List of Christian pastors in politics

Background

There are existing sub-sections on religious denominations to deal with Christian lay people in politics, e.g. List of LDS politicians. This list is for politicians who also do Christian pastoral work, both ordained clergy and evangelists or theologians. It is therefore not appropriate to add Christian lay people to the list, although some noted theologians in the laity are included as relational.

List

Anglican

• John Bani – President and head of state of Vanuatu from 25 March 1999, until 24 March 2004. Anglican priest.
• Timothy Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley – UK politician – only member of the House of Lords to sit as a member of the Green Party. Anglican priest.
• Walter Lini – Founding Prime Minister of Vanuatu (succeeded by Bani). Anglican priest.

Baptist

• William Aberhart – Founder of the Social Credit Party of Alberta.
• Chuck Baldwin – United States Constitution Party activist and Baptist pastor.
• Ross Clifford – Australian politician: New South Wales Legislative Council and Australian Senate candidate; and Baptist theologian.
• Walter E. Fauntroy – Former member of United States Congress and Baptist pastor.
• Ernie Fletcher – Governor of Kentucky from 2003–2007
• William H. Gray – former Congressman and minister.
• Benjamin Hooks – American civil rights leader and Baptist minister.
• Mike Huckabee – former governor of Arkansas and Baptist minister.
• Tim Hutchinson – former Senator from Arkansas and former Baptist pastor.
• Jesse Jackson – civil rights activist and Baptist minister.
• Martin Luther King – civil rights activist and Baptist minister.
• Ron Lewis – Retiring Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Kentucky since 1994 and Baptist minister.
• Pat Robertson – Republican supporter, former United States presidential nomination candidate, and former Baptist pastor.
• Benny M. Abante – Former two termed Congressman of the Philippines. He was also awarded as the Most Outstanding Congressmen of Philippines in the 13th & 14th Congresses. Founder and pastor of Metropolitan Bible Baptist Church in the Philippines.
• Thomas Clement "Tommy" Douglas – was a Canadian social democratic politician and Baptist minister. He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1935 as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). He left federal politics to become the Saskatchewan CCF's leader and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961. His government was the first democratic socialist government in North America, and it introduced the continent's first single-payer, universal health care program.

Roman Catholicism

• Jean-Bertrand Aristide – former President of Haiti, former Catholic priest.
• Ernesto Cardenal – former Minister for Culture for Nicaragua and Catholic priest
• James Renshaw Cox – US Presidency candidate and Catholic priest.
• Robert Drinan – Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, lawyer, human rights activist, and Democratic U.S. Representative from Massachusetts.
• Ivan Grubišić - Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, and independent representative in the Croatian Parliament.
• Andrej Hlinka – Slovak public activist and Catholic priest.
• Theodor Innitzer (later Cardinal Innitzer) – Austrian Minister of Social Administration (1929–1930).
• Ludwig Kaas – prominent German politician during Weimar Republic and Catholic priest.
• Hugo Kołłątaj – Polish social and political activist, political thinker, historian, philosopher and Catholic priest.
• Fernando Arturo de Meriño – President of the Dominican Republic (1880–1882).
• Mihovil Pavlinović - Roman Catholic priest, writer, and People's Party representative in the Diet of Dalmatia, Croatian Parliament and Austro-Hungarian Imperial Council.
• Gabriel Richard – French Roman Catholic priest who became a delegate from Michigan Territory to the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Ignaz Seipel – Chancellor of Austria for two stints during the 1920s.
• Stanisław Staszic – Polish priest, philosopher, statesman, geologist, scholar, poet and writer, a leader of the Polish Enlightenment, famous for works related to the "Great" or "Four-Year Sejm" (1788–1792) and its Constitution of 3 May 1791.
• Luigi Sturzo – one of the founders of the Italian People's Party and Catholic priest.
• Jozef Tiso – fascist Slovak politician of the SPP, Roman Catholic priest who became a deputy of the Czechoslovak parliament, a member of the Czechoslovak government, and finally the President of Independent Slovak Republic from 1939–1945, allied with Nazi Germany.
• Beda Weber – German Benedictine professor, author, and member of the Frankfurt Parliament.

