This is our full list of representative Christians through the centuries.

It’s a list that will certainly grow, as we work through more stories and as we add contemporary Christians who go onto be part of the great cloud of witnesses that is referred to in Scripture. To read more about any of the Christians below, please click on their image. you can then move back and forth via the post links below each article or return to searching with links in the header and footer. The order has a bit of theology embedded in it. We choose with the birth day or year of the person, not their death day. We understand that God knit us together and called us well before we returned a call to him, that he knew us even when we didn’t fully know him. We trust the multiple ways to search will alleviate any misgivings you might find in the order.

Paul of Tarsus

100

Justin Martyr

155

Tertullian of Carthage

274

Alban

296

Athanasius of Alexandria

347

John Chrysostom

354

Augustine of Hippo

387

Patrick

480

Benedict of Nursia

560

Isidore of Seville

675

Venerable Bede

1033

Anselm of Canterbury

1090

Bernard of Clairvaux

1098

Hildegard of Bingen

1181

Francis of Assisi

1225

Thomas Aquinas

1265

Dante Alighieri

1320

John Wycliffe

1347

Catherine of Siena

1369

Jan Hus

1412

Joan of Arc

1478

Thomas More

1483

Martin Luther

1484

Ulrich Zwingli

1489

Thomas Cranmer

1491

Ignatius of Loyola

1509

John Calvin

1593

George Herbert

1662

Samuel Wesley

1703

Jonathan Edwards

1703

John Wesley

1707

Charles Wesley

1711

John Francis Wade

1714

George Whitefield

1716

George Taylor

1719

James Smith

1724

Isaac Backus

1725

John Newton

1725

John Morton

1728

Caesar Rodney

1733

George Read

1734

Thomas McKean

1734

Robert Morris

1739

George Clymer

1742

Manasseh Cutler

1742

James Wilson

1745

Francis Asbury

1745

Benjamin Rush

1746

Benjamin Rush

1755

Richard Furman

1759

William Wilberforce

1759

Charles Simeon

1760

Richard Allen

1761

Willam Carey

1770

William Wordsworth

1773

Joseph Mohr

1792

John Henry Hopkins

1792

Charles Finney

1797

Sojourner Truth

1801

John Henry Newman

1804

Samuel Ajayi Crowther

1805

George Mueller

1806

James Finn

1807

Phoebe Palmer

1813

Søren Kierkegaard

1813

Henry Ward Beecher

1813

David Livingstone

1819

Alexander Crummell

1820

Florence Nightingale

1820

Fanny Crosby

1821

Fyodor Dostoevsky

1822

Harriet Tubman

1828

Andrew Murray

1828

Horatio Spafford

1829

William Booth

1830

Christina Rossetti

1837

D.L. Moody

1840

Lottie Moon

1848

Mary Slessor

1850

Annie Armstrong

1856

Charles H. Gabriel

1857

Milton Hershey

1860

C.T. Studd

1860

Anton Chekhov

1862

Billy Sunday

1866

Annie Johnson Flint

1870

William Seymour

1871

John Wesley Work Jr.

