Religious Affiliation of History's 100 Most Influential People

Comments

Notes

Also, Hart's outlook was essentially secular in outlook. He did consider the the doctrinal role of Jesus in human salvation as taught by Christianity. Muhammad, on the other hand, carved out an actual, geographic empire during his lifetime. Christians as well as historians agree that Jesus himself conquered no lands and led no armies during his lifetime.

John H. Kerr, an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Canada wrote us on this topic. His ideas, echoed by many and presented here with his permission are below:

In my opinion no one has come near to Jesus Christ with respect to His influence on so many aspects of our world and society. Most schools of higher learning in the English speaking world and many in the non-English speaking world exist because of Christ. Women and children throughout this world, with the exception of a few countries have a much better way of life because of what Christ taught and people accepted. The peace, good will and renewal that result each year from the celebration of His birth is astounding. Many of the internalional charities that exist today are Christian based. The Christian work ethic has spurred inventions of all sorts that have benefited mankind enormously. Just think of the influence Christians have had down through the centuries, every bit of their influence is either directly or indirectly associated with the influence Christ had on them. Many of these Christians are on Hart's list.

Even Karl Marx owed his fanatical promotion of communism to the revenge he sought for being bounced out of a Christian Seminary, by a misdirected priest.

To a point the creation of such a list is as you point out subjective, and subject to the bias of the individual or group that prepare it. But, for the life of me, I cannot conceive how any well read individual with eyes to see and ears to hear, would not place Jesus Christ at the top of such a list, so far ahead of the next most influential person that one would leave at least the subsequent 9 spaces on the list vacant, to emphasize this point.

All of the creation wouldn't exist if it were not for Jesus Christ. When one begins to dwell on what would or would not have been, had Christ not existed in the beginning, let alone had He not come to earth 2000 years ago it boggles the mind. When I think of the thousands of prayers answered, lives changed, wars ended or avoided, I can't help but thank such a benevolent Lord. Was it not the influence of a Christian mother on her son, the leader of the Soviet Union, and a Christian American President, working with Mikhail Gorbachev that brought an end to the cold war. When we look at the cause and effect of so many major positive events in our history, we see the hand of Christ working on one or more of His servants.

Michael McConnell (25 Sept. 2001) also suggests that some revisions to Hart's list are in order:

I just glanced at your list of the 100 most influential people and their religion and all I can say is this list is terrible at best. Jesus would have to be number one, Marx/Muhammad tie for number 2... Issac Newton was put above Marx who influences social-economic policy to this day.

Yes, indeed, I think you need to add another person to your list! What about Ellen G. White of the Seventh Day Adventist Church? She wrote more books than any other woman in history!

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels...

Muhammad founded and promulgated one of the world's great religions, and became an immensely effective political leader. Today, thirteen centuries after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive... Like all religions, Islam exerts an enormous influence upon the lives of its followers. It is for this reason that the founders of the world's great religions all figure prominently in this book. Since there are roughly twice as many Christians as Moslems in the world, it may initially seem strange that Muhammad has been ranked higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role in the development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity. Although Jesus was responsible for the main ethical and moral precepts of Christianity (insofar as these differed from Judaism), St. Paul was the main developer of Christian theology, its principal proselytizer, and the author of a large portion of the New Testament.

Muhammad, however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles. In addition, he played the key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the author of the Moslem holy scriptures, the Koran, a collection of certain of Muhammad's insights that he believed had been directly revealed to him by Allah. Most of these utterances were copied more or less faithfully during Muhammad's lifetime and were collected together in authoritative form not long after his death. The Koran therefore, closely represents Muhammad's ideas and teachings and to a considerable extent his exact words. No such detailed compilation of the teachings of Christ has survived. Since the Koran is at least as important to Moslems as the Bible is to Christians, the influence of Muhammed through the medium of the Koran has been enormous It is probable that the relative influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity. On the purely religious level, then, it seems likely that Muhammad has been as influential in human history as Jesus.

Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular as well as a religious leader. In fact, as the driving force behind the Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential political leader of all time... the Arab conquests of the seventh century have continued to play an important role in human history, down to the present day. It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history.

