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.

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.

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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Theology,

#501

Roger T. Forster

Roger T. Forster

#51288

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Roger Thomas Forster was the founder of Ichthus Christian Fellowship, a neocharismatic Evangelical Christian Church that forms part of the British New Church Movement. In 1965 he married Faith Forster and has three children.

#502

Roland Faber

#33273

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Roland Faber is an author and Kilsby Family/John B. Cobb, Jr., Professor of Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Claremont Graduate University. He is Executive Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies, Executive Director of the Whitehead Research Project in Claremont, California, and Editor of the Contemporary Whitehead Studies series. Faber received a PhD in systematic theology from the University of Vienna in 1992. In 1998, he was appointed assistant professor at the Institute for Dogmatic Theology in Vienna, Austria. In 2005, he r...

#503

Jean-Yves Lacoste

#37393

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Jean-Yves Lacoste is a French philosopher. Lacoste is associated with what Dominique Janicaud called the "theological turn in phenomenology", along with other influential French phenomenologists like Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Louis Chrétien. Lacoste's work straddles philosophy and theology, and displays an interest in what might be called postmodern themes. He works in Paris and Cambridge and has a life membership at Clare Hall, Cambridge.

#504

Jan Lindhardt

#40339

Overall Influence

1938 - 2014 (76 years)

Jan Lindhardt was a Danish theologian and writer. He was the son of professor Dr Poul Georg Lindhardt and Gerda Winding, and the elder brother of the Rev Mogens Lindhardt. His nephew is actor Thure Lindhardt. He was married to Tine Lindhardt, Bishop of Funen from 2012 until his death. He graduated with a doctorate in theology from Copenhagen University in 1962, and served as Bishop of Roskilde Diocese from 1997–2008.

#505

René Padilla

#64200

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

C. René Padilla was an Ecuadorian evangelical theologian and missiologist known for coining the term integral mission in the 1970s to articulate Christianity's dual priority in evangelism and social activism. He popularized this term in Latin American evangelicalism through the Latin American Theological Fellowship and through the global evangelical Lausanne Conference of 1974.

#506

Kwame Bediako

#33880

Overall Influence

1945 - 2008 (63 years)

Kwame Bediako , also known as Manasseh Kwame Dakwa Bediako, was a Ghanaian Christian theologian and Rector for the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture in Akropong, Ghana. Biography Bediako was born in Akropong, Ghana and, as the son of a police inspector, grew up in a Police Training Depot in Accra. Due to this upbringing, he learned and spoke his mother tongue of Twi and the Accra language Ga.

#507

Richard A. McCormick

#31678

Overall Influence

1922 - 2000 (78 years)

Richard A. McCormick was a leading liberal Catholic moral theologian who reshaped Catholic thought in the United States. He wrote many journal articles on Catholic social teachings and moral theory. He was an expert in Catholic medical ethics and for many years wrote the "Notes on Moral Theology" column in Theological Studies. He was "particularly articulate" among the five moral theologians who in 1964 at the Kennedy Compound crafted a political position for the Kennedy clan that would permit abortion in law.

#508

Anscar Chupungco

Anscar Chupungco

#40160

Overall Influence

1939 - 2013 (74 years)

Dom Anscar Chupungco, O.S.B., STD was a Filipino Benedictine monk, who was a noted liturgist, theologian and a mentor to all Filipino liturgists and countless students of the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm in Rome and San Beda University in Manila. He was known for integrating local customs and traditions into the Catholic Mass.

#509

Alexei Osipov

#58712

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Alexei Osipov - well known Russian Orthodox theologian, professor and lecturer from Moscow Orthodox Theological Academy. He is also a widely popular Orthodox pedagogue, publicist and defender of Russian Orthodoxy, being a slavophil, apologist of Eastern Christianity as based on teachings of Church Fathers and exposer of deficiencies of western Catholic teachings.

