Religious
- Conrad Beissel – religious leader who in 1732 founded the Ephrata Community in Pennsylvania
- August Ernst – former president of Northwestern University and ordained minister
- Raymond Philip Etteldorf – Roman Catholic Archbishop and author
- George J. Geis — Baptist missionary in Kachin State, Burma.
- Barbara Heck – 1768 – founder of the first Methodist church in New York
- Samuel Hirsch – philosopher and rabbi
- Adolf Hoenecke – served as the head of Wisconsin Synod congregations from 1878 – 1908
- Arthur W. Hummel, Sr. – Christian missionary to China and Sinologist
- Johannes Kelpius – Pietist, mystic, musician, and writer, interested in the occult, botany, and astronomy, came to believe with his followers in the "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness"
- Kathryn Kuhlman – 20th Century faith healer and Pentecostal arm of Protestant Christianity
- Barbara Heinemann Landmann – spiritual leader of the Amana Colonies
- Alexander Mack – Germantown, Pennsylvania New World religious leader
- Christian Metz – inspirationalist
- Henry Moeller – Roman Catholic archbishop of Cincinnati
- Heinrich Melchior Muhlenberg – Lutheran clergyman
- Richard John Neuhaus – clergyman (first a Lutheran pastor and then a Roman Catholic priest), theologian, and ethicist
- St. John Neumann – Bishop of Philadelphia (1852–60) and the first American bishop to be canonized
- Reinhold Niebuhr – Protestant theologian best known for his work relating the Christian faith to the realities of modern politics and diplomacy.
- George Rapp – founder of the religious sect called Harmonists, Harmonites, Rappites, or the Harmony Society
- George Erik Rupp – educator and theologian, the former President of Rice University and later of Columbia University, and president of the International Rescue Committee
- Theodore Schneider – was the second bishop of the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
- Francis Xavier Seelos – Roman Catholic martyred priest
- Joseph Stephan – Roman Catholic priest, Union Army chaplain, Indian agent and director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions from 1885 to 1901
- Joseph Strub – founder of what is today Duquesne University, which was called the Pittsburgh Catholic College of the Holy Ghost until 1911
- Paul Tillich – Protestant theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher
- C. F. W. Walther – Lutheran clergyman, professor, seminary president, editor, and first president of The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod
- Donald Wuerl – prelate of the Roman Catholic Church
- Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf – founded the town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where his daughter Benigna organized the school which would become Moravian College
Read more about this topic: List Of German Americans
Famous quotes containing the word religious:
“Primarily I am a passionately religious man, and my novels must be written from the depth of my religious experience.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“Better risk loss of truth than chance of error—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.”
—William James (1842–1910)