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.

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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

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List of the most influential people in Theology,

#1751

Giacomo Morandi

#98570

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Giacomo Morandi is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who has been named bishop of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. He served as the undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2015 to 2017 and then as secretary until 2022. He was made an archbishop in 2017 and retains that as his personal title.

#1752

Edward A. Synan

#178423

Overall Influence

1918 - 1997 (79 years)

Edward Aloysius Synan was a philosopher, theologian, and professor at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. In addition to authoring and editing several books, Synan published over eighty journal articles on subjects ranging from early patristics to late scholasticism.

#1753

Douglas A. Hicks

#85098

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Douglas A. Hicks is president of Davidson College and a religion and economics scholar. Hicks became the 19th president of Davidson College on August 1, 2022. He previously served as Dean of Oxford College of Emory University and the Charles R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Religion at Emory. Before that, he was Professor of Religion and Senior Advisor for Academic Initiatives at Colgate University in Hamilton NY. . He served as Colgate's Provost and Dean of the Faculty from 2012 through 2015. From 1998 through 2012, Hicks was Professor of Leadership Studies and Religion at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond.

#1754

Sang-Gyoo Lee

#184171

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Sang-Gyoo Lee is a South Korean theologian and an honorary professor of the department of church history at Kosin University. He contributed to the discovery of historical documents of Korean church and is highly regarded as a Korean church historian. In 2012, he was selected as the theologian of the year at the 500th Anniversary of John Calvin's birth and received an academic award from the Korean Evangelical Theological Society on October 27, 2018. He served as president of the Korea Presbyterian Theological Society and president of the Reformed Theological Society. He is one of the editors of the International Theological Journal, Unio cum Christo.

#1755

Robert Willis

#146074

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Robert Andrew Willis KStJ DL is an Anglican priest, theologian, chaplain and hymn writer. He was Dean of Canterbury from 2001 to 2022, having previously served as Dean of Hereford between 1992 and 2000. During the COVID-19 pandemic, after public worship was suspended, Willis received media attention for his popular daily video broadcasts of Morning Prayer from the deanery garden at Canterbury Cathedral.

#1756

Robert Prichard

#179363

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Robert W. Prichard first taught at Virginia Theological Seminary as an adjunct faculty member in 1980, joining the faculty full-time in 1983. In 1988 he was made the Arthur Lee Kinsolving Professor of Christianity in America and Instructor in Liturgy at VTS. He retired in 2019, he was name Faculty Emerita.

#1757

Klaus Baumann

#188842

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

#1758

Steven Grosby

#88196

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Steven Elliot Grosby is Professor of Religion at Clemson University. Education Grosby received his PhD from the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. Career Grosby's areas of research include the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the relation between religion and nationality, and Social and Political Philosophy.

#1759

Dominique Rey

#80130

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Dominique Marie Jean Rey is the Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon in the province of Marseille in southern France. He is a member of the Emmanuel Community, and he is considered one of the more conservative French bishops. He also frequently celebrates Tridentine Mass. He has been criticized for ordaining priests who have failed to qualify for the priesthood in their home countries, failing to supervise religious communities he has established, and for inadequate action against sex abusers in his diocese.

#1760

Raphael Warnock

Raphael Warnock

#38615

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Raphael Gamaliel Warnock is an American Baptist pastor and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Georgia since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Warnock has been the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church since 2005.

#1761

Matthias Vereno

#183731

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Matthias Vereno was a German-Austrian theologian, priest, and swami. Early life, marriage, academic career His parents were Eugen and Maria from Vienna, but Vereno was born in Düsseldorf. The name given him at birth was Karl Feldl. He attended high school in Vienna-Döbling and Berlin-Steglitz, graduated in 1940, entered military service in 1941, served in North Africa, and was incarcerated until 1946. He then studied philosophy, history, art history, theater, religious studies and theology at the universities of Vienna, Freiburg, and Tübingen, where he received his Ph.D. in 1953; his doctora...

