Top 10 Most Influential Women in Christian History

Mary Magdalene is named in all four Gospels as the first witness to the resurrection — the person to whom the risen Jesus first appeared and whom he commissioned to carry the news to the apostles, earning her the title "apostle to the apostles" in Eastern Orthodox and Catholic tradition. She accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry, stood at the foot of the cross, and sat vigil at the tomb — a loyalty not matched by any of the twelve male apostles. Her role as the primary witness to the resurrection's defining event makes her arguably the most important human witness in Christian history.

Teresa of Ávila was a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite nun who reformed her entire religious order, founded seventeen new convents against intense institutional opposition, and wrote two of the greatest works of Christian mystical theology ever produced — The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. In 1970 Pope Paul VI declared her a Doctor of the Church, making her one of only four women ever to hold that title and the first woman to receive it. Her description of prayer as an intimate friendship with God rather than a formal religious obligation transformed Catholic spirituality.

Catherine of Siena was a fourteenth-century Italian mystic and laywoman whose extraordinary political influence included persuading Pope Gregory XI to end the Avignon papacy and return to Rome in 1377 — a feat achieved through sheer force of correspondence and personality from a woman with no institutional authority whatsoever. Her major work, The Dialogue, is one of the most profound works of mystical theology in the medieval Catholic tradition. She was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970 alongside Teresa of Ávila and remains a patron saint of Italy and of Europe.

Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess who was simultaneously a composer, poet, visionary mystic, natural scientist, physician, and theologian — perhaps the most multi-talented woman in the history of medieval Europe. Her visionary works, including Scivias, were approved by Pope Eugenius III after a commission led by Bernard of Clairvaux investigated them — an extraordinary papal endorsement for a female writer in the twelfth century. Her compositions, performed and recorded in the twenty-first century, made her the first medieval composer to achieve mainstream commercial success.

Amy Carmichael was an Irish missionary to India who spent fifty-five years in Dohnavur without a furlough, rescuing girls from temple prostitution at a time when British colonial authorities were reluctant to intervene in Hindu religious practices. She founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, which eventually grew to house hundreds of children, and wrote over thirty books of extraordinary spiritual depth — most of them written from a bed of chronic pain following an injury in 1931 that left her largely bedridden for her last twenty years. Elisabeth Elliot called her "the most Christ-like person I ever knew."

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu — known to the world as Mother Teresa — founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950 and spent nearly fifty years serving the dying, the destitute, and the abandoned in the slums of India and eventually in over 130 countries. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by Pope Francis in 2016. Her posthumously published letters revealed decades of profound spiritual darkness — the absence of any felt sense of God's presence — which she bore in secret while continuing to serve the poorest with indefatigable cheerfulness.

Corrie ten Boom and her family hid Jewish refugees in their Haarlem home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, saving hundreds of lives before being betrayed and sent to concentration camps including the notorious Ravensbrück. Her sister Betsie died there; Corrie survived and spent the rest of her life traveling the world with a message of forgiveness and God's presence in the darkest suffering, recounted in her memoir The Hiding Place. Her encounter with a former camp guard after the war — and her choice, through prayer, to extend him forgiveness — is one of the most powerful testimonies to the transformative power of Christian grace in modern history.

Elisabeth Elliot's husband Jim was one of five missionaries speared to death by the Auca (Waodani) people of Ecuador in 1956 — an event that shocked the Christian world. Rather than retreating, Elliot returned with her daughter to live among the very people who had killed her husband, ultimately winning their trust and participating in the conversion of many of the men who had carried out the murders. Her books Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty, and her later writings on suffering, singleness, and femininity, shaped a generation of evangelical women and remain among the most read devotional works in American Christianity.

Julian of Norwich received a series of sixteen visions during a near-death illness in 1373, which she recorded in Revelations of Divine Love — widely considered the first book written in English by a woman and one of the most profound works of Christian mysticism in any language. Her central theological insight — "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well" — expressed a bold confidence in God's ultimate redemptive purpose that was remarkable in the aftermath of the Black Death. She spent the rest of her life as an anchoress enclosed in a cell attached to St. Julian's Church in Norwich.

