The Most Influential People Across History
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.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Theology,
#1
Billy Graham
#55
Overall Influence
1918 - 2018 (100 years)
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and a civil rights advocate whose broadcast and live sermons became well known internationally in the mid-to-late 20th century. During a career spanning six decades, Graham was a prominent evangelical Christian figure in the United States.
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Gustavo Gutiérrez
#1316
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. He currently holds the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and has previously been a visiting professor at many major universities in North America and Europe.
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Hans Küng
#737
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Hans Küng was a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. From 1995 he was president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic . Küng was ordained a priest in 1954, joined the faculty of the University of Tübingen in 1960, and served as a theological adviser during the Second Vatican Council. In 1978, after he rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility, he was not allowed to continue teaching as a Catholic theologian, but he remained at Tübingen as a professor of ecumenical theology until he retired with the title professor emeritus in 1996. He remained a Catholic priest until his death. He supported the spiritual substance of religion, while questioning traditional dogmatic Christianity.
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Alister McGrath
#697
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, Anglican priest, intellectual historian, scientist, Christian apologist, and public intellectual. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and is a fellow of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxf...
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Jürgen Moltmann
#1682
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Jürgen Moltmann is a German Reformed theologian who is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen and is known for his books such as the Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, God in Creation and other contributions to systematic theology. Jürgen Moltmann is the husband of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, a notable feminist theologian. Jürgen Moltmann described his own theology as an extension of Karl Barth's theological works, especially the Church Dogmatics, and he has described his own work as Post-Barthian. He has received honorary doctorates from a number of institut...
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Rowan Williams
#229
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Dr Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.
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John Hick
#953
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
John Harwood Hick was a philosopher of religion and theologian born in England who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism.
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Pope Francis
#330
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church, the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus , the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope born or raised outside Europe since the 8th century papacy of Syrian pope Gregory III.
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James H. Cone
#3058
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
James Hal Cone was an American theologian. He is best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of ...
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Pope John Paul II
#333
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Pope John Paul II was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was later canonised as Pope Saint John Paul II. In his youth, Wojtyła dabbled in stage acting. He graduated with excellent grades from an all-boys high school in Wadowice, Poland, in 1938, soon after which World War II broke out. During the war, to avoid being kidnapped and sent off to a German slave labor camp, he signed up for work in harsh conditions in a quarry. Wojtyła eventually took up acting and developed a love for the profession and participated at a local theater.
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William Lane Craig
#266
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is currently a Professor of Philosophy at Houston Christian University and a Research Professor of Philosophy at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology. Craig has updated and defended the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. He has also published work where he argues in favor of the historical plausibility of the resurrection of Jesus. His study of divine aseity and Platonism culminated with his book Go...
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Wolfhart Pannenberg
#2090
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Wolfhart Pannenberg was a German Lutheran theologian. He made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the resurrection of Christ, which has been widely debated in both Protestant and Catholic theology, as well as by non-Christian thinkers.
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Johann Baptist Metz
#3399
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Johann Baptist Metz was a German Catholic priest and theologian. He was Ordinary Professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Münster, and a consultant to the synod of German dioceses. He is regarded as one of the most important German theologians after the Second Vatican Council, who influenced liberation theology and focused on compassion.
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R. C. Sproul
#1895
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Robert Charles Sproul was an American Reformed theologian and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. He was the founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries and could be heard daily on the Renewing Your Mind radio broadcast in the United States and internationally. Under Sproul's direction, Ligonier Ministries produced the Ligonier Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which would eventually grow into the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Along with Norman Geisler, Sproul was one of the chief architects of the statement. Sproul has been described as "the greatest and mo...
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Pope Benedict XVI
#857
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Pope BenedictXVI was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict chose to be known as "Pope emeritus" upon his resignation, and he retained this title until his death in December 2022.
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Kallistos Ware
#5529
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Kallistos Ware was an English bishop and theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church. From 1982, he held the titular bishopric of Diokleia in Phrygia , later made a titular metropolitan bishopric in 2007, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. He was one of the best-known modern Eastern Orthodox hierarchs and theologians. From 1966 to 2001, he was Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford.
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Wayne Grudem
#2508
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Wayne A. Grudem is a New Testament scholar turned theologian, seminary professor, and author. He co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and served as the general editor of the ESV Study Bible.
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Leonardo Boff
#1953
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Leonardo Boff , born as Genézio Darci Boff , is a Brazilian theologian, philosopher writer, and former Catholic priest known for his active support for Latin American liberation theology. He is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the Rio de Janeiro State University. In 2001, he received the Right Livelihood Award for "his inspiring insights and practical work to help people realise the links between human spirituality, social justice and environmental stewardship."
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J. I. Packer
#4188
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
James Innell Packer was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994.
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Edward Schillebeeckx
#4521
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Edward Cornelis Florentius Alfonsus Schillebeeckx was a Belgian Catholic theologian born in Antwerp. He taught at the Catholic University in Nijmegen. He was a member of the Dominican Order. His books on theology have been translated into many languages, and his contributions to the Second Vatican Council made him known throughout the world.