#1762

Kenneth Baker

#131078

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J. is a Roman Catholic priest in the Society of Jesus. Besides his pastoral duties as a priest he has served as a professor of theology and a university president. He has also worked to bring the message of the Roman Catholic Church into more forms of communication media, most notably as editor-in-chief in the magazine the Homiletic and Pastoral Review which has been called "one of the most important magazines for priests in the English speaking world".

#1763

Isaac Zokoué

#187795

Overall Influence

1944 - 2014 (70 years)

Isaac Zokoué was a leading theologian in the Central African Republic. For 14 years was dean of the leading French-speaking evangelical seminary, Faculte de Theologie Evangelique de Bangui. Zokoué wrote a number of books and articles about harmonizing Christian ideas to African cultures, including “Jésus-Christ sauveur : le mystère des deux natures: perspective africaine,” his doctorate thesis in theology at the University of Strasbourg.

#1764

Peter Sugandhar

Peter Sugandhar

#168918

Overall Influence

1944 - 2017 (73 years)

B. P. Sugandhar was the fifth successor of Frank Whittaker as Bishop - in - Medak of the Church of South India whose bishopric lasted for more than a decade and half from 1993 through 2009 coinciding with the archbishoprics of Samineni Arulappa and Marampudi Joji of the Archdiocese of Hyderabad.

#1765

Charles Villa-Vicencio

#81703

Overall Influence

Charles Villa-Vicencio is an Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town. He is also a Visiting research professor at Georgetown University. He was a director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which organised the public hearings on the atrocities committed during apartheid.

#1766

Frank Crüsemann

#155787

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Frank Crüsemann is a German Old Testament scholar, biblical critic, and emeritus professor at Bethel Church College from 1980 to 2004. He is known for his publications on the Torah, Elijah and the social history of the Old Testament, and his participation in Christian–Jewish reconciliation and the German Evangelical Church Assembly.

#1767

Toivo Harjunpää

#174615

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

Kalle Toivo Immanuel Harjunpää was a Finnish-American Lutheran priest and professor. Background Harjunpää was born in Rauma, Finland. Harjunpää was ordained to the priesthood 18 February 1936 in Turku Cathedral. His background was in the Finnish Evangelical Revivalist Movement, originating from the activity of neo-Lutheran priest Fredrik Gabriel Hedberg. As a young priest while learning the New Testament, he was convinced of the importance of Christian ecumenism which was unpopular at that time in Finland. Soon after that Yngve Brilioth's book Eucharistic Faith and Practise. Evangelical and C...

#1768

Jerry Pillay

#102287

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Jerry Pillay is a Reformed pastor, member of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, professor of theology at the University of Pretoria where he heads the Department of History and Ecclesiology and is Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He was elected president of the World Communion of Reformed Churches in 2010 and, in June 2022, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches , to take office on 1 January 2023.

#1769

Mark Montebello

#104098

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Mark Montebello is a Maltese philosopher and author. He is mostly known for his controversies with Catholic Church authorities but also for his classic biographies of Manuel Dimech and Dom Mintoff. Private life Montebello, the son of Joseph, a RAF corporal, and Lucrezia née Sultana, a primary school teacher, both from Sliema, was born in Malta at the Mtarfa military hospital, the third of four siblings, and grew up at Sliema.

#1770

Tadeusz J. Zieliński

#175153

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Tadeusz Jacek Zieliński is a Polish lawyer and Protestant theologian, professor of theological sciences and Juris Doctor. Member of Polish Parliament and president of Polish Association of Church-State Law . Since 2016 deputy rector of the Christian Academy of Theology in Warsaw.

#1771

Peter Morales

#42705

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Peter Morales is an American former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association . Morales was the UUA's first Latino president. In the early 2000s, he was the senior minister of the Jefferson Unitarian Church in Jefferson County, Colorado, a rapidly growing Unitarian Universalist congregation in the northwestern Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area. He also worked for the UUA from 2002 to 2004. In 2008, he announced his candidacy for president, and in 2009 he was elected. As the result of a controversy regarding the UUA's hiring practices and charges of institutional racism, Morales resigne...

