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.

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Theology,

#1701

Dwight Hopkins

#180829

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Dwight Nathaniel Hopkins is an American theologian and ordained Baptist minister who serves as a professor of theology at the University of Chicago. Biography Hopkins was born on February 22, 1953, in Richmond, Virginia. In 1976, he graduated Harvard University with a bachelor's degree. He earned his Master of Divinity , Master of Philosophy , and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary. He has a second earned PhD degree from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, which became a basis for his book Down, Up and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology .

#1702

Gerhard Besier

#174835

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Gerhard Besier is a German Lutheran theologian, historian and politician best known for his work on church-state relations in the Third Reich and in the German Democratic Republic. Work Besier's publications have focused on church history, including church history during the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, and religious freedom issues in contemporary society. His views on religious freedom follow the libertarian American model, a stance which has made him controversial in Germany.

#1703

Gordian Landwehr

#174385

Overall Influence

1912 - 1998 (86 years)

Father Gordian Landwehr was a German Dominican friar and, for over a decade, the Prior of the St. Albert Dominican Monastery in Leipzig. According to at least one source he was the most high-profile Roman Catholic priest in the German Democratic Republic.

#1704

Martha L. Moore-Keish

#117357

Overall Influence

Martha L. Moore-Keish is an American theologian ordained in the Presbyterian Church . Her work is primarily focused on Reformed theology, liturgical theology and ecumenical theology, including engagement with interfaith issues around the world. She currently engages this work as the J.B. Green Associate Professor of Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary.

#1705

Hildegard Goss-Mayr

#58452

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Hildegard Goss-Mayr is an Austrian nonviolent activist and Christian theologian. Life and commitment Daughter of Kaspar Mayr, founder of the Austrian branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, she studied Philosophy in Vienna and New Haven. In 1958, she married Jean Goss , a French peace activist; the couple had two children, Myriam and Etienne.

#1706

Yoshio Fukuyama

#73240

Overall Influence

1921 - 1995 (74 years)

was an American theologian and writer. He held a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago and was a faculty member of the Chicago Theological Seminary. He is credited with beginning the scholarly discussion on how to define and measure religious commitment. Some of his works include The ministry in transition: a case study of theological education and The fragmented layman; an empirical study of lay attitudes . Some of his academic roles performed during his career include Director of Research for the United Church of Christ, chair of the membership committee for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

#1707

Nancy J. Duff

#157745

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Nancy J. Duff is an American professor of theology. Duff worked as the Stephen Colwell Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she taught from 1990 until 2020. Duff is also a Presbyterian minister in the PCUSA denomination. She is married to United Methodist Minister David Mertz. She has taught courses on the Decalogue, Biomedical ethics, human sexuality, liturgy and the Christian life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, James Cone, types of Christian ethics, and vocation in Christian tradition and contemporary life.

#1708

John Fenton

#107255

Overall Influence

1921 - 2008 (87 years)

John Charles Fenton was a British Church of England priest and New Testament scholar. He was Principal of Lichfield Theological College from 1958 to 1965, Principal of St Chad's College, Durham University from 1965 to 1978, and a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, from 1978 to 1991.

#1709

Donald E. Miller

#155253

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Donald Earl Miller is an American theologian, currently the Leonard K. Firestone Professor at University of Southern California. Publications Miller is author, co-author, or editor of the following:The Case for Liberal Christianity Writing and Research in Religious Studies, with Barry Jay Seltser Homeless Families: The Struggle for Dignity, with Barry Jay Seltser Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide, with Lorna Touryan Miller Reinventing American Protestantism GenX Religion, ed. with Richard Flory, Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope, with Lorna Touryan Miller and photograp...

#1710

Rajula Annie Watson

#178116

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Rajula Annie Watson is a Theologian who presently teaches at the Karnataka Theological College, Mangalore, a Seminary established in 1965 and affiliated to the nation's first University, the Senate of Serampore College. Annie has been a member of the Association of Theologically Trained Women of India since 1991 as well as Associate Presbyter at CSI-Hebich Memorial Church, Mangalore.

#1711

Bernard Genoud

#120806

Overall Influence

1942 - 2010 (68 years)

Bernard Genoud was the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg from his appointment on 18 March 1999, until his death on 21 September 2010. He was consecrated bishop on 24 May 1999. In 2008, Bishop Genoud publicly asked Swiss Catholics for forgiveness during the priest sex abuse scandal in the country.

#1712

Mary Getui

#176703

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Mary Getui is a Kenyan theologian and professor of religious studies at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. She is a founding member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. In 2009, Getui was named a Moran of the Burning Spear. She was appointed as chair of the National Aids Control Council of Kenya that same year.