Eastern Catholic Churches

• Paul Weyrich – US conservative political activist and commentator, ordained protodeacon in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.

Congregational Church

• Samuel C. Fessenden – U.S. Congressman, pastor.
• Washington Gladden – leading American Congregational church pastor leading member of the Progressive Movement, serving for two years as a member of the Columbus
• Fred Nile – New South Wales Legislative Council (Australia) member and Fellowship of Congregational Churches minister.

Disciples of Christ

• James A. Garfield - preacher, teacher, and lawyer from Ohio before becoming a Congressman and later the 20th President of the United States.
• Gerald L. K. Smith – founder of the quasi-fascist America First Party and Disciples of Christ minister.
• Jim Spainhower – US politician from Missouri and former Disciples of Christ minister.

Dutch Reformed Church

• Thomas François Burgers – President of the South African Republic 1871–77 and pastor.
• Abraham Kuyper – Dutch politician, journalist, statesman and theologian. He founded the Anti-Revolutionary Party and was Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905. Dutch Reformed Church minister.
• Daniel François Malan – former Prime Minister of South Africa and minister.

Eastern Orthodox Churches

• Miron Cristea – first Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church and Prime Minister of Romania.
• Damaskinos – Archbishop of Athens and All Greece (primate of the Church of Greece) and Regent of Greece (1944–1946) for the exiled King George II.
• Makarios III – archbishop and primate of the autocephalous Cypriot Orthodox Church (1950–1977) and first President of the Republic of Cyprus (1960–1977).
• Fan S. Noli – Albanian Orthodox bishop and politician, who served briefly as prime minister and regent of Albania in 1924.
• Feofan Prokopovich – archbishop and statesman in the Russian Empire, elaborated and implemented Peter the Great's reform of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Episcopalian

• John Danforth – former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and former Republican United States Senator from Missouri, ordained Episcopal priest.
• Wythe Leigh Kinsolving - Episcopal priest, essayist and campaigner for Democratic candidates in 1910s-1930s, and against U.S. participation in World War II in late 1930s through 1941.

Evangelist

• Charles Colson – chief counsel for President of the United States Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973 and was one of the Watergate Seven. Maintains a variety of media channels which discuss contemporary issues from an Evangelical Christian worldview; Colson's views are typically consistent with a politically conservative interpretation of evangelical Christianity.
• Eduardo Villanueva – (born 6 October 1946), known as Bro. Eddie, is a religious and political leader in the Philippines and a presidential candidate in the 2010 Philippine election as standard bearer of the Bagong Pilipinas Party. Prior to joining the politics, he is best known as the founder and leader of the Jesus is Lord Church but officially declared his leave of absence as its Spiritual Director during the launching of Bagong Pilipinas, Bagong Pilipino Movement on 28 March 2009 “so that [he] may concentrate on the transformation of our beloved nation".

Evangelical Lutheran

• Dean Johnson – former majority leader of the Minnesota Senate and minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
• Lauri Ingman – Archbishop of Turku (1930–1934), Prime Minister of Finland (1918–1919, 1924–1925)

Lutheran

• Ida Auken, Denmark
• Margrete Auken, Denmark
• Kjell Magne Bondevik – Norwegian Lutheran minister and politician; Prime Minister of Norway from 1997 to 2000, and from 2001 to 2005.
• Walter H. Moeller – American politician of the Democratic party, entered a Lutheran seminary in 1935 and served as a pastor in the 1940s and after his retirement from politics.
• Joachim Gauck - President of Germany, serving since 18 March 2012.