1874

Oswald Chambers

1874

Nikolai Berdyaev

1874

G.K. Chesterton

1878

Frank Buchman

1886

Karl Barth

1886

Paul Tillich

1887

Charles E. Fuller

1887

Lillian Hunt Trasher

1888

T.S. Eliot

1891

William F. Albright

1892

Reinhold Niebuhr

1892

Corrie ten Boom

1892

J.R.R. Tolkien

1893

Dorothy L. Sayers

1897

Dorothy Day

1897

A.W. Tozer

1898

C.S. Lewis

1899

Thomas A. Dorsey

1902

Kyrillos VI

1903

Malcolm Muggeridge

1904

Karl Rahner

1905

Harold J. Ockenga

1906

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1909

Simone Weil

1910

Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu

1911

Marshall McLuhan

1912

Jacques Ellul

1914

Robert Pierce

1915

Thomas Merton

1916

Walker Percy

1917

Louis Zamperini

1917

Bob Lindsey

1918

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

1918

Billy Graham

1920

Ruth Graham

1920

John Paul II

1920

P.D. James

1921

Truett Cathy

1921

John Stott

1925

Flannery O’Connor

1926

Allan Sandage

1926

Ivan Illich

1926

Elizabeth Alexandra

1927

Jim Elliot

1932

Johnny Cash

1932

Eugene Peterson

1933

Jerry Falwell

1934

Brennan Manning

1934

John Wimber

1944

Jack Heaslip

1953

Jean Donovan

1953

Keith Green

1955

Rick Elias

1955

John Chacha

1955

Rich Mullins

1987

Larry Norman

Joan of Arc

Catholic

January 6, 1412 - May 30, 1431

By Zach Kincaid

Burned at the stake as a heretic after a politically-motivated trial, Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Born of a fairly well-to-do peasant couple in Domremy-Greux southeast of Paris, Joan was only 12 when she experienced a vision and heard voices that she later identified as Saints Michael the Archangel, Catherine of Alexandria,…

Thomas More

Catholic

February 7, 1478 - July 6, 1535

By Zach Kincaid

Today we know Sir Thomas More primarily as the author of Utopia, and as one of the more famous martyrs of Henry VIII’s reign. The popular image is of a man – principled, steadfast, courageous – who placed his own conscience above his king’s demands. Yet if you were to ask More’s contemporaries to describe…

Martin Luther

Lutheran

November 10, 1483 - February 18, 1546

By Zach Kincaid

The life of Martin Luther is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of Christianity. It has all the stuff of a good novel: parental conflict, spiritual agony, life-changing moments, near-misses, princes, popes, emperors, castles, kidnapping, mobs, revolution, massacres, politics, courage, controversy, disguises, daring escapes, humor and romance. And not only is it…

Ulrich Zwingli

Swiss Reformed

January 1, 1484 - October 11, 1531

By Zach Kincaid

Other than Martin Luther, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin, the most important early Reformer was Ulrich Zwingli. A first-generation Reformer, he is regarded as the founder of Swiss Protestantism. Furthermore, history remembers him as the first Reformed theologian. Though Calvin would later surpass Zwingli as a theologian, he would stand squarely on Zwingli’s broad shoulders. Less than…

Thomas Cranmer

Anglican

July 2, 1489 - March 21, 1556

By Zach Kincaid

Before a vast crowd of friends and enemies, the Archbishop thrust his hand into the fire. He was going to his death by being burned at the stake but insisted that the hand that was guilty of such shameful sin must burn first. Jesus said “It is better to lose a limb than for your whole body…

Ignatius of Loyola

Catholic

October 23, 1491 - July 31, 1556

By Zach Kincaid

St. Ignatius came from a family of minor nobility in Spain’s northern Basque region. One thing to know about Ignatius is that he was far from saintly during much of his young adult life. He was vain, with dreams of personal honor and fame. He gambled and was not above sword fighting. As some have…

John Calvin

Reformed

July 10, 1509 - May 27, 1564

By Zach Kincaid

Born July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France, Jean Calvin was raised in a staunch Roman Catholic family. The local bishop employed Calvin’s father as an administrator in the town’s cathedral. The father, in turn, wanted John to become a priest. Because of close ties with the bishop and his noble family, John’s playmates and classmates…

George Herbert

Anglican

April 3, 1593 - March 1, 1633

By Zach Kincaid

George Herbert was born in 1593, a cousin of the Earl of Pembroke. His mother was a friend of the poet John Donne. George attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and became the Public Orator of the University, responsible for giving speeches of welcome in Latin to famous visitors, and writing letters of thanks, also in Latin, to…

Samuel Wesley

Anglican

December 17, 1662 - April 5, 1735

By Zach Kincaid

The English composer, Samuel Wesley, was the son of Rev. Charles and nephew of the celerbrated Rev. John Wesley. His elder brother, Charles Wesley (1757-1834), was an harpsichodist, organist and composer. Although Samuel was also a precocious performer, like his brother’, he did not develop his faculties quite so early, for he was 3 years…

Jonathan Edwards

Reformed

October 5, 1703 - March 22, 1758

By Zach Kincaid

Jonathan Edwards was born into a Puritan evangelical household on October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut. He was the fifth of eleven children born to the Rev. Timothy and Esther Edwards. His childhood education immersed him not only in the study of the Bible and Christian theology but also in classics and ancient languages….