List of religious studies scholars

Last updated March 28, 2020

Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions.

Edwin David Aponte
Raymond Apple, Australian Rabbi, writer on Jewish, interfaith and freemasonic issues
Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God
Miguel Asín Palacios, Spanish Arabist, work on the mutual influence between Christianity and Islam
Robert Baker Aitken, author of numerous academic books on Zen Buddhism
Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth , professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside
Edmond La Beaume Cherbonnier, professor and scholar, author of Hardness of Heart (1955)
Catherine Bell, ritual studies scholar
Herbert Berg, scholar of Islamic origins
Peter Berger, author of The Sacred Canopy
Pascal Boyer, author of Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
Joseph Epes Brown, author of The Sacred Pipe and Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions
Rudolf Bultmann
Frank G. Carver
John Corrigan, co-author of Religion in America, editor of the "Chicago History of American Religion" book series (University of Chicago Press)
Frank M. Cross, emeritus professor Harvard Divinity School, interpreter of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Ioan P. Culianu, author of The HarperCollins Concise Guide to World Religions and Out of This World
Miguel A. De La Torre
Arti Dhand, associate professor at the University of Toronto, Department for the Study of Religion^[1]
Wendy Doniger, (formerly published as Wendy O'Flaherty) is a leading researcher in Hinduism among other topics on religion.
Émile Durkheim, author of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life , a seminal work on sociology of religion
Diana L. Eck
Bart Ehrman, author, and James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Mircea Eliade, author of The Sacred and the Profane and History of Religious Ideas, vol.I-III
Steven Engler, Canadian scholar of religion
Desiderius Erasmus
Carl W. Ernst, specialist in Islamic studies, author of Sufism: An Introduction to the Mystical Tradition of Islam
Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard
James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough
Sigmund Freud, author of Totem and Taboo , The Future of an Illusion , and Moses and Monotheism
Rajmohan Gandhi, author of Revenge and Reconciliation
Arnold van Gennep
Anthony Giddens
René Girard, whose theological works include Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Stephen D. Glazier, editor of The Encyclopedia of African and African American Religions
Richard Gombrich
Justo Gonzalez, author of The Story of Christianity and a leading figure in Hispanic theology
Wouter Hanegraaff, author of New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought
Ishwar C. Harris
Nathan O. Hatch, author of "The Democratization of American Christianity"
Friedrich Heiler
Steven Heine, scholar of East Asian Buddhism, especially Zen and Dogen
Susan Henking, scholar of religion, gender and sexuality, and president of Shimer College
Peter L Hobson, author of The Hermeneutics of Followship: Relocating Narratives of Discipleship
Zora Neale Hurston, author of Mules and Men and Hoodoo in America
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz
William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience
Grace Jantzen
Carl G. Jung
Klaus Klostermaier
Adam Kotsko, author of Zizek and Theology and The Politics of Redemption, and translator of Agamben
Hans Küng, Catholic theologian, author of Tracing the Way. Spiritual Dimensions of the World Religions
Gerardus van der Leeuw
Peggy Levitt
Bruce Lincoln (University of Chicago), author of Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship and Discourse and the Construction in Society
Philip Lindholm
Bronislaw Kaspar Malinowski
Martin E. Marty (University of Chicago), author of the series Modern American Religion, editor of The Fundamentalism Project
John Macquarrie, Christian Existentialist and Systematic Theologian
Russell T. McCutcheon
Josef W. Meri
George Foot Moore, scholar and theologian, author of History of Religions (two wolumes – 1914, 1919) and Judaism (two volumes, 1927)
Max Müller, editor of Sacred Books of the East
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, author of Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization
Rudolf Otto, author of The Idea of the Holy
Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels
Christopher Partridge, author of The Re-enchantment of the West
Geoffrey Parrinder, former professor at King's College London and author of What World Religions Teach Us (1968)
F. E. Peters, Professor at New York University and author of numerous books on Christianity, Judaism and Islam
Stephen Prothero, Professor at Boston University and author of "American Jesus"; "Religious Literacy"; and "God Is Not One."
Roy Rappaport
Olivier Roy
Arne Runeberg (1912–1979), Finnish sociologist, anthropologist and linguist
Annemarie Schimmel, author of Mystical Dimensions of Islam
Wilhelm Schmidt
Arvind Sharma, author of Women in World Religions
Christian Smith, author of Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions
Jonathan Z. Smith (University of Chicago), author of Map is Not Territory; Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown and To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual
Wilfred Cantwell Smith
William Robertson Smith, Scottish theologian, early work in the "higher criticism" of the Bible
Ninian Smart, author of Dimensions of the Sacred
Nathan Söderblom
Rodney Stark
Michael Stausberg
John Shelby Spong, author The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love and other works
Einar Thomassen
Toulmin, Joshua (1740–1815), English radical Dissenting minister
Edward Burnett Tylor
Joachim Wach
James Webb, author of The Occult Underground and The Harmonious Circle
Max Weber
Christian K. Wedemeyer
Wesley Wildman
Linda Woodhead, MBE. Director of The Religion and Society Programme
Zakir Naik
Heinrich Robert Zimmer, Indologist, author of Philosophies of India and Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
Volker Zotz
Ghil'ad Zuckermann, linguist, revivalist, scholar of language, religion and nationhood

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References

↑ Arti Dhand

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[1] Arti Dhand