The Most Influential People Across History
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,
#3301
John Mason Neale
1818 - 1866 (48 years)
John Mason Neale was an English Anglican priest, scholar, and hymnwriter. He worked and wrote on a wide range of holy Christian texts, including obscure medieval hymns, both Western and Eastern. Among his most famous hymns is the 1853 Good King Wenceslas, set on Boxing Day. An Anglo-Catholic, Neale's works have found positive reception in high-church Anglicanism and Western Rite Orthodoxy.
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Joseph Parker
1830 - 1902 (72 years)
Joseph Parker was an English Congregational minister. Life Born in Hexham, Northumberland, Parker was the son of Teasdale Parker, a stonemason, and Elizabeth . He managed to pick up a fair education, which afterwards he constantly supplemented. In the revolutionary years from 1845 to 1850 young Parker as a local preacher and temperance orator gained a reputation for vigorous utterance. He was influenced by Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, and Edward Miall, the Liberationistist, and was much associated with Joseph Cowen, afterwards MP for Newcastle upon Tyne.
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Dimitrije Najdanović
1897 - 1986 (89 years)
Dimitrije Najdanović was a Serbian theologian, writer, and Serbian Orthodox priest. Biography Dimitrije Najdanović was born in Kragujevac in Serbia, on 7 June 1897, into comfortable middle-class circumstances. He was the son of a devoutly Serbian Orthodox mother and a strict but personable schoolteacher-father.
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Hildebert
1056 - 1133 (77 years)
Hildebert of Lavardin was a French ecclesiastic, hagiographer and theologian. From 1096–97 he was bishop of Le Mans, then from 1125 until his death archbishop of Tours. Life Hildebert was born of poor parents at Lavardin, near Vendôme, and was intended for the church. He was probably a pupil of Berengar of Tours, and became master of the school at Le Mans; in 1091 he was made archdeacon and in 1096 or 1097 bishop of Le Mans. He had to face the hostility of a section of his clergy and also of the English king, William II, who captured Le Mans and carried the bishop with him to England for abo...
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William of St-Thierry
1075 - 1148 (73 years)
William of Saint-Thierry, O. Cist was a twelfth-century Benedictine, theologian and mystic from Liège who became abbot of Saint-Thierry in France, and later joined the Cistercian Order. Biography William was born at Liège of a noble family between 1075 and 1080 , and died at Signy-l'Abbaye in 1148. He probably studied at the cathedral school in Reims, though some have argued it was at Laon, prior to his profession as a Benedictine monk. He became a monk with his brother Simon at the monastery of St. Nicaise, also in Reims, sometime after 1111. From here both eventually became abbots of other...
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Friedrich Spitta
1852 - 1924 (72 years)
Friedrich Spitta was a German Protestant theologian. Biography Spitta was born at Wittingen, Lower Saxony, the son of German hymn writer Karl Johann Philipp Spitta and brother of Philipp . Friedrich studied at the universities of Göttingen and Erlangen, where he was a pupil of Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann. In the course of time he became professor ordinarius and university preacher at St. Thomas, Strasbourg. In 1901 he was appointed university rector. In 1919 he was named a professor at the University of Göttingen.
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Giovanni Battista Riccioli
1598 - 1671 (73 years)
Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star. He argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself because on a rotating Earth, the ground moves at different speeds at different times.
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Samuel Belkin
1911 - 1976 (65 years)
Samuel Belkin was the second President of Yeshiva University. An American Rabbi and distinguished Torah scholar, he is credited with leading Yeshiva University through a period of substantial expansion.
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Abu Raita al-Takriti
775 - 835 (60 years)
Abu Raita al-Takriti , was a 9th-century Syriac Orthodox theologian and apologist. Biography Little is known about Abu Raita's life, and although some sources portray him as a bishop of Tikrit there is no contemporary evidence to support this. Abu Raita referred to himself as a "teacher" . It appears that his reputation as a theologian made him so well known that he was recalled to defend his fellow non-Chalcedonian co-religionists in Armenia.
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Hugh Broughton
1549 - 1612 (63 years)
Hugh Broughton was an English scholar and theologian. Early life He was born at Owlbury, Bishop's Castle, Shropshire. He called himself a Cambrian, implying Welsh blood in his veins. He was educated by Bernard Gilpin at Houghton-le-Spring and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1570. The foundation of his Hebrew learning was laid, in his first year at Cambridge, by his attendance on the lectures of the French scholar Antoine Rodolphe Chevallier.