#1772

Michael Mawson

#183721

Overall Influence

Michael Mawson is the Maclaurin Goodfellow Associate Professor of Theological and Religious Studies at University of Auckland, a post that has previously been held by Elaine Wainwright and Joseph Bulbulia. He is an international expert on the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and has published widely in the area of Christian Ethics.

#1773

John Davies

#156756

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

John Harverd Davies is a British Anglican priest and theologian. From 2016 to 2023, he was the Dean of Wells, the priest first-among-equals at Wells Cathedral and the most senior priest in the Diocese of Bath and Wells. He had previously served as Dean of Derby from 2010 to 2016.

#1774

Giuseppe Petrocchi

Giuseppe Petrocchi

#83928

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Giuseppe Petrocchi is an Italian Roman Catholic prelate who has served as the Archbishop of L'Aquila since 2013. Pope Francis made him a cardinal on 28 June 2018. Life Giuseppe Petrocchi was born on 19 August 1948 in Ascoli Piceno.

#1775

Magnús Már Lárusson

#115632

Overall Influence

1917 - 2006 (89 years)

Magnús Már Lárusson was an Icelandic theologian and historian. He was born in Copenhagen. After finishing school in 1937 he studied theology and graduated from the University of Iceland in 1941. Between 1942 and 1949 he was a priest and schoolteacher, but was also employed at the University of Iceland in 1947. He became a professor of theology in 1953 and professor of history in 1968. From 1969 to 1973 he served as rector.

#1776

Alexander M. Schweitzer

#185249

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Alexander M. Schweitzer is a German theologian and musician. Biography From 1984 to 1992 Schweitzer studied philosophy, Catholic theology and church music in Rome, Cremona and Munich. After years of activity in biblical pastoral ministry, from 2001 to 2011 Schweitzer served as General Secretary of the Catholic Biblical Federation. In 2008 Pope Benedict XVI appointed him expert for the Synod of Bishops on the Word of God.

#1777

Jon de Cortina

#129490

Overall Influence

1934 - 2005 (71 years)

Jon Cortina Garaigorta, S.J. was a Jesuit priest, engineer, and activist, founder of Pro-Búsqueda, an organization dedicated to searching for the missing children of the Salvadoran Civil War. He was a professor at Central American University , the Jesuit university of El Salvador, and escaped the massacre of the Jesuit community at the university in November 1989.

#1778

George Rekers

#24672

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

George Alan Rekers is an American psychologist and ordained Southern Baptist minister. He is emeritus professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Rekers has a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles and has been a research fellow at Harvard University, a professor and psychologist for UCLA and the University of Florida, and department head at Kansas State University.

#1779

R. Hollis Gause

#186022

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Rufus Hollis Gause, Jr. , known as R. Hollis Gause, was an American Pentecostal theologian and pastor. He was affiliated with the Church of God . Gause was the first dean of the Pentecostal Theological Seminary.

#1780

František Václav Lobkowicz

#117588

Overall Influence

1948 - 2022 (74 years)

Franz von Assisi Karl Friedrich Klemens Jaroslav Alois Leopold Gerhard Telesphorus Odilius Johann Bosco Paul Marie, Prince von Lobkowicz was a Czech Roman Catholic prelate. Lobkowicz served as titular bishop of Catabum Castra and as auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Prague, Czech Republic from 1990 to 1996. He was then appointed the first bishop of Roman Catholic Diocese of Ostrava-Opava, Czech Republic, serving from 1996 until his death.