#510

Michael Fishbane

#34252

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Michael A. Fishbane is an American scholar of Judaism and rabbinic literature. Formerly at Brandeis University, he is currently Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the Divinity School, University of Chicago.

#511

Richard Rice

#46146

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

T. Richard Rice is an American Seventh-day Adventist theologian and author. He is a leading proponent of "open theism". As of 2007 he is professor of theology and philosophy of religion at Loma Linda University in California.

#512

Ian Bradley

#25061

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Ian Campbell Bradley is a British academic, author and broadcaster. He is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews, where he was Principal of St Mary's College, the Faculty and School of Divinity, and honorary Church of Scotland Chaplain.

#513

Francesco Moraglia

#48628

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Francesco Moraglia is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He has been Patriarch of Venice since March 2012; he is the first native of Genoa to hold that position. He was bishop of La Spezia-Sarzana-Brugnato from 2008 to 2012.

#514

Francis Schüssler Fiorenza

#38038

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Francis Schüssler Fiorenza is an American theologian who currently holds the post of Charles Chancey Stillman Research Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School. Biography Born Francis Fiorenza in 1941, as a young man he entered St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland, from which he earned the degree of Master of Divinity, even though he did not intend to pursue ordination. In 1963 he won a fellowship to study theology in Germany under the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner at the University of Munich. Because that university would not accept docto...

#515

Bryan Chapell

#33724

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Bryan Chapell is an American pastor and theologian who currently serves as the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church in America. He was previously the senior pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois. Prior to that he was president and chancellor of Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri for twenty years. Chapell is also an author, lecturer, and conference speaker specializing in homiletics. He served as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America in 2014.

#516

Peter Vardy

#14108

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Peter Christian Vardy is a British theologian. The author or co-author of 18 books about religion and ethics, Vardy was vice-principal of Heythrop College, a Jesuit college in London, from 1999 to 2011. He is known for the religious-studies conferences he runs in the UK for schools.

#517

Rubel Shelly

#24371

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Dr. Rubel Shelly is an author, minister, and professor at Lipscomb University. He is the former president of Rochester University . Life Shelly began as an instructor in the department of Religion and Philosophy at Freed-Hardeman University in 1975. In 1978, Shelly began preaching as Senior Minister for the Family of God at Woodmont Hills, formerly known as the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ, in Nashville, Tennessee where he continued until 2005. While preaching at Woodmont Hills, he also taught at Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Tennessee State University. ...

#518

Allan MacRae

#42231

Overall Influence

1902 - 1997 (95 years)

Allan Alexander MacRae was an evangelical Christian scholar who, with Harold S. Laird, Carl McIntire, Roland K. Armes, and several other conservative Presbyterians, helped found Faith Theological Seminary and, with Jack Murray, Biblical Theological Seminary. Because of his longevity, MacRae engaged in both the battles of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy and with the rise of Neo-evangelicalism in mid-20th century America, playing important roles in the establishment of three conservative American seminaries.

#519

John E. Sanders

#37859

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

John E. Sanders is an American Christian theologian. He currently serves as professor of religious studies at Hendrix College. Sanders is best known for his promotion of open theism but he has also written on cognitive linguistics and religious pluralism .

#520

Walter Brandmüller

#16874

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Walter Brandmüller is a German prelate of the Catholic Church, a cardinal since 2010. He was president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences from 1998 to 2009. Early life Brandmüller was born in 1929 in Ansbach, Germany. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant. Brandmüller was baptized as a Protestant and converted to Catholicism from Lutheranism in his adolescence. He studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich in 1963, he earned a doctorate in history ; and he obtained the "habilitation" in 1967 with the dissertation "Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena " .

#521

Ursula Niebuhr

#23686

Overall Influence

1907 - 1997 (90 years)

Ursula Mary Niebuhr was an English American academic and theologian. She was the founder and longtime head of the Department of Religion at Barnard College in New York City, USA. She was born in Southampton, England. After graduation from the University of Oxford with double Firsts in history and theology, she became the first woman to win a fellowship to the Union Theological Seminary in New York, USA.

