List of religious studies scholars
Scholars of religious studies
- Edwin David Aponte
- Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
- Miguel Asín Palacios, Spanish Arabist, work on the mutual influence between Christianity & Islam.
- Robert Baker Aitken, author of numerous academic books on Zen Buddhism
- 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
- Rudolf Bultmann
- 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
- 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
- Mircea Eliade, author of The Sacred and the Profane
- Steven Engler
- 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
- 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
- Nathan O. Hatch, author of "The Democratization of American Christianity"
- Friedrich Heiler
- Steven Heine, scholar of East Asian Buddhism, especially Zen and Dogen
- Zora Neale Hurston, author of Mules and Men Hoodoo in American
- Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz
- William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience
- Grace Jantzen
- Carl G. Jung
- Klaus Klostermaier
- 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
- 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
- Josef W. Meri
- George Foot Moore, scholar and theologian, author of History of Religions (two wolumes - 1914, 1919) and Judaism (two volumes, 1927)
- Maerian Morris, scholar of neopaganism, Hellenic Reconstructionism, comparative religions, mythopoeia, editor of "Green Egg"
- Friedrich Max Müller, editor of Sacred Books of the East
- Rudolf Otto, author of The Idea of the Holy
- Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels
- 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
- Roy Rappaport
- Olivier Roy
- 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
- Zakir Naik
- Edmond La Beaume Cherbonnier, professor and scholar, author of Hardness of Heart (1955)