View our storymaps

Mary Slessor

Mary Mitchell Slessor was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary to Nigeria.      

J. C. Ryle

John Charles Ryle was a writer, pastor and an evangelical preacher.

Amy Carmichael

Amy Beatrice Carmichael (16 December 1867 – 18 January 1951) was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for 55 years without furlough and wrote many books about the missionary work there.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Robert Murray M‘Cheyne was widely regarded as one of the most saintly and able young ministers of his day.  

Arthur W. Pink

Arthur Walkington Pink  was an English Bible teacher who sparked a renewed interest in the exposition of Calvinism or Reformed Theology. Little known in his own lifetime, Pink became “one of the most influential evangelical authors in the second half of the twentieth century.”

C. T. Studd

Charles Thomas Studd, often known as C. T. Studd, was a British missionary, and a cricketer.

John Gresham Machen

John Gresham Machen was an American Presbyterian New Testament scholar and educator in the early 20th century. He was the Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary.

Joseph Hart

Joseph Hart was an 18th-century Calvinist minister in London. His works include “Hart’s Hymns”, a much-loved hymn book amongst evangelical Christians throughout its lifetime of over 200 years, which includes the well-known hymn, “Come ye sinners, poor and needy”.

Selina, Countess of Huntingdon

Selina, Countess of Huntingdon  was an English religious leader who played a prominent part in the religious revival of the 18th century and the Methodist movement in England and Wales. She founded an evangelical branch in England and Sierra Leone, known as the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion.

Cornelius Van Til

Cornelius Van Til was a Dutch-American Christian philosopher and Reformed theologian.

John Foxe

John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of Actes and Monuments (popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs), an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but which particularly emphasises the sufferings of English Protestants and from the 14th century and throughout the reign of Mary I.

Daniel Rowland

Daniel Rowland served as an Evangelist and early on as an Anglican curate. He was one of the foremost figures in the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist revival, along with Howell Harris and William Williams. For 55 years Daniel Rowland was one of the leading evangelists in Wales.

John Bradford

John Bradford was an English Reformer, prebendary of St. Paul’s, and martyr. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London for alleged crimes against Mary Tudor. He was burned at the stake on 1 July 1555.

David Livingstone

David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. He was a Protestant missionary, had a working-class “rags-to-riches” inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer and anti-slavery crusader. Livingstone was an explorer and was obsessed with learning the sources of the Nile River. His missionary travels, “disappearance”, and eventual death in Africa‍ led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives.  

William Grimshaw

William Grimshaw of Haworth was one of the most noted evangelists of the eighteenth century.

Howell Harris

Howell Harris was one of the main leaders of the Welsh Methodist revival in the 18th century, along with Daniel Rowland and William Williams Pantycelyn.

Samuel Rutherford

Rev Prof Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor, theologian and author, and one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly.

Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I.

Andrew Fuller

Andrew Fuller was an indefatigable and fearless Baptist theologian and minister, an outstanding figure with qualities that make him one of the most attractive figures in Baptist history.

Charles Simeon

Charles Simeon was an English evangelical clergyman.

Henry Martyn

Henry Martyn  was an Anglican priest and missionary to the peoples of India and Persia.

John Wycliffe

John Wycliffe was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, Biblical translator, reformer, priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism. Wycliffe attacked the privileged status of the clergy, which had bolstered their powerful role in England. He then attacked the luxury and pomp of local parishes and their ceremonies.

Richard Baxter

Richard Baxter was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymnodist, theologian, and controversialist. He was called  “the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen”. He made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster. After the Restoration he refused preferment, and became one of the most influential leaders of the Nonconformists, spending time in prison.

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. .

Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts was an English Christian minister (Congregational), hymn writer, theologian, and logician. He was a prolific and popular hymn writer and is credited with some 750 hymns.  Many of his hymns remain in use today and have been translated into numerous languages.

David Brainerd

David Brainerd was an American missionary to the Native Americans who had a particularly fruitful ministry among the Delaware Indians of New Jersey. During his short life he was beset by many difficulties. As a result, his biography has become a source of inspiration and encouragement to many Christians.

John Knox

John Knox (c. 1513 – 1572) was a Scottish minister, theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country’s Reformation. He was the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader. He served as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland “and of the dominions thereto belonging” from 1653 until his death, acting simultaneously as head of state and head of government of the new republic.

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming an independent MP for Yorkshire. In 1785, he became an evangelical Christian, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.

William Tyndale

William Tyndale was an English scholar who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known for his translation of the Bible into English.

Matthew Henry

Matthew Henry  was a non-conformist minister and author, born in Broad Oak, Flintshire but spent much of his life in England and is best known for the six-volume biblical commentary Exposition of the Old and New Testaments.