Albert Einstein: Not known to have been a practicing Jew. Had a positive attitude toward religion. Wrote of his belief in a noble "cosmic religious feeling" that enables scientists to advance human knowledge. A famous quote: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."; The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" Some writings by Einstein regarding religion are available here. It is reported that Einstein reported Christian Science services regularly in New York and said that Mary Baker Eddy was right in her theories about an essentially non-physical universe. Adherents.com has no expertise on the Einstein-Christian Science connection, but reports this for the sake of completeness. One example of references to this subject online can be found here.

Galileo: Galileo remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. "Affiliation: Catholic; It is known to everyone that Galileo was denounced to the Inquisition in 1615 and that he was tried and condemned by the Inquisition in 1633, living the rest of his life under house arrest. All of this was for Copernicanism, not for any heretical theological views." Online source.

Michael Faraday: Faraday's parents were members of the obscure religious denomination of the Sandemanians, and Faraday himself, shortly after his marriage, at the age of thirty, joined the same sect, to which he adhered till his death. Religion and science he kept strictly apart, believing that the data of science were of an entirely different nature from the direct communications between God and the soul on which his religious faith was based. Online source

Edward de Vere/Shakespeare: Online source: Annotations in Edward de Vere's Bible; Shakespeare and Religion, by Aldous Huxley.

Karl Marx: "Karl Marx was born in Rhinish Prussia 1818 to parents of a long rabbinical line of Jews. His father however, just before Karl's birth, found it politically expedient to become a baptized Christian. Nonetheless, Karl was raised with the taunts of being of Jewish descent despite his father's new Christian credentials." Marx was baptized into a Christian church, but adopted atheism. Online source

Orville and Wilbur Wright: "Wilbur Wright was born in Millville, Indiana, and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. From his father, a clergyman and editor, he learned to love reading, writing, and other scholarly pursuits... He also contributed stories to his father's magazine, Religious Telescope..." Online resource.

Thomas Edison: Edison attended a Congregational church in Ft. Myers, Florida, where he had a winter home. The church was renamed for him and is now the Thomas Edison Congregational Church. This church was one of those which did not join in the merger whch formed the United Church of Christ. The Second Congregational Church of Greenwich in Connecticut has in its archives a letter from Edison containing suggestions for for protecting their 212-foot steeple from lightning strikes. Edison's wife was a devout Methodist and, early in their marriage, tried to convert him to her religious views, but failed. As for his personal beliefs, Edison made many statements which indicated disbelief on key topics. John P. M. Murphy described Edison's position as "truculent agnosticism." [Source]

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: His biographer, the first to read his papers wrote of him: "Raised in a pious family which had given many priests to the Church, he had held to his beliefs. To Edward King, an English author who had sent him a controversial work, he wrote, 'You have done a noble thing in upholding revelation and the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures, and it is remarkable that you are using for the defence precisely the same weapons which were once used for the attack.'" Online source

James Watt: "On August 19th, 1819, Watt passed peacefully away at Heathfield, and was buried in Handsworth Church." Online source "Now those who knew Mr. Watt, had to contemplate a man whose genius could create such an engine, and indulge in the most abstruse speculations of philosophy, and could at once pass from the most sublime researches of geology and physical astronomy, the formation of our globe, and the structure of the universe, to the manufacture of a needle or a nail; who could discuss in the same conversation and with equal accuracy, if not with the same consummate skill, the most forbidding details of art, and the elegances of classical literature; the most abstruse branches of science, and the niceties of verbal criticism." Online source.

James Clerk Maxwell: Devout Protestant Christian. "Maxwell's breadth of appreciation of Christianity grew still further during his time in London. To his background of Presbyterianism (in the Scottish kirk of his father's tradition) and the Anglicanism of his mother and Cambridge, he added an experience of the Baptists." Online source.

Guglielmo Marconi: Marconi's marriage to Beatrice O'Brien was performed "in March 1905, before an Anglican minister; for though Signor Marconi had been born of a Catholic father and baptized in the Catholic faith, he had been brought up by his mother as a Protestant, and was in fact an Anglican at the time of the marriage." Their marriage was later granted a Catholic annulment. Source.

Antony van Leeuwenhoek: "Religion: Calvinist. He was baptized and buried in Calvinist churches, and his second wife was the daughter of the Calvinist minister."Online source.