#522

George Tinker

#36764

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

George E. "Tink" Tinker is an American Indian scholar of the Osage Nation who taught for more than three decades at the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist Church theological school, where he focused his scholarship on the decolonization of American Indian Peoples. The Tinker family name is deeply embedded among the Osage.

#523

Florentino García Martínez

#74959

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Florentino García Martínez is a former Catholic priest, now married and for many years professor of religion and theology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He is a leading expert on messianic ideas in the Dead Sea scrolls.

#524

Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz

#38847

Overall Influence

1943 - 2012 (69 years)

Ada María Isasi-Díaz was a Cuban-American theologian who served as professor emerita of ethics and theology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. As a Hispanic theologian, she was an innovator of Hispanic theology in general and specifically of mujerista theology. She was founder and co-director of the Hispanic Institute of Theology at Drew University until her retirement in 2009.

#525

Andrew Linzey

#8637

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Andrew Linzey is an English Anglican priest, theologian, and prominent figure in Christian vegetarianism. He is a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, and held the world's first academic post in Ethics, Theology and Animal Welfare, the Bede Jarret Senior Research Fellowship at Blackfriars Hall.

#526

Mercy Oduyoye

#58669

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye is a Ghanaian Methodist theologian known for her work in African women's theologies and theological anthropology. She is currently the Director of the Institute of African Women in Religion and Culture at Trinity Theological Seminary, Ghana. She founded the Circle of Concerned African Theologians in Ghana in 1987 to promote the visibility and publishing agenda of African women Theologians.

#527

Mary E. Hunt

#35110

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Mary E. Hunt is an American feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual in Silver Spring, Maryland, US. A Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to social justice concerns.

#528

Gerhard Forde

#53217

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

Gerhard O. Forde was an American Lutheran theologian who wrote extensively on the Protestant Reformation and Lutheran theology and tradition. Background Gerhard Olaf Forde was born in Pope County, Minnesota, and raised near Starbuck. He was the son of Gerhard Olavus and Hannah Forde . He received the B.A. degree from Luther College in 1950, attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for one year, and then earned the Bachelor of Theology degree from Luther Seminary in 1955. He earned the Th.D. degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1967. Forde also studied at the University of Tübingen and was the Lutheran tutor at Mansfield College, Oxford University, 1968–1970.

#529

Gerhard Schaffran

Gerhard Schaffran

#82512

Overall Influence

1912 - 1996 (84 years)

Gerhard Schaffran was Papal consistory and Auxiliary bishop of Görlitz, of Breslau for the see of Görlitz and Bishop of Dresden-Meissen. Life Schaffran was the son of a teacher, his family moved from Breslau to Leschnitz am Annaberg. In the First World War his father served as an officer and was killed. His widow lived with Gerhard and his siblings at Görlitz. Gerhard Schaffran initially studied at a gymnasium in Berlin, but left high school in Görlitz in order to study theology at Breslau. After his ordination by Adolf Bertram on 1 August 1937, Schaffran served as a chaplain in Breslau. Du...

#530

Desmond Tutu

#2750

Overall Influence

1931 - 2021 (90 years)

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.

#531

George Erik Rupp

#20905

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

George Erik Rupp is an American educator and theologian, who served successively as president of Rice University, Columbia University, and the International Rescue Committee. Biography Rupp was born in Summit, New Jersey, the son of German immigrant parents, and was raised in Springfield Township, Union County, New Jersey. He studied in Germany before graduating from Princeton University with an A.B. in English in 1964 after completing a senior thesis titled "A Theatre of Ideas: Studies in Mid-Twentieth Century German and English Drama." He then received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School and, after studying for a year in Sri Lanka, a Ph.D.