#1713

Leo D. Lefebure

#63964

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Leo Dennis Lefebure is an American Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, university professor, and author. He is the inaugural Matteo Ricci S. J. Chair of Theology at Georgetown University.

#1714

Asher ben Meshullam

#76473

Overall Influence

Asher ben Meshullam was a Jewish theologian and Talmudic scholar who lived at Lunel in the second half of the 12th century CE. A renowned Talmudist, he was a son of the well-known Meshullam ben Jacob, and a pupil of Joseph ibn Plat and the Raavad.

#1715

Geoffrey Jarrett

#132060

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

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

#1716

Louis Joachim Munoz

Louis Joachim Munoz

#146087

Overall Influence

1933 - 2013 (80 years)

Louis Joachim Munoz, MFR was a Spanish priest. He lived in Nigeria for 47 years where, alongside his duties as an Opus Dei priest, he lectured on political science and French. Early life Munoz was born in Zamora, Spain. He studied law at University of Granada, where in his first year he became a member of Opus Dei. He graduated in 1958 with an LLM degree. Munoz then worked as a journalist for the Granada newspaper Patria.

#1717

Robert M. Doran

#183574

Overall Influence

1939 - 2021 (82 years)

Robert Michael Doran was an American-Canadian Jesuit priest, and theologian, and Emmett Doerr Chair in Catholic Systematic Theology at Marquette University. He was known for his research on the works of the Jesuit theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan.

#1718

Zac Niringiye

#62677

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Zac Niringiye is a Ugandan Anglican theologian and pastor. Biography Niringiye was born in Bufumbira. After a first degree in physics and a teaching diploma at Makerere University, Niringiye completed an MA at Wheaton College, Illinois in 1987 and a PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1998, studying under T. Jack Thompson and David Kerr.

#1719

Homer Kent

#107185

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (98 years)

Homer Austin Kent, Jr. taught from 1949 to 1999 at Grace Theological Seminary and Grace College in Winona Lake, IN. While there he taught New Testament and Greek and was Dean of the Seminary from 1962 to 1976 when he became President of Grace College and Seminary until 1986. He has also taught around the world in Israel, France, Central African Republic, Hungary and around the U.S. Not only is he an educator, but he is also authored many books and Bible commentaries.

#1720

Ignatius Firzli

#179309

Overall Influence

1913 - 1997 (84 years)

Dom Ignatios Firzli , also known in Brazilian Portuguese as Ignatios Ferzli was a Melkite Greek Orthodox Christian priest and theologian who became Antiochian Metropolitan Bishop of Sao Paulo and head of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch for Brazil and South America.

#1721

William T. Ingram

#117192

Overall Influence

1913 - 2001 (88 years)

William T. Ingram was an American theologian. He served as the first President of Memphis Theological Seminary from 1964 to 1978. Early life Ingram was born in 1913. His father, William Thomas Ingram, Sr., was a Cumberland Presbyterian minister. His brother, Joe Lynn Ingram, was also a minister. Ingram was ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

#1722

Robert A. Krieg

#177581

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Robert Anthony Krieg is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Education B.A., Stonehill College, 1969Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, 1976 Selected bibliography Story-Shaped Christology: The Role of Narratives in Identifying Jesus Christ. Theological Inquiries Series. New York: Paulist Press, 1988.Karl Adam: Catholicism in German Culture. Foreword by Cardinal Walter Kasper. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.Romano Guardini: A Precursor of Vatican II. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany. New York: Continuum Books, 2004.Treasure in the Field: Salvation in the Bible and in Our Lives.

#1723

Cipriano Calderón Polo

#129659

Overall Influence

1927 - 2009 (82 years)

Cipriano Calderón Polo was a Spanish prelate of the Catholic Church who worked as a journalist, editor, spokesperson, and administrator as an expert in explaining Church affairs to the Spanish-language public and in helping two popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, manage their relationship with the bishops of Latin America. After becoming a bishop in 1989, as vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, he became known as "the pope's man for Latin America".

#1724

John

#176023

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

John is a bishop of Urzhum and Omutninsk of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is also a radiophysicist, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences and lecturer at Novosibirsk State Technical University .

#1725

John A. Dick

#176671

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

John "Jack" Alonzo Dick is a historical theologian, now retired from the KU Leuven. His areas of research, lecturing, and writing are religion and values in the United States, secularization, and religious fundamentalism.