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Julius Micrander
1640 - 1702 (62 years)
Julius Erici Micrander Uplandiensis was a Swedish professor, member of the Swedish Parliament, and vicar with the Church of Sweden. Biography Micrander was born in the rectory of Bro Church in Uppland, Sweden. His father was Ericus Georgi Micranderan, vicar in Tierp parish and his mother was Benedicta Eriksdotter. By age 10, Micrander was a student at Uppsala University. At age 28, he was studying for a master's degree with the De educatione liberorum.
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Johann Jakob Stähelin
1797 - 1875 (78 years)
Johann Jakob Stähelin was a Swiss theologian, who specialized in Old Testament studies. From 1817 to 1821 he studied theology at the University of Tübingen. In 1823 he received his PhD and subsequently worked as a lecturer at the University of Basel. In 1829 he became an associate professor at Basel, where in 1835 he was named a full professor of Old Testament studies. In 1842 he obtained his doctorate of divinity, and in 1846 was appointed university rector.
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Gustav Leopold Plitt
1836 - 1880 (44 years)
Gustav Leopold Plitt was a German Protestant theologian. From 1854 to 1858, he studied theology at the Universities of Erlangen and Berlin. At Erlangen he was influenced by the work of Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann. In January 1862, he became a privat-docent of theology at Erlangen, where he later became an associate professor and a full professor of theology .
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Frederick Oakeley
1802 - 1880 (78 years)
Frederick Oakeley was an English Roman Catholic convert, priest, and author. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1828 and in 1845 converted to the Church of Rome, becoming Canon of the Westminster Diocese in 1852. He is best known for his translation of the Christmas carol Adeste Fideles from Latin into English.
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George Benson
1699 - 1762 (63 years)
George Benson was an English Presbyterian pastor and theologian who was noted for his publications on the Christian epistles. Benson often conversed with dignitaries such as Lord Chancellor Peter King and Edmund Law, the bishop of Carlisle. According to Alexander Balloch Grosart, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, Benson's views were "Socinian" though at this period the term is often confused with Arian.
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Christoph Birkmann
1703 - 1771 (68 years)
Christoph Birkmann was a German theologian and minister. A pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach, he has been identified as the author of the texts of several Bach cantatas. Career Born in Nuremberg, Birkmann received some musical training. He spent a year at the University of Altdorf before studying theology and mathematics at the University of Leipzig from 1724 to 1727.
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Anne Zernike
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
Anne Zernike was a Dutch, liberal theologian, who was the first ordained woman minister of the Netherlands. Though she began her career with the Mennonites, which was the only congregation that allowed female ministers at the time, the majority of her career was spent in the Dutch Protestant Association .
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John Pearson
1613 - 1686 (73 years)
John Pearson was an English theologian and scholar. Life He was born at Great Snoring, Norfolk. From Eton College he passed to Queens' College, Cambridge, and was elected a scholar of King's College, Cambridge in April 1632, and a fellow in 1634. On taking orders in 1639 he was collated to the Salisbury prebend of Nether-Avon. In 1640 he was appointed chaplain to the lord-keeper Finch, by whom he was presented to the living of Thorington in Suffolk. In the Civil War he acted as chaplain to George Goring's forces in the west. In 1654 he was made weekly preacher at St Clement's, Eastcheap, in L...
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Claude Pajon
1626 - 1685 (59 years)
Claude Pajon was a 17th-century French theologian. He followed the teachings of John Cameron which was at odds with the dominant Calvinist views which led to the "Pajonist controversy" in 1668. After studying at Blois under Paul Testard, he was declared for the ministry on 25 August 1650. He was soon appointed to be pastor at Marchenoir.
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David Hollatz
1648 - 1713 (65 years)
David Hollatz was a German Lutheran theologian. He studied at Erfurt and Wittenberg, and became preacher at Pützerlin near Stargard in 1670, at Stargard in 1681 , rector in Colberg in 1684, and pastor in Jakobshagen in 1692.
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Anton Berlage
1805 - 1881 (76 years)
Anton Berlage was a German Catholic dogmatic theologian. Life He studied philosophy and theology in the same city, after completing his course at the Gymnasium, and proceeded to the University of Bonn in 1826. Esser, at Münster, and especially Georg Hermes, at Bonn, led him to speculations in theology. Later at Tübingen, during 1829 and 1830, under Drey, J. B. Hirscher, and Johann Adam Möhler, who influenced him by their historic method.
