20 Figures Whose Lives Inspired Religious Movements

A Jewish teacher and healer from Galilee, Jesus preached a message of love, forgiveness, and the coming of the Kingdom of God before being crucified by the Roman authorities around the year 30 CE. His resurrection, as understood by his disciples, became the foundation of the Christian faith. Christianity is now the world’s most widespread religion, with approximately two billion followers. 

Born into a noble family in what is now Nepal around the 5th century BCE, Siddhartha renounced wealth and comfort in order to seek an end to human suffering. After years of meditation, he is said to have attained enlightenment under a Bodhi tree, and the path he taught became Buddhism.

Born in Mecca around 570, Muhammad was a merchant who began receiving divine revelations around the age of 40 and devoted the rest of his life to spreading Islam before his death in 632. Islam is now the world’s second-largest religion.

A central figure in the Hebrew Bible, Moses is known for leading the Israelites out of Egypt and receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai. Whether historical or partly legendary, his story has formed the foundation of Judaism and has influenced Christianity and Islam.

Born in 1469 in what is now Pakistan, Guru Nanak experienced a spiritual revelation around the age of thirty and began preaching equality, devotion to one God, and the rejection of caste distinctions. He traveled extensively to spread his message. Sikhism today has approximately 25 million followers.

Zoroaster, an ancient Iranian prophet, founded one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions; he is believed to have lived between 1500 and 600 B.C. His teachings on the struggle between good and evil have influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Born in 551 B.C. in what is now China, Confucius was a philosopher whose ideas on ethics, family, and governance have shaped Chinese civilization for more than two thousand years through his teachings, which are compiled in the Analects.

Laozi, the legendary founder of Taoism, is traditionally regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching, a short text on existence and the art of living whose influence on Chinese culture is immeasurable. Whether he was a historical figure or a composite character remains a matter of debate, but the tradition that has developed around his teachings has shaped philosophy, art, medicine, and governance in East Asia for more than two thousand years. 

A contemporary of the Buddha, Mahavira renounced his wealth and devoted himself for years to rigorous asceticism before becoming the 24th and final Tirthankara of Jainism. He systematized the fundamental teachings of this religion, namely nonviolence, truth, and detachment. Jainism has approximately 4 to 5 million followers, mainly in India.

Paul never met Jesus and was initially a persecutor of the early Christians. Through his letters and missionary journeys, undertaken after a dramatic conversion, he shaped Christian theology more than almost any other figure and spread the faith throughout the Roman Empire.

Born in Vermont in 1805, Joseph Smith claimed to have had divine visions as early as his teenage years and founded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830. He was killed by an angry mob in 1844. The religion he founded now has more than 17 million members.

A co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Ellen G. White began having prophetic visions as a teenager. Her numerous writings helped establish a movement that today has more than 20 million baptized members worldwide.

Born in 1817 in Persia, Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed himself a divine messenger and founded the Bahá’í Faith, which advocates for the unity of all religions and the unity of humanity. He spent much of his life in prison or in exile. The faith is estimated to have between five and eight million followers worldwide.

A 19th-century Bengali mystic, Ramakrishna practiced devotion within multiple religious traditions and came to the conclusion that all paths lead to the same reality. His teachings, passed down by his disciple Swami Vivekananda, sparked a Hindu revival and shaped interfaith dialogue for generations.

Born in 1821 in New Hampshire, Mary Baker Eddy came to the conclusion, following a dramatic healing, that physical illness was spiritual in nature. In 1875, she published Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and in 1879, she founded the Church of Christ, Scientist.

Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974, Haile Selassie was not himself a Rastafarian. But the Rastafarians of Jamaica came to regard him as the Messiah returned to earth, thus placing his life at the heart of a movement he never claimed to lead.

Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean religious leader, founded the Unification Church in 1954 after claiming to have received a revelation from Jesus Christ. The movement grew into a global organization with millions of members and wields considerable political and media influence across several continents.

In 1926, in southern Vietnam, Ngo Van Chieu and other spiritualists founded Caodaism after receiving what they described as divine messages. This religion, which blends Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Christianity, has between four and six million followers, mainly in Vietnam.

Born in 1835 in the Punjab, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be the promised Messiah awaited by Muslims and founded the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. This movement emphasizes peace and evangelism and has tens of millions of followers in more than 200 countries, although it remains controversial within traditional Islam.

The tenth and final human guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa in 1699 and, before his death, proclaimed that the sacred scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, was the eternal and living guru, thus bringing the line of human gurus to an end. A poet, warrior, and spiritual leader, he is remembered not only as a religious figure but also as the one who gave the Sikh community its own identity and the courage to defend it.