#1726

Donald Nicholl

#78883

Overall Influence

1923 - 1997 (74 years)

Donald Nicholl was a British historian and theologian. A speaker of medieval Welsh, Irish and Russian, he published books on medieval and modern history, religion and a biography of Thurstan. He has been regarded as "one of the most influential of modern Christian thinkers".

#1727

Fulata Moyo

#179074

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (34 years)

Fulata Lusungu Mbano Moyo is a Malawian systematic and feminist theologian who is an advocate for gender justice. Early life and education Fulata Mbano was born in northern Malawi, a member of the Ngoni people from Mzimba District. Her great grandfather, Songea, was a warrior chief. Her name, Fulata, means she was born feet first. Her father started his own church after he was not accepted in mainline churches due to his polygamy.

#1728

Jean Borella

#14696

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Jean Borella is a Christian philosopher and theologian. Borella's works are inspired by Ancient and Christian Neoplatonism, but also by the Traditionalist School of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon.

#1729

Maggi Dawn

#179661

Overall Influence

Maggi Eleanor Dawn is a British musician, author, theologian and Anglican priest. She was Principal of St Mary's College at the University of Durham, and remains a professor in the Department of Theology and Religion. Previously she was associate professor of Theology and Literature and Associate Dean of Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School.

#1730

John Kuykendall

#81999

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

John Wells Kuykendall was the 15th president of Davidson College. Graduating from Davidson in 1959, Kuykendall went on to receive a bachelor in divinity from Union Theological Seminary and then more advanced degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton University. He eventually became a professor of religion and campus pastor at Auburn University.

#1731

Abraham J. Malherbe

#126710

Overall Influence

1930 - 2012 (82 years)

Abraham J. Malherbe was a distinguished South African-American biblical scholar and theologian. He taught at Yale Divinity School from 1970 until 1994, and was named Buckingham Distinguished Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in 1981.

#1732

Brooke Prentis

#170262

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Brooke Prentis is an Australian Aboriginal Christian leader, who is descended from the Wakka Wakka people. She is the current CEO of Common Grace and coordinator of the Grasstree Gathering. Early life and education Prentis was born in Cairns on Yidinji land and grew up in Redcliffe, Queensland on the lands of the Gubbi Gubbi people. She is a descendant of the Wakka Wakka people. She attended Redcliffe State High School, graduating in 1997. She studied at The University of Queensland gaining a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Japanese and Political science.

#1733

Robert Rapljenović

#178693

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Robert Rapljenović is a German catholic Archpriest, church historian and Eastern Theologian. He is lead tutor at the Oriental College of Eichstätt, visiting docent at the Institutum Studiorum Philosophici et Theologici Societatis Jesu in Zagreb and was rector of the Greek Catholic Seminary in Zagreb.

#1734

Erwin Hecht

#100557

Overall Influence

1933 - 2016 (83 years)

Erwin Hecht, O.M.I. was a Roman Catholic bishop. Ordained to the priesthood in 1959, Hecht served as auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kimberley, South Africa, from 1972 to 1974. He then served as bishop of the diocese from 1974 to 2009.

#1735

Simon Barrow

#81675

Overall Influence

Simon Barrow is a practical theologian, commentator, journalist, NGO consultant, adult educator and trainer who is director of the religion and society think tank Ekklesia. Simon Barrow is the creator of Employer Brand concept and consultant. Simon Barrow was Chairman and founder of the consultancy People in Business which he sold to a private equity owned US group in August 2007. He retired to focus on his new interests in 2012. The first academic paper on the Employer Brand was written by Tim Ambler, Grand Metropolitan Senior Research Fellow at London Business School and Simon Barrow and was published in 1996 in the Journal of Brand Management.

#1736

Sione ʻAmanaki Havea

#187723

Overall Influence

1922 - 2000 (78 years)

Sione Amanaki Havea was a Tongan Methodist minister and theologian, known for developing a contextual theology for the context of the Pacific Islands. Career Havea was a strong advocate for ecumenism amongst Christians in Oceania. He served as the first chairman of the Pacific Conference of Churches and was an active participant in the World Council of Churches.

#1737

Elizabeth Livingstone

#59938

Overall Influence

1929 - 2023 (94 years)

Elizabeth Anne Livingstone , also known as E. A. Livingstone, was an English Anglican theologian, who specialised in patristics. Life Education Livingstone held a Master of Arts degree from the University of Oxford and a Lambeth Doctorate of Divinity.