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Giovanni Miegge
1900 - 1961 (61 years)
Giovanni Miegge was an Italian Protestant theologian and author on religious issues. He was professor of theology at the Waldensian school of theology in Rome, Italy. Miegge supported neo-orthodoxy, and promoted the ideas of Karl Barth in Italy, and translated Barth's work on the Epistle to the Romans. Miegge wrote many books, including a biography of Martin Luther published in 1946.
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Tomás de Mercado
1525 - 1575 (50 years)
Tomás de Mercado was a Spanish Dominican friar and both an economist and a theologian, best known for his book Summa de Tratos y Contratos of 1571. Together with Martín de Azpilcueta he founded the economic tradition of "Iberian monetarism"; both form part of the general intellectual tradition often known as "Late Scholasticism", or the School of Salamanca.
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Charles Augustus Aiken
1827 - 1892 (65 years)
Charles Augustus Aiken was an American clergyman and academic. Biography He was born in Manchester, Vermont, on October 30, 1827, to John Aiken and Harriet Adams Aiken. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1846, at the age of nineteen, and went on to Andover Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1853. He married Sarah Noyes on October 17, 1854, and was ordained a pastor of the Congregational church in Yarmouth, Maine, that same year.
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Gottfried von Hagenau
1270 - 1313 (43 years)
Gottfried von Hagenau was a medieval priest, physician, theologian and poet from Alsace. As his name suggests, he was probably born in Haguenau, before 1275. After having studied medicine and theology in Strasbourg and in Paris, he worked as a headmaster in Basel, Switzerland, before settling as a physician in Strasbourg, where he applied for the post of canon at the St Thomas' Church. He was at first rejected but successfully sued against that decision before the Apostolic Signatura in Rome, and was instated as canon of St Thomas' Church in 1300. He died on 26 September 1313 and is buried in the church, where his ornate Gothic ledger stone is preserved to this day.
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Paul Luther
1533 - 1593 (60 years)
Paul Luther was a German physician, medical chemist, and alchemist. He was the third son of the German Protestant Reformer Martin Luther and was successively physician to John Frederick II, Duke of Saxony; Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg; Augustus, Elector of Saxony and his successor Christian I, Elector of Saxony. He taught alchemy to Anne of Denmark.
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Svend Borchmann Hersleb
1784 - 1836 (52 years)
Svend Borchmann Hersleb was a Norwegian professor of theology who also served one term in the Norwegian Parliament. Personal life He was born in Alstahaug as the youngest son of Jørgen Sverdrup Hersleb and his wife Anna Svendsdatter Borchmann. He had several brothers and sisters. His sister Else married local businessman Jonas Greger Walnum.
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Otto Kirn
1857 - 1911 (54 years)
Otto Kirn was a German Lutheran theologian and university professor. Life Kirn went through the Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren, where he was trained, among others, by the philosopher Karl Christian Planck. From 1875 to 1880 he studied philosophy and theology at the University of Tübingen and was then a lecturer at the Tübinger Stift from 1881 to 1884. In 1886 he earned the degree of Lic. Theol. with the work Die christliche Vollkommenheit and in 1889 he was finally promoted to Doctor of Philosophy and graduated with the dissertation Kants transcendentale Dialektik in ihrer Bedeutung für die Religionsphilosophie .
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Ildefonsus
607 - 667 (60 years)
Ildefonsus or Ildephonsus was a scholar and theologian who served as the metropolitan Bishop of Toledo for the last decade of his life. His Gothic name was Hildefuns. In the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church he is known as Dexius based on the Ge'ez translation of legends about his life.
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John Bunyan Reeve
1831 - 1916 (85 years)
John Bunyan Reeve was a Presbyterian minister and professor at Howard University. In 1871 he organized the department of theology at Howard. Early life John Bunyan Reeve was born October 29, 1831, in Mattituck, New York. He attended district schools and worked on a farm as a young man. His parents were Presbyterians and his mother pushed him to become a minister. As a young man he was a member of the Shiloh Presbyterian church under Rev. James W.C. Pennington. He worked as a teacher for a few months at New Tower, Long Island when, in 1853, he enrolled at the New York Central College at McGrawsville, New York, in a preparatory course for the seminary.