William Carey

William Carey was a British Christian missionary, Particular Baptist minister, translator, social reformer and cultural anthropologist who founded the Serampore College and the Serampore University, the first degree-awarding university in India. He went to Calcutta in 1793, but then joined the Baptist missionaries in the Danish colony of Frederiksnagar in Serampore. One of his first contributions was to start schools for impoverished children where they were taught reading, writing, accounting and Christianity. He opened the first theological university in Serampore offering divinity degrees.

George Whitefield

George Whitefield was an English Anglican cleric and evangelist who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement. Born in Gloucester, he matriculated at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford in 1732. There he joined the “Holy Club” and was introduced to the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, with whom he would work closely in his later ministry. Whitefield was ordained after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree. He immediately began preaching, but he did not settle as the minister of any parish. Rather he became an itinerant preacher and evangelist. In 1740, Whitefield travelled to North America and where he...

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was a North American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. Edwards is widely regarded as one of the America’s most important and original philosophical theologians. Edwards’ theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first revivals in 1733–35 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts.  

John Bunyan

John Bunyan was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of  The Pilgrim’s Progress. In addition to The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan wrote nearly sixty titles, many of them expanded sermons.

John Wesley

John Wesley (1703 – 1791) was an English cleric, theologian and evangelist who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement.

Isobel Kuhn

Isobel Selina Miller Kuhn,  “Belle”, was a Canadian Christian missionary to the Lisu people of Yunnan Province, China, and northern Thailand. She served with the China Inland Mission, along with her husband, John, as a Bible translator, church planter, Bible teacher, evangelist and authored nine books about her experiences.

Gladys Aylward

Gladys Aylward was a British evangelical Christian missionary to China whose story was told in the book The Small Woman, by Alan Burgess in 1957.

Hudson Taylor

James Hudson Taylor (21 May 1832 – 3 June 1905) was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM, now OMF International). Taylor spent 51 years in China. The society that he began was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country who began 125 schools and directly resulted in 18,000 Christian conversions, as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work with more than 500 local helpers in all eighteen provinces. Taylor was known for his sensitivity to Chinese culture and zeal for evangelism. He adopted wearing native Chinese clothing even though this...

Dwight L. Moody

Dwight Lyman Moody (February 5, 1837 – December 22, 1899), also known as D. L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher connected with the Holiness Movement, who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts (now Northfield Mount Hermon School), Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers. One of his most famous quotes was “Faith makes all things possible… Love makes all things easy.“

William Booth

William Booth  was an English Methodist preacher who founded The Salvation Army and became its first General (1878–1912). The Christian movement with a quasi-military structure and government founded in 1865 has spread from London, England, to many parts of the world and is known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid.

Frances Ridley Havergal

Frances Ridley Havergal was an English religious poet and hymnwriter. Take My Life and Let it Be and Thy Life for Me (also known as I Gave My Life for Thee) are two of her best known hymns. She also wrote hymn melodies, religious tracts, and works for children.

John Stott

John Robert Walmsley Stott CBE (27 April 1921 – 27 July 2011) was an English Anglican priest and theologian who was noted as a leader of the worldwide evangelical movement. He was one of the principal authors of the Lausanne Covenant in 1974. In 2005, Time magazine ranked Stott among the 100 most influential people in the world.

Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Dr Lloyd-Jones was a well-known preacher who gave up an excellent career in medicine to preach the Word of God tirelessly throughout his life.

Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth with her husband, Lars Gren, in her later years.

Horatius Bonar

Francis Schaeffer

Schaeffer was born on January 30, 1912, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Franz A. Schaeffer III and Bessie Williamson. He was of German and English ancestry. In 1935, Schaeffer graduated magna cum laude from Hampden–Sydney College. The same year he married Edith Seville, the daughter of missionary parents who had been with the China Inland Mission founded by Hudson Taylor.

Martin Luther

German former monk who became the father of the Protestant Reformation.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The ‘Prince of Preachers’ and leading figure in Reformed Baptist history. In London, he pastored New Park Street Chapel (later the Metropolitan Tabernacle) for 38 years.

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954–1963). He is best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

Thomas Chalmers

Thomas Chalmers DD LLD FRSE (17 March 1780 – 31 May 1847), was a Scottish minister, professor of theology, political economist, and a leader of both the Church of Scotland and of the Free Church of Scotland. He has been called “Scotland’s greatest nineteenth-century churchman”.

John Newton

John Calvin

Calvin was a French theologian, pastor and reformer during the Protestant Reformation. His theology was built on the sovereignty of God in the predestination of all things.