#532

William Henry Willimon

William Henry Willimon

#45969

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

William Henry Willimon is a retired American theologian and bishop in the United Methodist Church who served the North Alabama Conference for eight years. He is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry and Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Duke Divinity School. He is former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and is considered by many as one of America's best-known and most influential preachers. A Pulpit & Pew Research on Pastoral Leadership survey determined that he was one of the two most frequently read writers by pastors in mainline Protestantism alongside the Roman Catholic writer Henri Nouwen.

#533

Philip Sheldrake

#48497

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Philip Sheldrake is a religious historian and theologian with additional background in philosophy and political theory. His main work has been as a leading scholar in the overall multi-disciplinary field of spirituality. In particular, Philip Sheldrake has been closely involved internationally in the emergence of Christian Spirituality as an academic discipline. Sheldrake is a past president of the international Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, linked to the American Academy of Religion . He has written or edited seventeen books, with another book pending, as well as numerous book essays and journal articles.

#534

Deidre Palmer

#34719

Overall Influence

Deidre Palmer was the President of the Uniting Church in Australia from 8 July 2018 until 17 July 2021. She is a counsellor, theologian, and social worker. She was the Moderator of the Uniting Church's Synod of South Australia from 2013 to 2016.

#535

Gregor Maria Franz Hanke

#56804

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Gregor Maria Hanke OSB is a German prelate of the Catholic Church who has been the bishop of Eichstätt since 2006. A member of the Benedictines, he was abbot of Plankstetten Abbey from 1993 to 2006.

#536

Alfons Maria Stickler

#13946

Overall Influence

1910 - 2007 (97 years)

Alfons Maria Stickler was an Austrian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church from 1985 to 1988. Stickler was elevated to the cardinalate in 1985, and was the oldest member of the College of Cardinals. A traditionalist, he was a strong supporter of the Tridentine Mass and clerical celibacy.

#537

D. Stephen Long

#40967

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Duane Stephen Long , also known as D. Stephen Long, is the Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University. Previously, Long was Professor of Systematic Theology at Marquette University. He specializes in systematic theology, Christian ethics, and political theology. His books include The Divine Economy: Theology and Market, which details a Christian approach to economics based in the thought of radical orthodoxy, The Goodness of God: Theology, Church and Social Order and Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction.

#538

Valerie Saiving

#45089

Overall Influence

1921 - 1992 (71 years)

Valerie Saiving was a feminist theologian. She is the author of the influential essay The Human Situation: A Feminine View. Biographical details Valerie Saiving Goldstein was born in 1921, and received her BA from Bates College, Maine, United States in 1943, studying both theology and psychology. Her University of Chicago Divinity School PhD thesis, The Concepts of Individuality in Whitehead’s Metaphysics, was published in 1966. She was co-founder of the Department of Religious Studies and of the Women's Studies programme at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York State, where she taught from 1959 to 1987.

#539

Gordon Wenham

#26506

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Gordon J. Wenham is a Reformed British Old Testament scholar and writer. He has authored several books about the Bible. Tremper Longman has called him "one of the finest evangelical commentators today."

#540

John Sailhamer

#46214

Overall Influence

1946 - 2017 (71 years)

John Herbert Sailhamer was an American professor of Old Testament studies at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in California. He was president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2000 and made notable contributions to Old Testament studies.

#541

Carter Heyward

#39024

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Isabel Carter Heyward is an American feminist theologian and priest in the Episcopal Church, the province of the worldwide Anglican Communion in the United States. In 1974, she was one of the Philadelphia Eleven, eleven women whose ordinations eventually paved the way for the recognition of women as priests in the Episcopal Church in 1976.

#542

Jay W. Richards

#21390

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Jay Wesley Richards is an American analytic philosopher who focuses on the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. He is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. He serves as an adjunct professor in the School of Business at the Catholic University of America and the executive editor of The Stream and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. A former Presbyterian, Richards is now a Catholic.