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Hasan ibn Hasan
650 - 716 (66 years)
Abu Muhammad Hasan ibn Hasan ibn Ali al-Hashimi was an Islamic scholar and theologian. He was a son of Hasan ibn Ali and Khawla bint Manzur. He was a grandson of the fourth caliph Ali and a great-grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
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Bryan Joseph McEntegart
1893 - 1968 (75 years)
Bryan Joseph McEntegart was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Ogdensburg in Northern New York , rector of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. , and as bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn in New York City .
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Robert de Sorbon
1201 - 1274 (73 years)
Robert de Sorbon was a French theologian, the chaplain of Louis IX of France, and founder of the Sorbonne college in Paris. Biography Born into a poor family in Sorbon, in what is now the Ardennes département, Robert de Sorbon entered the Church and was educated in Reims and Paris. He was noted for his piety and attracted the patronage of the Comte d'Artois and King Louis IX of France, later known as Saint Louis. He became the canon of Cambrai around 1251 before being appointed canon of Paris and the king's confessor in 1258.
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Henry Denifle
1844 - 1905 (61 years)
Henry Denifle, in German Heinrich Seuse Denifle , was an Austrian paleographer and historian.
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John Albert Broadus
1827 - 1895 (68 years)
John Albert Broadus was an American Baptist pastor and President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Early life Born in 1827 in Culpeper County, Virginia, Broadus was educated at home and at a private school. He taught in a small school before completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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Robert Spearman
1703 - 1761 (58 years)
Robert Spearman was an English theologian, known as a Hutchinsonian. Life He was the eldest son of Robert Spearman, attorney of Durham, by his wife Hannah, only daughter of William Webster, merchant, of Stockton-on-Tees. He studied at Durham School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, but left without taking a degree. He then lived at Old Acres, Sedgefield.
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Richard Adelbert Lipsius
1830 - 1892 (62 years)
Richard Adelbert Lipsius was a German Protestant theologian. Biography Richard Adelbert Lipsius was the son of K. H. A. Lipsius , who was rector of the school of St. Thomas at Leipzig, was born at Gera on 14 February 1830. He studied at Leipzig, and eventually settled at Jena as professor ordinaries. He helped to found the "Evangelical Protestant Missionary Union" and the "Evangelical Alliance", and from 1874 took an active part in their management. He died at Jena on 19 August 1892.
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Nilus of Sora
1433 - 1508 (75 years)
Nil Sorsky became a leader of a tendency in the late medieval Russian Orthodox Church known as the non-possessors which opposed ecclesiastic landownership. The Russian Orthodox Church venerates Nil Sorsky as a saint, marking his feast day on the anniversary of his repose on 7 May.
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Denis Pétau
1583 - 1652 (69 years)
Denis Pétau , also known as Dionysius Petavius, was a French Jesuit theologian. Life Pétau was born at Orléans, where he had his initial education; he then attended the University of Paris, where he successfully defended his theses for the degree of Master of Arts, not in Latin, but in Greek. After this he followed the theological lectures at the Sorbonne, and, on the advice of Nicolas Ysambert, successfully applied for the chair of philosophy at Bourges. At Paris he formed a friendship with Isaac Casaubon, then librarian at the royal library, where he spent all his spare time studying the ancient Greek manuscripts.
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Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz
1606 - 1682 (76 years)
Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz was a Spanish Catholic scholastic philosopher, ecclesiastic, mathematician and writer. He is believed to be a great-grandson of Jan Popel y Lobkowicz. Life Juan Caramuel was born in Madrid in 1606, the son of Count Lorenzo Caramuel and Caterina Frissea von Lobkowitz, a descendant of a Czech noble family. He was instructed in oriental languages by Archbishop Juan de Esron . By the age of 17, he was studying at the University of Alcalá de Henares, where he took his degree in the humanities and philosophy. His theological teachers at the University of Alcalá included the Dominicans John of St.
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Ebenezer Porter
1772 - 1834 (62 years)
Ebenezer Porter , D.D., was an American minister and writer. Early life and career The son of Vermont politician and judge Thomas Porter, Ebenezer was born in Cornwall, Connecticut on May 5, 1772. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1792, studied theology in Bethlehem, Connecticut, and in 1796 became pastor of the Congregational church in Washington, Connecticut.
