Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Religious Figures & Theologians

6

🕯️ 0

Menachem Mendel Schneerson

מנחם מנדל שניאורסון

Russia

1902 – 1994 (92 years old)

Seventh leader of Chabad-Lubavitch who built a global network of educational and humanitarian emissaries (shluchim), transforming post-Holocaust Jewish life worldwide.

Queens, New York, United States

6 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Joseph Ber Soloveitchik

יוסף דוב הלוי סולובייצ'יק

Russian Empire

1903 – 1993 (90 years old)

Scion of the Brisker rabbinic dynasty, philosopher, and leader of Modern Orthodoxy who ordained over 2,000 rabbis at Yeshiva University and authored 'The Lonely Man of Faith'.

West Roxbury, Massachusetts, United States

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Switzerland

1905 – 1988 (82 years old)

Swiss Catholic theologian, cultural philosopher, and priest whose monumental 16-volume trilogy centered theology on the transcendental of Beauty ('The Glory of the Lord').

Lucerne, Switzerland

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Karl Rahner

Karl Rahner

Germany

1904 – 1984 (80 years old)

German Jesuit priest, Doctor of the Church, and principal theological architect of the Second Vatican Council whose transcendental Thomism formulated the 'Anonymous Christian'.

Innsbruck, Austria

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Rudolf Karl Bultmann

Rudolf Bultmann

German Empire

1884 – 1976 (91 years old)

German Lutheran theologian and New Testament scholar who pioneered form criticism and the program of 'demythologizing' the New Testament to reveal the existential Kerygma.

Marburg, Germany

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

4

🕯️ 0

Shunryu Suzuki

鈴木俊隆

Meiji Era

1904 – 1971 (67 years old)

Soto Zen monk who moved to California in 1959, founded the San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara, and authored the modern spiritual classic 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind'.

Carmel Valley, California, United States

4 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr

United States

1892 – 1971 (78 years old)

American public theologian and ethicist whose 'Moral Man and Immoral Society', formulation of Christian Realism, and 'Serenity Prayer' influenced generations of statesmen.

Stockbridge, Massachusetts, United States

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Karl Barth

Karl Barth

Switzerland

1886 – 1968 (82 years old)

Titan of 20th-century Protestant theology whose 'Epistle to the Romans' and multi-volume 'Church Dogmatics' shattered liberal optimism and whose Barmen Declaration opposed Nazi tyranny.

Riehen (Basel), Switzerland

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

4

🕯️ 0

Paul Johannes Tillich

Paul Tillich

German Empire

1886 – 1965 (79 years old)

German-American Christian existentialist philosopher and theologian whose 'The Courage to Be' and 'Systematic Theology' defined faith as the state of being grasped by an 'ultimate concern'.

New Harmony, Indiana, United States

4 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

1

🕯️ 0

Sri Aurobindo

অরবিন্দ ঘোষ

India

1872 – 1950 (78 years old)

Revolutionary nationalist who became one of India's greatest modern philosophers, developing Integral Yoga and the vision of human spiritual evolution in 'The Life Divine'.

Pondicherry, India

1 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

7

🕯️ 0

Venkataraman Iyer

ரமண மகரிஷி

India

1879 – 1950 (70 years old)

Sage of Arunachala and master of Advaita Vedanta who taught the direct method of Self-inquiry ('Who Am I?') and radiated silent transformative peace to seekers from across the globe.

Tiruvannamalai, India

7 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

15

🕯️ 1,100

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Poland

4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945 (39 years old)

Heroic German Lutheran pastor and theologian who resisted the Nazi regime, led the underground seminary of the Confessing Church, authored The Cost of Discipleship, and was executed by hanging weeks before WWII ended.

Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, Germany

15 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov

Сергий Булгаков

Russian Empire

1871 – 1944 (72 years old)

Russian Orthodox priest, philosopher, and economist who fled Marxist Russia to lead the Saint Sergius Institute in Paris, developing the theology of divine Wisdom (Sophiology).

Paris, France

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

4

🕯️ 0

Abraham Isaac Kook

אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק

Russian Empire

1865 – 1935 (69 years old)

First Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine, visionary mystic, and poet whose philosophy of 'Orot' (Lights) saw secular Jewish national rebuilding as part of messianic redemption.

Jerusalem, Israel

4 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

3

🕯️ 0

Shirdi Sai Baba

शिर्डीचे साई बाबा

India

c. 1838 – 1918 (~80 years old)

Indian spiritual master revered by both Hindu and Muslim devotees, who lived in a dilapidated mosque in Shirdi preaching charity, love, and 'Sabka Malik Ek' (One God for All).

Shirdi, India

3 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

John of Kronstadt

Иоанн Кронштадтский

Russian Empire

1829 – 1909 (79 years old)

Russian Orthodox archpriest and pastoral miracle-worker whose daily Eucharistic liturgies, profound diary 'My Life in Christ', and immense charities transformed naval Kronstadt.

Saint Petersburg, Russia

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

5

🕯️ 0

Lalla Zaynab

لالة زينب القاسمية

Algeria

c. 1850 – 1904 (54 years old)

Algerian female religious leader and Sufi shaykha who succeeded her father Cheikh Mohamed Belqacem as head of the prestigious Rahmaniyya Zawiya of El Hamel in 1897, successfully defying French colonial attempts to seize its vast endowments.

El Hamel, Algeria

5 Full Record →

Religious Figures & Theologians

4

🕯️ 0

Narendranath Datta

স্বামী বিবেকানন্দ

India

1863 – 1902 (39 years old)

Chief disciple of Ramakrishna who introduced Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world at the 1893 Chicago Parliament of Religions and founded the Ramakrishna Mission.

Howrah, India

4 Full Record →