Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most important people in 24 academic disciplines from 4000 BCE to today

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 proprietary AI program, we have ranked everyone in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef based on the number of citations, publications, and academically relevant web presence.

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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies, for the years 2010 – 2020

Pope Francis

#1182

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (87 years)

Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church. He has been the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 13 March 2013. 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 from outside Europe since Gregory III, a Syrian who reigned in the 8th century.

Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath

#1790

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (70 years)

Alister E. McGrath was born on January 23, 1953 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. After studying at Methodist College Belfast, McGrath earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1975. He pursued graduate research in science while also studying theology, and earned a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics in 1977. He was later ordained as an Anglican priest and awarded a B.D. from Oxford in 1983 and a doctorate in divinity in 2001. He also later earned a third doctorate from Oxford, a D.Litt., in 2013 for his work on science and religion. McGrath is a renowned apologist, intellectual historian, scientist, and theologian.

Bart D. Ehrman

#2305

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (68 years)

Ehrman was born in 1955 in Lawrence, Kansas. He received a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in 1978. He then went on to study at Princeton Seminary, where he obtained a master of divinity in 1981 and a PhD in 1985. His doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude. Ehrman is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman’s work has focused on textual criticism of the New Testament, the origins of early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. He has written or edited thirty books, including textbooks for undergraduate students and five New York Times bestsellers.

Billy Graham

#311

Overall Influence

1918 - 2018 (100 years)

William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. He was a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and according to a biographer, was "among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.

Rowan Williams

#907

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (73 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, Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.

Thích Nhất Hạnh

#1751

Overall Influence

1926 - 2022 (96 years)

Thích Nhất Hạnh was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition, historically recognized as the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Known as the "father of mindfulness", Nhất Hạnh was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism.

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI

#1717

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (96 years)

Pope Benedict XVI 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 by the title "pope emeritus" upon his resignation, and he retained this title until his death in 2022.

R. C. Sproul

#4816

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, of which Sproul, alongside Norman Geisler, was one of the chief architects. Sproul has been described as "the greatest and most influ...

William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig

#727

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (74 years)

William Lane Craig was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1949. He earned a B.A. from Wheaton College, and pursued graduate work at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the philosophy of religion. His earned his doctorate in 1977 at the University of Birmingham, England, with work on the cosmological argument for God’s existence under the supervision of John Hick. He pursued postdoctoral work under the direction of Wolfhart Pannenberg at the Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München in Germany, where he earned a doctorate in theology in 1984. Craig is currently research professor of philosophy at t...

Norman Geisler

#4447

Overall Influence

1932 - 2019 (87 years)

Norman Leo Geisler was an American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher. 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.

Gerhard Ludwig Müller

Gerhard Ludwig Müller

#8167

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (76 years)

Gerhard Ludwig Müller is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 until 2017. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2014.

Michael S. Heiser

#17514

Overall Influence

Michael S. Heiser is an American biblical Old Testament scholar and Christian author. His area of expertise is the nature of the spiritual realm in the Bible, namely the Divine Council and hierarchy of the spiritual order. He is Executive Director of the School of Ministry at Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He was a distance-learning professor at Liberty University and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Until 2019, he was scholar-in-residence at Faithlife Corporation.

Wayne Grudem

#6642

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (75 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.

Gavin Flood

#6531

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (69 years)

Gavin Dennis Flood is a British scholar of comparative religion specialising in Shaivism and phenomenology, but with research interests that span South Asian traditions. From October 2005 through December 2015, he served in the Faculty of Theology University of Oxford and as the Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies which is a Recognised Independent Centre of the University of Oxford. In 2008, Flood was granted the title of Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion from the University of Oxford. In 2014, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2016, ...

Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

#14098

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (48 years)

Yasir Qadhi , is an American preacher, theologian, and imam. Since 2001, he has served as Dean of Academic Affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute, an international Islamic educational institution with a center in Houston, Texas. He also taught in the Religious Studies department at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently the resident scholar of the East Plano Islamic Center in Plano, Texas.

Mouhanad Khorchide

Mouhanad Khorchide

#41988

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (52 years)

Mouhanad Khorchide is an Austrian Sociologist and Islamic theologian, teaching as a professor at the University of Münster in Germany. Personal life and studies Khorchide was raised in Saudi Arabia where his Palestinian family had fled to. At the age of 18 he emigrated to Vienna, Austria. There, he studied Sociology and soon became citizen of Austria. Parallel to his studies in Austria, Khorchide made Islamic studies in Beirut.

Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Plantinga

#438

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (91 years)

Alvin Plantinga currently holds the title of the William Harry Jellema Chair in Philosophy at Calvin University. Previously, Plantinga has taught at Wayne State University and the University of Notre Dame. Additionally, Plantinga was the president of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division from 1981 to 1982. As an undergraduate, Plantinga studied at Jamestown College, Calvin College, and Harvard University. Plantinga went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of Michigan, before transferring to Yale University in 1955 and earning his PhD there in 1958. Plantinga is o...

David Bentley Hart

#10344

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (58 years)

David Bentley Hart is a writer, philosopher, religious studies scholar, critic, and theologian with academic works published on a wide range of topics including Christian metaphysics, philosophy of mind, classics, Asian languages, and literature. In 2015, Hart was granted a Templeton Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study with research and a conference focused on the philosophy of mind. His translation of the New Testament was published by Yale in 2017 . A prolific essayist, he has written on topics as diverse as art, literature, baseball, religion, philosophy, consciousness, problem of evil, apocatastasis, theosis, fairies, film, and politics.

Ravi Zacharias

#8320

Overall Influence

1946 - 2020 (74 years)

Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was an Indian-born Canadian-American Christian evangelical minister and apologist who founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries . He was involved in Christian apologetics for a period spanning more than forty years. Zacharias was the author of more than thirty books on Christianity, He also hosted the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking. He belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Keswickian Christian denomination in which he was ordained as a minister.

Walter Kasper

#7076

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (90 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.

Hans Küng

#1928

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.

N. T. Wright

#6249

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (75 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.

Yogi Adityanath

#3694

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (51 years)

Yogi Adityanath , is an Indian Hindu monk and politician who is serving as the 21st and current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, since 19 March 2017. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the RSS, Adityanath is known for being on the far right of Indian politics.

Péter Erdő

#23826

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (71 years)

Péter Erdő is a Hungarian Cardinal of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, who has been the Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and Primate of Hungary since 2003. He was president of the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe from 2006 to 2016 and was the relator general for the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.

Geoffrey Samuel

#7902

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (77 years)

Geoffrey Samuel is an emeritus professor of religious studies at Cardiff University. He is known for his ethnographic studies of Tibetan and other Indic religions, investigating topics such as yoga, tantra, and the subtle body.

Tariq Ramadan

#7429

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (61 years)

Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss Muslim academic, philosopher, and writer. He was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, but since 2018 has been taking an agreed leave of absence due to being held in prison following two rape allegations. He is a visiting professor at the Université Mundiapolis in Morocco. He is also a senior research fellow at Doshisha University in Japan. He was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and used to be the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics , based in Doha.

Christopher Partridge

#8769

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (62 years)

Christopher Hugh Partridge is an author, editor, professor at Lancaster University, and founding Co-director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Popular Culture. According to Gordon Lynch, Partridge is a leading scholar of topics in popular culture.

Russell D. Moore

Russell D. Moore

#17570

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (52 years)

Russell D. Moore is an American theologian, ethicist, and preacher. In June 2021, he became the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today, and on August 4, 2022, was announced as the magazine's incoming Editor-in-Chief.

Rick Warren

#4474

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (69 years)

Richard Duane Warren is an American Southern Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author. He is the founder of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention in Lake Forest, California.

Richard Swinburne

Richard Swinburne

#1502

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (89 years)

Richard Swinburne was born in 1934 in Smethwick, Staffordshire, England. He graduated in 1957 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Exeter College, the fourth oldest college at the University of Oxford. He pursued a graduate degree in philosophy (1957-59) from the university and then entered St. Stephen’s House, where he earned the Oxford Diploma in Theology (1959-60). From 1985 until his retirement in 2002, Swinburne held the position of Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford. Since his retirement, Swinburne has continued to pub...

Reza Aslan

#5053

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (51 years)

Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American scholar of sociology of religion, writer, and television host. A convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a youth, Aslan eventually reverted to Islam but continued to write about Christianity. He has written four books on religion: No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, and God: A Human History.

C. Peter Wagner

C. Peter Wagner

#8891

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Charles Peter Wagner was an American missionary, writer, teacher and founder of several Christian organizations. In his earlier years, Wagner was known as a key leader of the Church Growth Movement and later for his writings on spiritual warfare.

John Piper

#7814

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (77 years)

John Stephen Piper is an American New Testament scholar, Baptist theologian, pastor, and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper taught biblical studies at Bethel University for six years , before serving as pastor for preaching and vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 33 years .

Gustavo Gutiérrez

Gustavo Gutiérrez

#3442

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (95 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.

Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong

#3933

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (79 years)

Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while in the convent and majored in English. She left the convent in 1969. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.

Angelo Scola

#9145

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (82 years)

Angelo Scola is an Italian Cardinal of the Catholic Church, philosopher and theologian. He was Archbishop of Milan from 2011 to 2017. He had served as Patriarch of Venice from 2002 to 2011. He has been a cardinal since 2003 and a bishop since 1991.

Sviatoslav Shevchuk

Sviatoslav Shevchuk

#22819

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (53 years)

Sviatoslav Shevchuk has been the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church since 25 March 2011, serving as the Eastern Catholic church's leader. Priesthood Shevchuk was ordained as a priest on 26 June 1994. He is an alumnus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum where he earned a Doctorate in theology in 1999. After completing his theological training Shevchuk served as rector of the seminary of Lviv.

Christoph Schönborn

Christoph Schönborn

#6706

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (78 years)

Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Graf von Schönborn, O.P. is a Bohemian-born Austrian Dominican friar and theologian, who is a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He serves as the Archbishop of Vienna and was the Chairman of the Austrian Bishops' Conference from 1998 to 2020. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1998. He is also Grand Chaplain of the Order of the Golden Fleece , of which he has been a member since 1961. He is a member of the formerly sovereign princely House of Schönborn, several members of which held high offices of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Chur...

Federico Lombardi

#7454

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (81 years)

Federico Lombardi, S.J. is an Italian Catholic priest and the former director of the Holy See Press Office. He succeeded Joaquín Navarro-Valls and was succeeded by Greg Burke. Lombardi also serves as the postulator for the sainthood cause of Fr Bernardo Mattio.

Ray Comfort

#13159

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (74 years)

Ray Comfort is a New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist who lives in the United States. Comfort started Living Waters Publications, as well as the ministry The Way of the Master, in Bellflower, California, and has written several books.

Joel Osteen

#15347

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (60 years)

Joel Scott Osteen is an American lay preacher, televangelist, businessman and author based in Houston, Texas. Known for his weekly televised services and several best-selling books, Osteen is one of the more prominent figures associated with prosperity theology.

Daniel B. Wallace

Daniel B. Wallace

#13788

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (71 years)

Daniel Baird Wallace is an American professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, the purpose of which is digitizing all known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament via digital photographs.

John Dominic Crossan

John Dominic Crossan

#7715

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (89 years)

John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, former Catholic priest who was a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar, and emeritus professor at DePaul University. His research has focused on the historical Jesus, the theology of noncanonical Gospels, and the application of postmodern hermeneutical approaches to the Bible. His work is controversial, portraying the Second Coming as a late corruption of Jesus' message and saying that Jesus' divinity is metaphorical. In place of the eschatological message of the Gospels, Crossan emphasizes the historical context of Jesus and of his followers immediately after his death.

Johann Baptist Metz

Johann Baptist Metz

#7239

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.

Peter Kreeft

#5293

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (86 years)

Peter John Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he is the author of over eighty books on Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics. He also formulated, together with Ronald K. Tacelli, Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God in their Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

Giuseppe Versaldi

Giuseppe Versaldi

#17079

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (80 years)

Giuseppe Versaldi is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who the prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education from 2015 under that body was merged into the new Dicastery for Culture and Education in 2022. He served as president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See from 2011 to 2015. Before that he was Bishop of Alessandria. Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the rank of cardinal on 18 February 2012.

John Lennox

#6326

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (80 years)

John Carson Lennox is a Northern Irish mathematician, bioethicist and Christian apologist. He has written many books on religion, ethics, the relationship between science and faith , and has had numerous public debates with atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Candida Moss

#40115

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (45 years)

Candida R. Moss is an English public intellectual, journalist, New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity, who is the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. A graduate of Oxford and Yale universities, Moss specialises in the study of the New Testament and martyrdom in early Christianity.

Angelo Amato

#9234

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (85 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.

Jürgen Moltmann

Jürgen Moltmann

#4122

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (97 years)

Jürgen Moltmann was born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany. In 1944, Moltmann was drafted into the German army to fight in World War II. He served for six months before surrendering to the British, after which he was confined to prisoner of war camps for three years in Belgium, England, and Scotland. After his release, he studied at the University of Gottïngen, earning a doctorate in 1952. Moltmann is emeritus professor of theology at Tübingen University, where he taught from 1967 to 1994. Moltmann is best known for his theology of hope, a unique form of liberation theology centered on the idea that God suffers with humanity and the hope found in the resurrection of Christ.

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