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Charles Caldwell Ryrie
#5359
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Charles Caldwell Ryrie was an American Bible scholar and Christian theologian. He served as professor of systematic theology and dean of doctoral studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and as president and professor at what is now Cairn University. After his retirement from Dallas Theological Seminary he also taught courses for Tyndale Theological Seminary. He is considered one of the most influential American theologians of the 20th century. He was the editor of The Ryrie Study Bible by Moody Publishers, containing more than 10,000 of Ryrie's explanatory notes. First published in 1978, it has sold more than 2 million copies.
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John B. Cobb
#1499
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (99 years)
John Boswell Cobb, Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Cobb is the author of more than fifty books. In 2014, Cobb was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Rosemary Radford Ruether
#2172
Overall Influence
1936 - 2022 (86 years)
Rosemary Radford Ruether was an American feminist scholar and Roman Catholic theologian known for her significant contributions to the fields of feminist theology and ecofeminist theology. Her teaching and her writings helped establish these areas of theology as distinct fields of study; she is recognized as one of the first scholars to bring women's perspectives on Christian theology into mainstream academic discourse. She was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and her own work was influenced by liberation and black theologies. She taught at Howard University for ten years, and later at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.
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Walter Kasper
#3384
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Walter Kasper is a German Catholic cardinal and theologian. He is President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, having served as its president from 2001 to 2010. Early life Born in Heidenheim an der Brenz, Germany, Kasper was ordained a priest on 6 April 1957 by Bishop Carl Leiprecht of Rottenburg.
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Gerhard Ludwig Müller
#3172
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Gerhard Ludwig Müller is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 until 2017. Pope Francis elevated him to the rank of cardinal in 2014.
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Eberhard Bethge
#3464
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Eberhard Bethge was a German theologian and pastor, best known for being the close friend and biographer of the theologian and anti-Nazi Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Early life Bethge was born in Warchau, Landkreis Jerichow II, Province of Saxony, the Kingdom of Prussia, near Magdeburg, on August 29, 1909. He attended several universities, as is customary for theology students in Germany, before attending the underground Finkenwalde Seminary in Pomerania where Bonhoeffer taught in the name of Germany's Confessing Church . Bethge became Bonhoeffer's close friend and confidant. With the help of pietist...
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N. T. Wright
#2002
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Nicholas Thomas Wright , known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is an English New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop. He was the bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010. He then became research professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary's College in the University of St Andrews in Scotland until 2019, when he became a senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford.
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John Walvoord
#5297
Overall Influence
1910 - 2002 (92 years)
John Flipse Walvoord was a Christian theologian, a pastor, and the president of Dallas Theological Seminary from 1952 to 1986. He was the author of over 30 books, focusing primarily on eschatology and theology, including The Rapture Question, and was co-editor of The Bible Knowledge Commentary with Roy B. Zuck. He earned AB and DD degrees from Wheaton College, an AM degree from Texas Christian University in philosophy, a Th.B., Th.M., and Th.D. in Systematic Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Litt.D. from Liberty Baptist Seminary.
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Stanley Hauerwas
#2321
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Stanley Martin Hauerwas is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. Hauerwas originally taught at the University of Notre Dame before moving to Duke University. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke University, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. In the fall of 2014, he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001.
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Raymond E. Brown
#2631
Overall Influence
1928 - 1998 (70 years)
Raymond Edward Brown was an American Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar. He was a specialist on the hypothetical Johannine community, which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and he also wrote studies on the birth and death of Jesus.
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Dumitru Stăniloae
#7402
Overall Influence
1903 - 1993 (90 years)
Dumitru Stăniloae was a Romanian Orthodox Christian priest, theologian and professor. He worked for over 45 years on a comprehensive Romanian translation of the Greek Philokalia, a collection of writings on prayer by the Church Fathers, together with the hieromonk, Arsenie Boca, who brought manuscripts from Mount Athos. His book, The Dogmatic Orthodox Theology , made him one of the best-known Christian theologians of the second half of the 20th century. He also produced commentaries on earlier Christian thinkers, such as St Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Maximus the Confessor, and St Athanasius of Alexandria.
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Marcel Lefebvre
#1049
Overall Influence
1905 - 1991 (86 years)
Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre was a French Catholic archbishop who influenced modern traditional Catholicism. In 1970, five years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, he founded the Society of Saint Pius X , a community to train seminarians in the traditional manner, in the village of Écône, Switzerland. In 1988, Pope John Paul II declared that Archbishop Lefebvre had "incurred the grave penalty of excommunication envisaged by ecclesiastical law" for consecrating four bishops against the pope's express prohibition but, according to Lefebvre, in reliance on an "agreement giv...
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John Polkinghorne
#1317
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
John Charlton Polkinghorne was an English theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest. A prominent and leading voice explaining the relationship between science and religion, he was professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He served as the president of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1988 until 1996.
