 1944 (61 years)

Friedrich Brunstäd was a German Lutheran systematic theologian and philosopher. He attempted a renewal of German idealism, from the point of view of Lutheranism. From 1901 he studied philosophy, theology, political science and history at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1909 with the thesis Untersuchungen zu Hegels Geschichtstheorie . In 1911 he obtained his habilitation for philosophy at the University of Erlangen, where in 1918 he became an associate professor. In 1925 he was appointed as professor of systematic theology at the University of Rostock .

#2574

Günther Dehn

1882 - 1970 (88 years)

Günther Dehn was a German pastor and theologian. He was an illegal instructor in the Confessing Church, and, after 1945, he was a professor of practical theology. Dehn was one of the first victims of Nazi campaigns against critical intellectuals in the Weimar Republic. He was a Christian socialist in the tradition of Christoph Blumhardt, Hermann Kutter, and Leonhard Ragaz.

#2575

J. Vernon McGee

1904 - 1988 (84 years)

John Vernon McGee was an American ordained Presbyterian minister, pastor, Bible teacher, theologian, and radio minister. Biography Childhood, education, and early ministry McGee was born in Hillsboro, Texas, to itinerant parents, John McGee and Carrie McGee . His father held many jobs, his last one being an engineer at a cotton mill in Oklahoma, where he died in 1918 when Vernon was 14 years old. After his father's death, Vernon's family relocated to Tennessee. Before entering the ministry, Vernon worked as a bank teller.

#2576

Justin Popović

1894 - 1979 (85 years)

Justin Popović was a Serbian Orthodox theologian, archimandrite of the Ćelije Monastery, Dostoyevsky scholar, writer, anti-communist advocate and critic of the pragmatic church ecclesiastical life.

#2577

Lyman Beecher

1775 - 1863 (88 years)

Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became writers or ministers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.

#2578

Otto Pfleiderer

Otto Pfleiderer

1839 - 1908 (69 years)

Otto Pfleiderer was a German Protestant theologian. Through his writings and his lectures, he became known as one of the most influential representatives of liberal theology. Biography Pfleiderer was born at Stetten im Remstal in Württemberg. From 1857 to 1861 he studied at the University of Tübingen under Ferdinand Christian Baur, and afterwards in England and Scotland. He then entered the ministry, became tutor at Tübingen, and for a short time held a pastorate at Heilbronn . In 1870 he became chief pastor and superintendent at the University of Jena and soon afterwards professor ordinari...

#2579

Frank Sheed

1897 - 1981 (84 years)

Francis Joseph Sheed was an Australian-born lawyer, Catholic writer, publisher, speaker, and lay theologian. He and his wife Maisie Ward were famous in their day as the names behind the imprint Sheed & Ward and as forceful public lecturers in the Catholic Evidence Guild.

#2580

Louis Ginzberg

1873 - 1953 (80 years)

Louis Ginzberg was a Russian-born American rabbi and Talmudic scholar of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, contributing editor to numerous articles of The Jewish Encyclopedia , and leading figure in the Conservative movement of Judaism during the early 20th century. He was born in Kaunas, Vilna Governorate and died in New York City.

#2581

Francisco Suárez

Francisco Suárez

1548 - 1617 (69 years)

Francisco Suárez, was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement. His work is considered a turning point in the history of second scholasticism, marking the transition from its Renaissance to its Baroque phases. According to Christopher Shields and Daniel Schwartz, "figures as distinct from one another in place, time, and philosophical orientation as Leibniz, Grotius, Pufendorf, Schopenhauer and Heidegger, all found reason to cite him as a source of inspiration and influence."

#2582

Albert Benjamin Simpson

Albert Benjamin Simpson

1843 - 1919 (76 years)

Albert Benjamin Simpson , also known as A. B. Simpson, was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance , an evangelical denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism that has been characterized as being Keswickian in theology.

#2583

Mesrop Mashtots

Mesrop Mashtots

361 - 440 (79 years)

Mesrop Mashtots was an early Medieval Armenian linguist, composer, theologian, statesman, and hymnologist in the Sasanian Empire. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. He is best known for inventing the Armenian alphabet AD, which was a fundamental step in strengthening Armenian national identity. He is also considered to be the creator of the Caucasian Albanian and Georgian alphabets by a number of scholars.

#2584

William Law

1686 - 1761 (75 years)

William Law was a Church of England priest who lost his position at Emmanuel College, Cambridge when his conscience would not allow him to take the required oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch, King George I. Previously, William Law had given his allegiance to the House of Stuart and is sometimes considered a second-generation non-juror. Thereafter, Law continued as a simple priest and when that too became impossible without the required oath, Law taught privately and wrote extensively. His personal integrity, as well as his mystic and theological writing greatly influenced the evangelical movement of his day, as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as the writer Dr.

#2585

Hasan al-Basri

642 - 728 (86 years)

Abu Sa'id ibn Abi al-Hasan Yasar al-Basri, often referred to as Hasan of Basra for short, or as Hasan al-Basri, was an ancient Muslim preacher, ascetic, theologian, exegete, scholar, judge, and mystic. Born in Medina in 642, Hasan belonged to the second generation of Muslims, all of whom would subsequently be referred to as the tābiʿūn in Sunni Islamic piety. He became one of "the most celebrated" of the tābiʿūn, enjoying an "acclaimed scholarly career and an even more remarkable posthumous legacy in Islamic scholarship."