#543

William Hamilton

#60673

Overall Influence

1924 - 2012 (88 years)

William Hughes Hamilton III was a prominent theologian and proponent of the Death of God movement. Hamilton died in 2012 at age 87 in Portland, Oregon. Education and career Hamilton was born March 9, 1924, to William Hughes Hamilton II and Helen Hamilton . in Evanston, Illinois. In 1943 Hamilton graduated from Oberlin College. He served in the United States Navy during World War II, then earned a master's degree from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York in 1949. In 1952 Hamilton received a doctorate in theology from the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

#544

Barbara Stühlmeyer

Barbara Stühlmeyer

#29240

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Barbara Stühlmeyer OblOSB is a German theologian, musicologist, author, especially a Hildegard scholar and a science journalism. Biography Stühlmeyer was born in Bremen. After completing her A levels at the Altes Gymnasium in Bremen and her organ studies with church music director Winfrid Langosz, whom she assisted at the Catholic Provost church St. John's Bremen, she studied Christian music at the University of the Arts Bremen . During her scientific studies from 1988 to 1994 she studied Catholic theology with Arnold Angenendt and Klemens Richter, philosophy with Berthhold Wald and musicology with Axel Beer and Winfried Schepporst at the Westfaelische Wilhelms Universitaet in Muenster.

#545

Donald A. Crosby

Donald A. Crosby

#25634

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Donald Allen Crosby is an American theologian who is professor emeritus of philosophy at Colorado State University, since January 2000. Crosby's interests focus on metaphysics, American pragmatism, philosophy of nature, existentialism, and philosophy of religion. He is a member of the Highlands Institute of American Religious and Philosophical Thought and has been a leader in the discussions on Religious Naturalism.

#546

Athanasios Angelopoulos

Athanasios Angelopoulos

#20809

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Athanasios Angelopoulos is a Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; founder and in-honour president of the Institute for National and Religious Studies . He has studied at the Theology School of the University of Athens as well as in University of Belgrade's Theology School. From 1973 to 1981 he was instructor of theology at Aristotle University; in 1982 he became an assistant professor and in 1984, full professor of Ecclesiastic History at the Department of Pastoral Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

#547

R. Tudur Jones

#36386

Overall Influence

1921 - 1998 (77 years)

Robert Tudur Jones , better known as R. Tudur Jones, was a Welsh nationalist and one of the country's leading theologianss. His nationalistic stance, combined with Calvinist doctrine, created an integrated vision that was significant to the religious life of Christian Wales in the later half of the 20th century.

#548

Rickie D. Moore

#55443

Overall Influence

Rickie D. Moore is an American renewal theologian within the Pentecostal movement. He is now the Associate Dean of the Lee University School of Religion. Moore received a B.A. from Lee College in 1976, his M.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1982 and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt in 1988. He is an ordained bishop of the Church of God, and was appointed to the faculty of the Church of God Theological Seminary in 1982, becoming Professor of Old Testament Studies.

#549

Franz Scholz

#63605

Overall Influence

1909 - 1998 (89 years)

Franz Scholz was a German priest and professor of theology from Breslau, Silesia. He had eight brothers and two sisters. His youngest brother Gerhard is now 86. He studied at Breslau's Catholic St.-Matthias-Gymnasium, then Caritas Science at Freiburg. He studied the Polish language at Kraków and Lublin. In 1934 he became a priest and took up a position as chaplain at Cross Church in Breslau. In this office Schulz attended to the spiritual needs of Polish seasonal workers in the Silesian capital city. After receiving his doctorate he transferred to St. Bonifacius Church in Görlitz.

#550

Craig S. Keener

#33920

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Craig S. Keener is a North American academic, Biblical scholar and professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. Biography Early Life Keener was born on 4 July 1960. Education In 1982, Keener got his B.A. from the Central Bible College . He got his M.A. in 1982 and M.Div. in 1987 at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary . In 1991, he received his Ph.D. in New Testament Studies and Christian Origins from Duke University.

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