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Adam Franz Lennig
1803 - 1866 (63 years)
Adam Franz Lennig was an ultramontane German Catholic theologian. He was born and died in Mainz. Life Lennig studied at Bruchsal under the private tutorship of the ex-Jesuit Laurentius Doller, and afterwards at the bishop's gymnasium at Mainz, his birthplace. Being too young for ordination, he went to Paris to study Oriental languages under Sylvestre de Sacy, then to Rome for a higher course in theology. Here he was ordained priest, 22 September 1827, and then taught for a year at Mainz.
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Vincent Taylor
1887 - 1968 (81 years)
Vincent Taylor was a Methodist biblical scholar and theologian. He was elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy in 1954, specializing in theology. During his career, he was both Principal of Wesley College, Headingley, Leeds and, from 1930–58, Ferens Professor of New Testament Language and Literature there. He was also Examiner in Biblical Theology, London University. He is described as "one of the outstanding New Testament scholars of his day and theologian of great renown and influence" with an "immense" literary output. According to the British Academy, his principal publications ...
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Joachim Westphal
1510 - 1574 (64 years)
Joachim Westphal was a German "Gnesio-Lutheran" theologian and Protestant reformer. From 1571 to 1574 he served as Superintendent of Hamburg , presiding as spiritual leader over the Lutheran state church of the city-state.
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Abraham Dirk Loman
1823 - 1897 (74 years)
Abraham Dirk Loman was a Dutch theologian. He was a professor from 1856 to 1893. In his later period he belonged to the Dutch radical critics. Life Loman was the son of a minister in the Dutch Lutheran church. He started studying theology in 1840 and became a minister in 1846. In 1856 he became a professor at the Lutheran seminary in Amsterdam. Loman gradually lost his eyesight in the beginning of the 1870s, but continued working. From 1877 he also was a theology professor at the University of Amsterdam until his retirement in 1893. His son Rudolf Loman was Dutch Chess Champion.
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Albert Geyser
1918 - 1985 (67 years)
Albertus Stephanus Geyser was a South African cleric, scholar and anti-apartheid theologian. Geyser became an outcast in the white Afrikaner community because of his theological opposition to apartheid and to the Broederbond, the secret male Calvinist organisation that covertly steered South African politics during the apartheid era. He obtained master's and doctoral degrees cum laude, specializing in Greek and Latin. At the age of 27 he was appointed lecturer, and a year later, professor in the Theological Faculty of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk at the University of Pretoria. Geyser cont...
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Nathanael Emmons
1745 - 1840 (95 years)
Nathanael Emmons, sometimes spelled Nathaniel Emmons, was an American Congregational minister and influential theologian of the New Divinity school. He was born at East Haddam, Connecticut. Emmons graduated at Yale in 1767, studied theology under the Rev. John Smalley at Berlin, Connecticut, and was licensed to preach in 1769. After preaching four years in New York and New Hampshire, he became, in April 1773, pastor of the Second church at Franklin , of which he remained in charge until May 1827, when failing health compelled his relinquishment of active ministerial cares. He lived, however,...
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Andreas Hyperius
1511 - 1564 (53 years)
Andreas Gerhard Hyperius , real name Andreas Gheeraerdts, was a Protestant theologian and Protestant reformer. He was Flemish, born at Ypres, which is signified by the name 'Hyperius'. Life He had a humanist education, and studied at Tournai and Paris. He was resident in England from 1536 to 1540, and in 1542 was appointed professor of theology at Marburg.
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Harrison S. Elliot
1882 - 1951 (69 years)
Harrison Sacket Elliott was an ordained Methodist minister and taught at Union Theological Seminary from 1922 to 1950. His interest in the interplay of psychology, group dynamics, democratic thinking, and liberal theology found expression in his leadership in the Y.M.C.A., ecumenical agencies, the Religious Education Association, and Union Theological Seminary. Elliot was born in St. Clairsville, Ohio.
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Andreas Rinkel
1889 - 1979 (90 years)
Andreas Rinkel was a Dutch priest who served as the nineteenth Archbishop of Utrecht from 1937 to 1970. Early ministry Before serving as Archbishop of Utrecht, Rinkel served as a parish priest in Amersfoort, Holland, and as a professor at the seminary there. He was part of the Old Catholic commission that worked toward the reconciliation of the Old Catholic Church with the Anglican Church.
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