#1781

Félicien Mwanama Galumbulula

#107505

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Félicien Mwanama Galumbulula is a Congolese prelate of the Catholic Church who has been bishop of Luiza in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2014. Biography Félicien Mwanama Galumbulula was born on 26 October 1960 in the village of Tshibala in the newly independent Republic of the Congo. After attending primary schools in Tshibala from 1968 to 1974 and secondary schools at the Popopu Institute in Tshibala from 1974 to 1980, he completed his studies in philosophy at the Christ the King Major Seminary in Kabwe in Zambia from 1980 to 1983 and in theology at the Major Seminary in Fano, Italy, from 1983 to 1986.

#1782

Thomas H. Green

#186766

Overall Influence

1932 - 2009 (77 years)

Thomas Henry Green SJ was an American Jesuit, spiritual director, educator and author of spiritual books. He taught primarily in the Philippines. Early life Thomas Henry Green was the son of George Charles and Marie Margaret Green . After graduating from Catholic The Aquinas Institute of Rochester, he entered the noviciate of the Society of Jesus in Poughkeepsie on September 7, 1949. He studied Philosophy and Theology at Bellarmine College in Plattsburgh, New York, and at Woodstock College in Maryland. At Fordham University he earned a M.A. degree in education and a M.S. degree in Physics .

#1783

Karl Paul Donfried

#141491

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Karl Paul Donfried was an American theologian and New Testament scholar. He is Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor Emeritus of Religion and Biblical Literature at Smith College. Life Donfried was born in New York City and graduated from the prep school Trinity School. He went to college at Columbia University and Harvard Divinity School . Donfried was ordained by the Lutheran Church in America on June 5, 1963, and went on to earn graduate degrees from Union Theological Seminary and the University of Heidelberg .

#1784

Mark Raper

#131558

Overall Influence

Mark Raper SJ AM is a Jesuit priest. He currently serves as president of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific , based in Manila. He was previously provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Oceania from 2002 until 2008.

#1785

Ilia Jinjolava

#187635

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (34 years)

Ilia Jinjolava is a Georgian theologian and Orthodox presbyter. Biography llia Jinjolava completed his undergraduate studies at Tbilisi Theological Seminary, Tbilisi, in 2011. He continued studying theology in Germany at the Catholic University of Eichstätt and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and later at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece. He received his MAS in Ecumenical Studies from the Bossey Ecumenical Institute in 2016 and was tonsured a monk in 2017. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Orthodox Theology at the LMU Munich. Since 2017 he has ...

#1786

Mathew P. John

#169701

Overall Influence

Mathew P. John was a Biblical Scholar and President of the Society for Biblical Studies in India. Studies M. P. John studied Bachelor of Divinity from 1943–1949 at Serampore College, Serampore during the Principalship of G. H. C. Angus.

#1787

George Blankenbaker

#187998

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

George Vernon Blankenbaker is an American Old Testament theologian and one of only three scholars who worked on both the original 1971 translation of the New American Standard Bible as well as the 1995 update. He is the author of The Language of Hosea 1-3. During his career, he served as vice-president and academic dean of Westmont College, where he currently serves as dean emeritus.

#1788

Bede Lackner

#117059

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

Bede Lackner was a Hungarian-American, Catholic priest and monk of the Cistercian Order. He was a theologian and historian. Biography Flight from Hungary, theological studies, and priestly ordination Fr. Bede was born Károly János Lackner in Vaskút, in southern Hungary, to Stefan Lackner and Elisabeth Rutscher. They were so-called Danube Swabians who had been brought into Hungary mainly in the eighteenth century to repopulate it after the expulsion of the Ottoman Turks. He entered the Cistercian Order in 1947 at the Abbey of Zirc after attending a school run by Cistercians in Baja for eight years.

#1789

Mikko Juva

#170758

Overall Influence

1918 - 2004 (86 years)

Mikko Einar Juva was a Finnish historian, theologian and Lutheran archbishop. Biography He was professor in Nordic history 1957–1962 at the University of Turku and professor in Finnish and Scandinavian history and church history at the University of Helsinki 1962–1978. He served as rector of the University of Helsinki from 1971 to 1973 and chancellor from 1973 to 1978. He was also a member of the Finnish parliament 1964–1966 and the chairman of Liberal People's Party 1965–1968.