Mary Magdalene is named in all four Gospels as the first witness to the resurrection — the person to whom the risen Jesus first appeared and whom he commissioned to carry the news to the apostles, earning her the title "apostle to the apostles" in Eastern Orthodox and Catholic tradition. She accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry, stood at the foot of the cross, and sat vigil at the tomb — a loyalty not matched by any of the twelve male apostles. Her role as the primary witness to the resurrection's defining event makes her arguably the most important human witness in Christian history.

Teresa of Ávila was a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite nun who reformed her entire religious order, founded seventeen new convents against intense institutional opposition, and wrote two of the greatest works of Christian mystical theology ever produced — The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. In 1970 Pope Paul VI declared her a Doctor of the Church, making her one of only four women ever to hold that title and the first woman to receive it. Her description of prayer as an intimate friendship with God rather than a formal religious obligation transformed Catholic spirituality.

Catherine of Siena was a fourteenth-century Italian mystic and laywoman whose extraordinary political influence included persuading Pope Gregory XI to end the Avignon papacy and return to Rome in 1377 — a feat achieved through sheer force of correspondence and personality from a woman with no institutional authority whatsoever. Her major work, The Dialogue, is one of the most profound works of mystical theology in the medieval Catholic tradition. She was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1970 alongside Teresa of Ávila and remains a patron saint of Italy and of Europe.

Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess who was simultaneously a composer, poet, visionary mystic, natural scientist, physician, and theologian — perhaps the most multi-talented woman in the history of medieval Europe. Her visionary works, including Scivias, were approved by Pope Eugenius III after a commission led by Bernard of Clairvaux investigated them — an extraordinary papal endorsement for a female writer in the twelfth century. Her compositions, performed and recorded in the twenty-first century, made her the first medieval composer to achieve mainstream commercial success.

Amy Carmichael was an Irish missionary to India who spent fifty-five years in Dohnavur without a furlough, rescuing girls from temple prostitution at a time when British colonial authorities were reluctant to intervene in Hindu religious practices. She founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, which eventually grew to house hundreds of children, and wrote over thirty books of extraordinary spiritual depth — most of them written from a bed of chronic pain following an injury in 1931 that left her largely bedridden for her last twenty years. Elisabeth Elliot called her "the most Christ-like person I ever knew."

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu — known to the world as Mother Teresa — founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950 and spent nearly fifty years serving the dying, the destitute, and the abandoned in the slums of India and eventually in over 130 countries. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by Pope Francis in 2016. Her posthumously published letters revealed decades of profound spiritual darkness — the absence of any felt sense of God's presence — which she bore in secret while continuing to serve the poorest with indefatigable cheerfulness.

Corrie ten Boom and her family hid Jewish refugees in their Haarlem home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, saving hundreds of lives before being betrayed and sent to concentration camps including the notorious Ravensbrück. Her sister Betsie died there; Corrie survived and spent the rest of her life traveling the world with a message of forgiveness and God's presence in the darkest suffering, recounted in her memoir The Hiding Place. Her encounter with a former camp guard after the war — and her choice, through prayer, to extend him forgiveness — is one of the most powerful testimonies to the transformative power of Christian grace in modern history.

Elisabeth Elliot's husband Jim was one of five missionaries speared to death by the Auca (Waodani) people of Ecuador in 1956 — an event that shocked the Christian world. Rather than retreating, Elliot returned with her daughter to live among the very people who had killed her husband, ultimately winning their trust and participating in the conversion of many of the men who had carried out the murders. Her books Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty, and her later writings on suffering, singleness, and femininity, shaped a generation of evangelical women and remain among the most read devotional works in American Christianity.

Julian of Norwich received a series of sixteen visions during a near-death illness in 1373, which she recorded in Revelations of Divine Love — widely considered the first book written in English by a woman and one of the most profound works of Christian mysticism in any language. Her central theological insight — "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well" — expressed a bold confidence in God's ultimate redemptive purpose that was remarkable in the aftermath of the Black Death. She spent the rest of her life as an anchoress enclosed in a cell attached to St. Julian's Church in Norwich.