Napoleon Bonaparte: Believed in God, but criticized religion. "As for myself, I do not believe that such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed; but as the people are inclined to superstition, it is proper not to oppose them." A number of quotes attributed to him indicate a utilitarian view of religion. "Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."; He also said: "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich" (quoted from Robert Byrne, 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, 1988).

Werner Heisenberg: He wrote: "Wenn wir an die naechste Zeit denken, so droht uns die staerkste Gefahr wohl von der Verwechslung der boesen und der guten Maechte. Gerade in einer Epoche, in der sich die Bindung zur alten Religion loest, ist die Gefahr, dass Daemonen die Herrschaft der Goetter uebernehmen, groesser als je; und die Daemonen verbuenden sich stets mit jenem glaenzenden Phantom, das die Menschen zu allen Zeiten irregefuehrt hat, mit der politischen Macht" (Ordnung der Wirklichkeit 1942) Online source.

Descartes: "Descartes was a French mathematician, scientist and philosopher who has been called the father of modern philosophy. His school studies made him dissatisfied with previous philosophy: He had a deep religious faith as a Catholic, which he retained to his dying day, along with a resolute, passionate desire to discover the truth. At the age of 24 he had a dream, and felt the vocational call to seek to bring knowledge together in one system of thought. His system began by asking what could be known if all else were doubted - suggesting the famous 'I think therefore I am'. Actually, it is often forgotten that the next step for Descartes was to establish the near certainty of the existence of God - for only if God both exists and would not want us to be deceived by our experiences can we trust our senses and logical thought processes. God is, therefore, central to his whole philosophy. What he really wanted was to see his philosophy adopted as standard Catholic teaching. Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) are generally regarded as the key figures in the development of scientific methodology. Both had systems in which God was important, and both seem more devout than the average for their era.Online source.

Simon Bolivar: Became an atheist. Was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

William Harvey: "Religion: Anglican; Harvey conformed to the established church, but there is no evidence of serious religious commitment and more than one suggestion (though only on the level of gossip) of considerable free thought."Online source

Max Planck: "Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born on April 23, 1858, in Kiel, Germany, the sixth child of a distinguished jurist and professor of law at the University of Kiel. The long family tradition of devotion to church and state, excellence in scholarship, incorruptibility, conservatism, idealism, reliability, and generosity became deeply ingrained in Planck's own life and work... In his later years, Planck devoted more and more of his writings to philosophical, aesthetic, and religious questions. Together with Einstein and Schrdinger, he remained adamantly opposed to the indeterministic, statistical worldview introduced by Bohr, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, and others into physics after the advent of quantum mechanics in 1925-26. Such a view was not in harmony with Planck's deepest intuitions and beliefs. The physical universe, Planck argued, is an objective entity existing independently of man; the observer and the observed are not intimately coupled, as Bohr and his school would have it." Online source.

Planck made many contributions to physics, but is best known for quantum theory, which has revolutionized our understanding of the atomic and sub-atomic worlds. In his 1937 lecture "Religion and Naturwissenschaft," Planck expressed the view that God is everywhere present, and held that "the holiness of the unintelligible Godhead is conveyed by the holiness of symbols." Atheists, he thought, attach too much importance to what are merely symbols. Planck was a churchwarden from 1920 until his death, and believed in an almighty, all-knowing, beneficent God (though not necessarily a personal one). Both science and religion wage a "tireless battle against skepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition" with the goal "toward God!" Online source.

Thomas Jefferson: Raised as an Episcopalian/Anglican. Influenced by English Deists and often identified by historians as a Deist. Held many beliefs in common with Unitarians of the time period, and sometimes wrote that he thought the whole country would become Unitarian. Wrote that the teachings of Jesus contain the "outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man." Wrote: "I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know." Online source: "Jefferson's Religious Beliefs", by Rebecca Bowman, Monticello Research Department, August 1997.

The Positive Atheism website has a page of quotes by Jefferson.

Marie Curie: Daughter of a Polish 'freethinker' but raised by a Catholic mother. Abandoned the Church before she was 20; Marriage with Pierre Curie was a civil ceremony because, as she wrote: "Pierre belonged to no religion and I did not practice any."

Sigmund Freud: Freud was always proud of Jewishness, despite the fact that neither he nor his family were religious in the practicing sense. His nursemaid was a devout Catholic which helped as well. Later Freud maintained a deep interest in biblical history and religion, again guite possibly motivated by these childhood experiences. Online source.