#2586

Loraine Boettner

1901 - 1990 (89 years)

Loraine Boettner was an American theologian, teacher, and author in the Reformed tradition. He is best known for his works on predestination, Roman Catholicism, and Postmillennial eschatology. Biography Boettner was born on March 7, 1901, in Linden, Missouri. His father, William Boettner, was a Christian school superintendent and had been born in Schwartzenhazel, Germany. He attended his father's church until he was eighteen, when he then joined his mother's church, the Centennial Methodist Church. Boettner attended the Lone Cedar and Fairview elementary schools, before going to Tarkio High School.

#2587

Johann Arndt

1555 - 1621 (66 years)

Johann Arndt was a German Lutheran theologian who wrote several influential books of devotional Christianity. Although reflective of the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy, he is seen as a forerunner of Pietism, a movement within Lutheranism that gained strength in the late 17th century.

#2588

Constantin von Tischendorf

Constantin von Tischendorf

1815 - 1874 (59 years)

Lobegott Friedrich Constantin Tischendorf was a German biblical scholar. In 1844, he discovered the world's oldest and most complete Bible dated to around the mid-4th century and called Codex Sinaiticus after Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, where Tischendorf discovered it.

#2589

Zayd ibn Ali

695 - 740 (45 years)

Zayd ibn ʿAlī , also spelled Zaid, was the son of Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin, and great-grandson of Ali ibn Abi Talib. He led an unsuccessful revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate, in which he died. The event gave rise to the Zaydiyya sect of Shia Islam, which holds him as the next Imam after his father Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin. Zayd ibn Ali is also seen as a major religious figure by many Sunnis and was supported by the prominent Sunni jurist, Abu Hanifa, who issued a fatwa in support of Zayd against the Umayyads.

#2590

Joseph Seiss

1823 - 1904 (81 years)

Joseph Augustus Seiss was an American theologian and Lutheran minister. He was known for his religious writings on pyramidology and dispensationalism. Life Seiss was born in Graceham, Frederick County, Maryland, to an agricultural family; his interest in religious studies reportedly began in childhood. Seiss was confirmed at age 15 as a member of the Moravian Church, and determined to pursue the ministry. Beginning in 1839, Seiss enrolled at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania for a year or two of studies, but completed his theological courses by private study. He was licensed to preach in 1842 by the synod of Virginia, and ordained to a Lutheran ministry in 1844.

#2591

Heinrich Bullinger

Heinrich Bullinger

1504 - 1575 (71 years)

Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.

#2592

Valentinus

Valentinus was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.

#2593

Désiré-Joseph Mercier

Désiré-Joseph Mercier

1851 - 1926 (75 years)

Désiré Félicien François Joseph Mercier was a Belgian cardinal of the Catholic Church and a noted scholar. A Thomist scholar, he had several of his works translated into other European languages. He was known for his book, Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine . His scholarship gained him recognition from the Pope and he was appointed as Archbishop of Mechelen , serving from 1906 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1907.

#2594

Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger

1819 - 1883 (64 years)

Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger was a leading German Catholic theologian and author of the Enchiridion symbolorum et definitionum , a work commonly referred to simply as Denzinger after him. Life Denzinger was born on 10 October 1819 at Liège. In 1831 his father, who was a professor at the University of Liège, took him to Würzburg, the original home of the family. Here he attended the gymnasium and studied philosophy at the university, where he received the Ph.D. degree. In 1838 he entered the Würzburg seminary, went to the German College at Rome in 1841, was ordained priest in 1844, and ...

#2595

Harold Ockenga

1905 - 1985 (80 years)

Harold John Ockenga was a leading figure of mid-20th-century American Evangelicalism, part of the reform movement known as "Neo-Evangelicalism". A Congregational minister, Ockenga served for many years as pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also a prolific author on biblical, theological, and devotional topics. Ockenga helped to found the Fuller Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as well as the National Association of Evangelicals .

#2596

Ronald Knox

1888 - 1957 (69 years)

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was an English Catholic priest, theologian, author, and radio broadcaster. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a high reputation as a classicist, Knox was ordained as a priest of the Church of England in 1912. He was a fellow and chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford until he resigned from those positions following his conversion to Catholicism in 1917. Knox became a Catholic priest in 1918, continuing in that capacity his scholarly and literary work.

#2597

Nicolaus Zinzendorf

Nicolaus Zinzendorf

1700 - 1760 (60 years)

Nikolaus Ludwig, Reichsgraf von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf was a German religious and social reformer, bishop of the Moravian Church, founder of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, Christian mission pioneer and a major figure of 18th-century Protestantism.

#2598

Josemaría Escrivá

Josemaría Escrivá

1902 - 1975 (73 years)

Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest. He founded Opus Dei, an organization of laypeople and priestss dedicated to the teaching that everyone is called to holiness by God and to discover sanctity in their ordinary lives. He was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, who declared Josemaría should be "counted among the great witnesses of Christianity."

#2599

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

1150 - 1210 (60 years)

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī or Fakhruddin Razi , often known by the sobriquet Sultan of the Theologians, was an influential Muslim polymath, scientist and one of the pioneers of inductive logic. He wrote various works in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics, astronomy, cosmology, literature, theology, ontology, philosophy, history and jurisprudence. He was one of the earliest proponents and skeptics that came up with the concept of multiverse, and compared it with the astronomical teachings of Quran. A rejector of the geocentric model and the Aristotelian notions of a single universe revolvin...

#2600

Charles Augustus Briggs

Charles Augustus Briggs

1841 - 1913 (72 years)

Charles Augustus Briggs , American Presbyterian scholar and theologian, was born in New York City, the son of Alanson Briggs and Sarah Mead Berrian. He was excommunicated from the Presbyterian Church for heresy due to his liberal theology regarding the Bible.

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