A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, known as Prabhupada among his disciples, founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and ISKCON members recognize him as a spiritual master in the sampradaya, or lineage of teachers, that stretches back to the...

The earliest texts that form the foundation of Hinduism date from the mid-2nd millenium BCE to the mid-1st millenium BCE in the Indus Valley ("Hinduism" comes from the word Indus and was not used for the religion until the 14th century.) Adi Shankara's...

In her time, Aimee Semple McPherson was the most popular evangelical preacher in America. She was one of the first to use radio, and in 1923 became the first megachurch pastor when she opened a facility in Los Angeles that seated 5,300 and is still...

Anne Hutchinson is a key figure in the history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Puritanism. She is the daughter of a Puritan Anglican clergyman from London who had been convicted of heresy and spent two years in prison before she was born, but who had...

As Christianity became more of an organized religion, and especially after it became legal—then the state religion—and the days of martyrdom faded, some Christians who sought a path with greater sacrifice and greater purity started going into...

Author of the extremely influential "Confessions," Augustine is arguably the first religious memoirist, and Christianity’s first—and possibly most influential—major theologian. A Berber born in present-day Algeria to a Christian mother...

Confucius is believed to have been born around 551 B.C.E. and to have died in 479 B.C.E. He traveled from state to state teaching the sons of the nobility about leadership and morality. He was not famous during his lifetime, and never achieved the high...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis in the final days of World War II. Fourteen years earlier, in 1931, he had been a rising star in German Lutheranism. Ordained at 25 and a lecturer at the University of Berlin, he was a youth secretary of what...

Buddhism travelled from its origination point in India in the 5th century BCE, across the East and eventually found its way to Japan in the 8th century CE. Several schools from China developed followings in Japan. In the 1200s, Dōgen Zenji, a monk trained...

Dorothy Day was a journalist and social activist who, after converting to Catholicism, cofounded the Catholic Workers’ Movement and helped shape Catholic social justice activism for generations to follow, including silent vigils, nonviolent direct...

Ellen Gould White is the founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Born Methodist, when she was 12, White’s family became involved in the movement following William Miller, who believed he had calculated the exact time of Jesus Christ’s...

Francis of Assisi has crossed over into today’s secular culture more than any other saint or other Christian leader, thanks to his love of animals and the example of extreme humility he represents. Perhaps even more so, though, for his...