Edward Jenner: As yet we do not know if Jenner was more than just a nominal church member, or which denomination he belonged to. "Edward Jenner was born on May 17, 1749, in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England, the son of a parish vicar" Online source.

Johannes Kepler: Studied at Adelberg monastery school (lower seminary). Religious Affiliation: Lutheran. We've found nothing notable, either in terms of heterodoxy or devotion. Online source.

"Kepler was an extremely sincere and pious Lutheran, whose works on astronomy contain writings about how space and the heavenly bodies represent the Trinity. Kepler suffered no persecution for his open avowal of the sun-centered system, and, indeed, was allowed as a Protestant to stay in Catholic Graz as a Professor (1595-1600) when other Protestants had been expelled!" Online source.

Voltaire: "His entire life was a parodox. He despised mankind and yet he was passionately fond of men. He ridiculed the clergy and dedicated one of his books to the pope. He made fun of royalty and he accepted a pension from King Frederick the Great. He hated bigotry and he was bigoted in his attitude toward the Jews. He sneered at the vanity of riches and he acquired a vast fortune (by means that were not always honest). He disbelieved in God and he tried all his life to find Him. He had no respect for religion and he created a new religion of laughter... His father was a Jansenist, which in itself was a paradox. For the Jansenists were a sect of 'Protestant Catholics.'... His father imposed his doctrine of abstract mysticism so vigorously upon him that Voltaire grew up with a rebellious thirst for concrete reality. He cordially hated Jansenism. But he grew up with another hatred--a hatred against the persecution of Jansenists. Against any kind of persecution."; Pg. 185: "He was not, as is commonly believed, an atheist. He was a deist. He believed in the existence of God. Indeed, 'if God did not exist,' he said, 'it would be necessary to invent him.' But Voltaire's God is not an exclusive king of a single ecclesiastical order. He is the world's 'supreme Intelligence, a Workman infinitely able'--and infinitely impartial. He has no favorite people, no favorite country, no favorite church. For the true worshiper there is but a single faith, equal tolerance to all mankind."; Pg. 186: "...he helped them in the preparation of the great Encyclopedia of Free Thought. The Encyclopedists accused him of being a Christian and the Christians accused him of being an infidel, and between the two parties he had his hands full." (Source: Henry and Dana Lee Thomas. Living Biographies of Great Philosophers, Garden City, NY: Garden City Books (1959); Other source: "Late in life Voltaire wrote considerably against religious injustice and was quite opposed to the Catholic Church and Christianity in general."

Voltaire made an official deathbed affirmation of Catholic beliefs, but his intentions in doing so are disputed. Like his writing, many of his activities consisted of multi-layered satire. There is no way to know conclusively what his motivation was. Certainly, from a cultural and literary perspective, Voltaire was deeply involved in Catholicism more than any other religion, often to the consternation of the Catholic Church.

Enrico Fermi: "Enrico Fermi, born in Rome, Italy on September 29, 1901 was baptized as a Catholic though he wasn't raised in any sort of religious fashion." [Online source.] Fermi's wife was Jewish.

Gregory Pincus: "Pincus was the son of Joseph William and Elizabeth Florence (nee Lipman) Pincus. He was born on April 9, 1903, in Woodbine, New Jersey. His father was a teacher, the editor of the Jewish Farmer and an agricultural consultant. Pincus' father was also a leader in a community of Russian Jews who hoped to turn refugees from the czar's pogroms into American farmers in the late 19th century." [Online source: Florida Atlantic University Libraries: Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America: Dr. Gregory Goodwin Pincus: Father of 'The Pill'.]

Francis Bacon: "Affiliation: Anglican. Bacon's mother was a thorough Calvinist. He adhered to the middle road of the Church of England, however, neither authoritarian nor sectarian. His religion was more formal than fervent." Online source; Also: "Thus, Bacon delineated the principles of the inductive thinking method, which, while as a method goes back to Aristotle, constituted a breakthrough in the approach to science. He was just these kind of materialist theories that brought about the great discoveries Copernicus and Galileo. Bacon could see that the only knowledge of importance to man was empirically rooted in the natural world; and that a clear system of scientific inquiry would assure man's mastery over the world. That is not to say that Bacon did not believe that there was a God, for, as he said in 'Of Atheism': 'I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.'" Online source.