#1738

John Nurser

#174531

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

John Shelley Nurser was a Church of England priest who was an eminent theologian. Early life Nurser was born in 1929 in Far Cotton, Northamptonshire, to Arthur Nurser, a joiner, and his wife Florence , a milliner. In his childhood the family moved to Rugeley, Staffordshire, and Nurser went to Rugeley Grammar School. From there he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, gaining a double first in history.

#1739

Jurn de Vries

#179460

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Jurjen Pieter "Jurn" de Vries is a Dutch theologian and former politician and journalist. De Vries was a member of the Senate from 1999 to 2003 and in 2007. He was also a member of the municipal council of Amersfoort.

#1740

E. W. Jackson

#75164

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Earl Walker Jackson Sr. is an American conservative politician, Protestant minister, and lawyer in Virginia who is a candidate in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. He was the Republican Party nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 2013. Jackson unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in Virginia in the 2012 and 2018 elections. He is head pastor at Exodus Faith Ministries, located in Chesapeake, Virginia and founder of Staying True to America's National Destiny, a Christian political organization.

#1741

Christian Baëta

#171877

Overall Influence

1908 - 1994 (86 years)

Christian Gonçalves Kwami Baëta was a Ghanaian academic and a Presbyterian minister who served as the Synod Clerk of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1945 to 1949. He was among a number of prominent individuals, corporate organisations and civil society groups that were instrumental in the establishment of the University of Ghana, Legon in 1948.

#1742

Åke V. Ström

#176313

Overall Influence

1909 - 1994 (85 years)

Åke Viktor Ored Ström was a Swedish theologian who specialized in the study of Germanic religion. Biography Åke V. Ström was born in Karlskrona, Sweden on 28 February 1909, the son of Tord Ström and Agnes Palm. He gained his fil kand from Stockholm University in 1930, and his teol kand from Uppsala University in 1935. Ström was ordained as a priest in 1936. He gained his teol dr from Uppsala University in 1945. Since 1965, Ström was a docent in religious history at Lund University. He was a highly regarded religious scholar, and a known authority on Old Norse religion. Ström died in Kista, Sw...

#1743

Jonathan Campbell

#179934

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Jonathan G Campbell was a Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies & Early Judaism in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol in Bristol, United Kingdom. He retired in 2017.

#1744

Max King

#178876

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Max R. King was the founder of the school of thought known as "transmillennialism". King was a minister in the Churches of Christ for 40 years before developing Transmillennialism. King pioneered a field of theology that he termed "covenant eschatology" which most call full preterism. Within fundamentalist and conservative evangelical contexts, he contended that biblical eschatology was not related to the end of the space-time universe, but to the transition of the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. King offered a unique interpretation concerning the millennium as found in Revelation 20 as pertaining to the forty-year period from 30-70 AD.

#1745

Peter Cameron

#175067

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Peter Cameron is a former Scottish Presbyterian minister, theologian, lawyer, who was notable for being convicted of heresy. Early life Cameron was born in 1945 in Scotland, read law at Edinburgh University, and studied theology at Edinburgh and Cambridge before being ordained as a minister in the Church of Scotland.

#1746

Edmund Campion

#67716

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Edmund Campion is an Australian Catholic priest and historian. He was educated at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview and the University of Sydney, where he was editor of the student newspaper Honi Soit in 1953. He was appointed a lecturer in history at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, later becoming Professor of History there.

#1747

Kung Lap-yan

#119305

Overall Influence

Kung Lap-yan is a public theologian and Associate Professor at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College , Chinese University of Hong Kong. Biography He received his Bachelor of Theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Hong Kong and spent a semester at Aarhus University, Denmark. He then finished Master of Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and PhD at the University of Glasgow. His master thesis was on two Czech theologians, Josef L. Hromadka and Jan M. Lochman, and his doctoral thesis was on Stanley Hauerwas and Jon Sobrino. He was a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hon...

#1748

Teresia Mbari Hinga

#170084

Overall Influence

Teresia Mbari Hinga was a Kenyan Christian feminist theologian and a professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University in California. She was a founding member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.

#1749

Kim Power

#183862

Overall Influence

Kim E. Power is an Australian academic, feminist theologian and church historian, who was a co-founder of the Golding Centre for Women's History, Theology and Spirituality at the Australian Catholic University.

#1750

Dennis Orme

#169754

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Dennis Frederick Orme is a former leader of Unification Churches in England, theologian and author. Orme and his wife were among the earliest Western followers of the Unification Church, and he is perhaps best known for his unsuccessful personal lawsuit for libel against Associated Newspapers Group. At that time, at $1.6m, it was the longest and most expensive libel case in British history.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions

Image Source for Louis Joachim Munoz