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Ideas & Media

Journalists, publishers, scholars, teachers and preachers who shaped what Americans knew and believed.

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Billy Graham 1918–2018Religion & Religious MovementsEvangelist whose mass crusades, media reach, and presidential relationships made him a defining figure in modern American Protestantism.Joseph Smith 1805–1844Religion & Religious MovementsFounder of the Latter Day Saint movement, one of the most consequential religions to originate in the United States.Roger Williams 1603–1683Religion & Religious MovementsFounder of Rhode Island and early advocate of religious liberty and separation of church and state.Brigham Young 1801–1877Religion & Religious MovementsReligious and territorial leader who directed Mormon migration and settlement in the American West.JEJonathan Edwards 1703–1758Religion & Religious MovementsTheologian and preacher whose role in the Great Awakening shaped American evangelical religion.Cotton Mather 1663–1728Religion & Religious MovementsPuritan minister who wrote the official defense of the Salem witch court and later campaigned for smallpox inoculation.L. Ron Hubbard 1911–1986Religion & Religious MovementsScience-fiction writer who founded Scientology, creating a controversial and internationally influential American religious movement.Jerry Falwell 1933–2007Religion & Religious MovementsPastor and political organizer who helped make conservative evangelicalism a major Republican constituency.Mary Baker Eddy 1821–1910Religion & Religious MovementsFounder of Christian Science and a major female religious leader and publisher.Anne Hutchinson 1591–1643Religion & Religious MovementsReligious dissenter whose trial and banishment exposed tensions over authority, gender, and conscience in Puritan New England.Pat Robertson 1930–2023Religion & Religious MovementsFounded the Christian Broadcasting Network and, after a failed 1988 presidential run, the Christian Coalition.Dorothy Day 1897–1980Religion & Religious MovementsCo-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, combining religious faith with radical commitments to peace and the poor.Reinhold Niebuhr 1892–1971Religion & Religious MovementsTheologian whose Christian realism influenced American foreign policy, civil rights, and public ethics.Oral Roberts 1918–2009Religion & Religious MovementsMoved Pentecostal healing services from the revival tent onto national television, and built a university on the proceeds.Elijah Muhammad 1897–1975Religion & Religious MovementsLeader who built the Nation of Islam into a major religious and Black nationalist movement.Dwight L. Moody 1837–1899Religion & Religious MovementsRan revival like a business and left the Chicago school that trained American fundamentalism.Menachem Mendel Schneerson 1902–1994Religion & Religious MovementsLed Chabad-Lubavitch from Brooklyn for 43 years and sent married emissaries to more than 100 countries.TMThomas Merton 1915–1968Religion & Religious MovementsTrappist monk and writer whose books popularized contemplative spirituality, social criticism, and interfaith dialogue.Fulton J. Sheen 1895–1979Religion & Religious MovementsCatholic bishop whose radio and television programs made him one of America’s first major religious media personalities.Ellen G. White 1827–1915Religion & Religious MovementsCo-founder and prophet of the Seventh-day Adventist ChurchJoel Osteen b. 1963Religion & Religious MovementsBuilt his father's Houston church into the largest congregation in the United States and preached it to millions on television.Norman Vincent Peale 1898–1993Religion & Religious MovementsMinister whose bestselling positive-thinking message joined American Protestantism with modern self-help culture.Aimee Semple McPherson 1890–1944Religion & Religious MovementsEvangelist and media innovator who founded the Foursquare Church and pioneered religious broadcasting and celebrity ministry.Charles Grandison Finney 1792–1875Religion & Religious MovementsTurned religious revival into a set of repeatable methods that every American evangelist since has used.Stephen S. Wise 1874–1949Religion & Religious MovementsFounder of the Free Synagogue and the World Jewish Congress, and the leading American Jewish voice of the Holocaust yearsAbraham Joshua Heschel 1907–1972Religion & Religious MovementsRabbi and theologian who linked Jewish thought with civil-rights and antiwar activism.William J. Seymour 1870–1922Religion & Religious MovementsPreacher who led the Azusa Street Revival, a foundational event in the global growth of Pentecostal Christianity.Isaac Mayer Wise 1819–1900Religion & Religious MovementsBuilt the three institutions that still hold American Reform Judaism together.