Gorbachev: At the end of a November 1996 interview on CSPAN's Booknotes, Gorbachev described his plans for future books. He made the following reference to God: "I don't know how many years God will be giving me, [or] what his plans are." Online source.

Benjamin Franklin: "Franklin, who normally preferred to contemplate the eternal in the privacy of his own home, had been invited by Jedediah Andrews to become a member of the Presbyterian church. He attended for five Sundays in a row. He became a pew holder and a contributor, but he nevertheless ceased to attend weekly services... In general, most Franklin scholars have found him to be quite moderate in his attitude toward religion. Typically, Alfred Owen Aldridge has described Franklin as a confirmed Deist, who, in contrast to more militant Deists like Tom Paine, did not attempt to 'wither Christianity by ridicule or bludgeon it to death by argument.'"Online source.

Abraham Lincoln: "Considerable uncertainty arises... when Lincoln's own religion is examined... it is obvious that Christianity exerted a profound influence on his life. His father was a member of Regular Baptist churches in Kentucky and Indiana. Lincoln himself read the Bible throughout his life, quoted from it extensively... during his years as president he did regularly attend the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington. On the other hand, Lincoln never joined a church nor ever made a clear profession of standard Christian beliefs... Lincoln's friend Jesse Fell [suggested that Lincoln's views on Christian theology] were not orthodox... It is probable that Lincoln was turned against organized Christianity by his experiences as a young man in New Salem, Illinois, where excessive emotion and bitter sectarian quarrels marked yearly camp meetings and the ministry of traveling preachers. Yet although Lincoln was not a church member, he did ponder the eternal significance of his own circumstances..." Online source: The Ambiguous Religion of Abraham Lincoln by Mark A Noll.

The Positive Atheism website presents some other writings about the religious beliefs and practices of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Time Magazine's Person of the Century Poll

In choosing their Person of the Century, Time did not use the poll results, but made their own decision. They chose Albert Einstein (a non-religious Jew).

The runners-up for Time's Person of the Century were Franklin Roosevelt (an Episcopalian) and Mohandas Gandhi (a devout Hindu whose mother was a Jain and whose beliefs and practices were partially Jain).

Most Influential Asians of the 20th Century

• Hirohito
• Ho Chi Minh
• Pol Pot
• Issey Miyake
• Daisuke Inoue
• Rabindranath Tagore
• Sun Yat-sen
• Mohandas Gandhi
• Sukarno
• Mao Zedong
• Lee Kuan Yew
• Deng Xiaoping
• Corazon Aquino
• Park Chung Hee
• Eiji Toyoda
• King Rama
• Swaminathan
• Akira Kurosawa
• Dalai Lama
• Akio Morita

[Source: Nisid Hajari. "Asians of the Century" in Time Asia, August 23-30, 1999 Vol. 154 No. 7/8]

Useful Biography Links

• Biography.com - In association with the A&E television show.
• Lives - The Biography Resource. Fantastic source of carefully-categorized and annotated links, also original material.
• Catalog of the Scientific Community in the 16th and 17th Centuries
• People of Faith - Famous Scientists

Related Links on this Web Site

• The 100 Most Influential Jews in History
• Religious Affiliation of History's Greatest Philosophers
• History's Great Religious Leaders
• Religious Affiliation of U.S. Presidents
• Religious Affiliation of U.S. Congress
• Religious Affiliation of Famous Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers
• Famous Adherents - Famous Christians, Famous Muslims, Famous Zoroastrians, etc.
• Most Admired Men and Women - Gallup poll results show Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley and Dalai Lama on short list of men Americans admire most

Lists of Influential People Without Reference to or Information About Religious Affiliation

• Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century
• Biography of the Millennium - Top 100 most influential people of the millennium, from the A&E program Biography
• The Millennium 100 - results of a reader poll: most influential people of the 2nd millennium B.C.
• World's 100 Greatest People - from the bibliography on tape series by InteliQuest, by Steven DeVore
• 100 Most Powerful Women in the World
• The Film 100 - 100 Most Influential People in the History of Film

Our thanks to Jason Quartarone for assistance with some Voltaire, Marconi and Copernicus facts. Thanks to Joe Rowe for assistance with Johann Gutenberg info. Thanks to Ann Rodgers-Melnick of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for additional Edison information.