#1790

Bekir Bozdağ

#174434

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Bekir Bozdağ is a Turkish lawyer and politician of Kurdish origin and former Minister of Justice. On 6 July 2011 he was appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister in the third cabinet of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On 26 December 2013, he was appointed as the Minister of Justice after the cabinet revision amidst the 2013 corruption scandal. On 19 July, he became Deputy Prime Minister again in the Cabinet of Yıldırım II.

#1791

Egano Righi-Lambertini

Egano Righi-Lambertini

#156905

Overall Influence

1906 - 2000 (94 years)

Egano Righi-Lambertini was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He spent decades in the diplomatic service of the Holy See and from 1957 to 1974 held a series of appointments as Papal Delegate to Korea and then Papal Nuncio to Lebanon, Chile, Italy, and France. He was made a cardinal in 1979.

#1792

Erasmus Desiderius Wandera

#103425

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Erasmus Desiderius Wandera was a Ugandan Roman Catholic priest who served as the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Soroti, from 29 March 1981 until 27 June 2007. Wandera died on 8 December 2022, at the age of 92.

#1793

Mathias Rissi

#186042

Overall Influence

1920 - 2006 (86 years)

Mathias Rissi was a New Testament scholar and teacher, the Walter H. Robertson Professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond. He is a specialist in the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of John.

#1794

Roger L. Shinn

#166033

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

Roger L. Shinn was an American theologian. He was a dean and acting president of the Union Theological Seminary, and the author of many books. Works Christianity and the Problem of History

#1795

Madeleine Barot

#45998

Overall Influence

1909 - 1995 (86 years)

Madeleine Barot was a French activist and theologian, who was influential in Protestant, humanist, and human rights movements. Biography Madeleine Barot was the daughter of Alexandre Auguste Barot, a literature teacher from Clermont-Ferrand, and Madeleine Kuss. From 1927 to 1934, she began her studies at Sorbonne University in Paris, where she achieved both a graduate degree in History and a diploma in library/archives. In 1934, she became an intern at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. She was then hired as a librarian at the École française de Rome, where she worked from June, 1935 to ...

#1796

Noel Cox

#73674

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Noel Cox is a New Zealand-born lawyer, legal scholar, and Anglican priest. Personal Cox was raised in Auckland, New Zealand. He is an advocate of the monarchy in New Zealand. Career Cox earned an LLB and an LLM degree from the University of Auckland, an MTh degree, an MA degree in ecclesiastical law, an LTh from the University of Wales Lampeter, and a PhD degree in Political Studies from the University of Auckland. His doctoral thesis was titled The evolution of the New Zealand monarchy: The recognition of an autochthonous polity. His main field of research has been constitutional law. In 2...

#1797

Leona G. Running

#126105

Overall Influence

1916 - 2014 (98 years)

Leona Rachel Glidden Running was the first Seventh-day Adventist woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She was also the first female to join the faculty of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in 1955 at Takoma Park, Maryland, and later when the Seminary relocated to the campus of Andrews University.

#1798

Sean Doherty

#170424

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Sean William Doherty is a British Anglican priest and academic specialising in Christian ethics. Since June 2019, he has been Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, an evangelical Anglican theological college.

#1799

John G. Stackhouse Jr.

John G. Stackhouse Jr.

#170874

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

John Gordon Stackhouse Jr. is a Canadian scholar of religion. As a journalist he has been recognized with over a dozen awards by the Canadian Church Press, and his scholarship has been supported by research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Association of Theological Schools, the Canadian Embassy to the United States, and several other sponsors. He was fired from his faculty position at Crandall University in 2023 following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.

#1800

Mary McClintock Fulkerson

#187905

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Mary McClintock Fulkerson is a Protestant theologian and scholar whose work explores feminist theologies and gender issues. She is currently a Professor Emerita of Theology at Duke Divinity School and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church .

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