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Eugen Drewermann
#2454
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Eugen Drewermann is a German church critic, theologian, peace activist and former Catholic priest. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Drewermann was born in Bergkamen near Dortmund. He is best known in Germany for his work toward a non-violent form of Christianity, which, he believes, requires an integration of Depth psychology into Exegesis and Theology. Trained in philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and comparative religious studies, he criticized the Roman Catholic Church's literal and biologistic interpretations of miracles, the virgin birth, Ascension, and Resurrection as superstitious and medieval.
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Karl Lehmann
#4288
Overall Influence
1936 - 2018 (82 years)
Karl Lehmann was a German prelate and cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Mainz from 1983 to 2016, being elevated to the cardinalate in 2001. He served as chairman of the Conference of the German Bishops from 1987 to 2008, being considered one of the most influential prelates in Germany in those years and a leading proponent of liberal stances within the Church. Before he became a bishop, he worked as professor of theology at the University of Mainz and the University of Freiburg.
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Don Cupitt
#2880
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Don Cupitt is an English philosopher of religion and scholar of Christian theology. He has been an Anglican priest and a lecturer in the University of Cambridge, though is better known as a popular writer, broadcaster and commentator. He has been described as a "radical theologian", noted for his ideas about "non-realist" philosophy of religion.
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Helmut Gollwitzer
#10011
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Helmut Gollwitzer was a German Protestant theologian and author. Born in Pappenheim, Bavaria, Gollwitzer studied Protestant theology in Munich, Erlangen, Jena and Bonn ; he later completed a doctorate under Karl Barth in Basel , writing on the understanding of the eucharist in Martin Luther and John Calvin.
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Walter Brueggemann
#10704
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Walter Brueggemann is an American Protestant Old Testament scholar and theologian who is widely considered one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the last several decades. His work often focuses on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argues that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism.
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James Dunn
#4660
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
James Douglas Grant Dunn , also known as Jimmy Dunn, was a British New Testament scholar, who was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. He is best known for his work on the New Perspective on Paul, which is also the title of a book he published in 2007.
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Dorothee Sölle
#8370
Overall Influence
1929 - 2003 (74 years)
Dorothee Steffensky-Sölle , known as Dorothee Sölle, was a German liberation theologian who coined the term "Christofascism". She was born in Cologne and died at a conference in Göppingen from cardiac arrest.
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Richard L. Rubenstein
#4537
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Richard Lowell Rubenstein was a theologian, educator, and writer, noted particularly for his path-breaking contributions to post-Holocaust theology and his socio-political analyses of surplus populations and bureaucracy. A Connecticut resident, he was married to art historian Betty Rogers Rubenstein .
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Norman Geisler
#2311
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Norman Leo Geisler was an American Christian systematic theologian, philosopher, and apologist. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries . He held a Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University and made scholarly contributions to the subjects of classical Christian apologetics, systematic theology, the history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Biblical inerrancy, Bible difficulties, ethics, and more. He was the author, coauthor, or editor of over 90 books and hundreds of articles.
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Jon Sobrino
#7357
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Jon Sobrino is a Jesuit Catholic priest and theologian, known mostly for his contributions to Latin American liberation theology. He received worldwide attention in 2007 when the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a notification for what they termed doctrines that are "erroneous or dangerous and may cause harm to the faithful."
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Juan Luis Segundo
#8569
Overall Influence
1925 - 1996 (71 years)
Juan Luis Segundo was a Jesuit priest and Uruguayan theologian who was an important figure in the movement known as Latin American liberation theology. He wrote numerous books on theology, ideology, faith, hermeneutics, and social justice, and was an outspoken critic of what he perceived as Church callousness toward oppression and suffering. He was a physician by training.
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Tim LaHaye
#3115
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Timothy Francis LaHaye was an American Baptist evangelical Christian minister who wrote more than 85 books, both fiction and non-fiction, including the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which he co-authored with Jerry B. Jenkins.
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D. A. Carson
#7716
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Donald Arthur Carson is an evangelical biblical scholar. He is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and president and co-founder of the Gospel Coalition. He has written or edited about sixty books and served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2022.
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Mary Daly
#1807
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
Mary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher, and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston College for 33 years. Once a practicing Roman Catholic, she had disavowed Christianity by the early 1970s. Daly retired from Boston College in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her advanced women's studies classes. She allowed male students in her introductory class and privately tutored those who wanted to take advanced classes.
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Angelo Amato
#4041
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Angelo Amato, S.D.B. is an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints between 2008 and 2018. He served as Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2002 to 2008 and became a cardinal in 2010.
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Harvey Cox
#4219
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Harvey Gallagher Cox Jr. is an American theologian who served as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, until his retirement in October 2009. Cox's research and teaching focus on theological developments in world Christianity, including liberation theology and the role of Christianity in Latin America.
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Thomas J. J. Altizer
#9719
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Thomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer was an American university professor, religious scholar, and theologian, noted for his incorporation of Death of God theology and Hegelian dialectical philosophy into his body of work. He regarded his philosophical theology as also being grounded in the works of William Blake and considered his theology to have come into its own with his extended study of Blake's radical visionary thinking: The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake ; indeed he regarded himself as the first and only fully Blakean theologian.
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