Methodist

• Canaan Banana - president of Zimbabwe and Methodist minister
• Henry Augustus Buchtel – American public official and educator, ordained to the Methodist Episcopal ministry and served for a year as a missionary in Bulgaria.
• John Bull (congressman) – American clergyman and physician who represented Missouri in the U.S. Congress in 1833 and 1834.
• Emanuel Cleaver – United Methodist pastor and a Democratic politician from the state of Missouri. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in November 2004 to represent Missouri's 5th congressional district.
• Robert W. Edgar – former Congressman and Methodist pastor.
• Robert P. Shuler – Prohibition Party candidate who received the highest vote in any election in U.S. history, Methodist pastor.
• Donald Soper, Baron Soper – prominent Methodist minister, socialist and pacifist.
• Ted Strickland – Governor of Ohio, briefly a United Methodist pastor.
• Silas C. Swallow – United States Methodist preacher and prohibitionist politician.
• Aaron S. Watkins – Prohibition Party candidate and Methodist minister.
• Robert L. Williams – third Governor of Oklahoma and Methodist minister.
• Terry Wynn – Methodist local preacher and Member of the European Parliament

Pentecostal

• Stockwell Day - Has been credentialed with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada
• Andrew Evans – South Australian Legislative Council (Family First Party) member and Pentecostal Christian pastor.
• Anne McBride – Canadian politician ordained in the Assemblies of God.
• Danny Nalliah – President of an Assemblies of God related group, Family First Party candidate.
• Judy Turner – New Zealand politician, pastoral and community worker at New Life Churches, New Zealand.
• Marcelo Crivella – senator in the federal government of Brazil

Presbyterian

• William H. Hudnut III – Presbyterian minister, Congressional representative from Indiana 1972–1974, and then four-term mayor of Indianapolis.
• Ian Paisley – First Minister of Northern Ireland, veteran politician and church leader in Northern Ireland; founding member and former Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster.
• John Witherspoon – a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of New Jersey. He was the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration.

United Church

• Bill Blaikie – current Deputy Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons. He has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1979, representing the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood—Transcona and its antecedents as a member of the New Democratic Party. Minister of United Church of Canada.
• Lorne Calvert – former premier of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and current leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, as leader of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party. Ordained minister of United Church of Canada.
• Brian Howe – Australian politician, was Deputy Prime Minister in the Labor government of Paul Keating, and minister of Uniting Church in Australia.
• Stanley Knowles – Canadian parlementarian. United Church minister.
• Doug Lauchlan – Canadian politician, minister and educator, ordained minister in the United Church of Canada.
• Doug Martindale – politician in Manitoba, Canada. He has been a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba since 1990, serving as a member of the New Democratic Party. Ordained United Church minister.
• Davis McCaughey – key architect in the formation of the Uniting Church in Australia and Governor of Victoria from 1986–1992.
• David MacDonald – United Church of Canada minister and a former Canadian politician and author.
• Lloyd Stinson – politician in Manitoba, Canada, and the leader of that province's Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1953 to 1959, and ordained United Church minister.
• Andrew Young – American civil rights activist, former mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, and United States' first African-American ambassador to the United Nations, United Church of Christ pastor.
• Keith Seaman (Australian) – Uniting Church in Australia

Other

• Gregorio Aglipay – founded Philippine Independent Church
• Harold Albrecht – Brethren in Christ
• Benjamin W. Arnett – Ohio State Legislature politician and African Methodist Episcopal Church pastor.
• Graham Capill – Reformed Churches of New Zealand
• William Irvine (Methodist then Unitarian)
• Donald Malinowski – Polish National Catholic Church
• Kenneth Meshoe – Hope of Glory Tabernacle
• Clementa C. Pinckney - African Methodist Episcopal
• Hiram Rhodes Revels – African Methodist Episcopal
• Efraín Ríos Montt – Church of the Word
• Gordon Moyes – New South Wales Legislative Council (Australia), Christian Democratic Party member, Churches of Christ in Australia minister.
• Douglas Nicholls (Australian) – Churches of Christ in Australia

Unclassified

• Reinhold Niebuhr – Christian Realism. In his younger days he was a socialist candidate for New York state Senate
• Wavel Ramkalawan – Seychelles politician and priest.
• Tuve Skånberg
• Albert Edward Smith-Communist Party of Canada politician, but considered himself Christian throughout.
• William Horace Temple – Christian Socialist
• László Tőkés – Bishop in Reformed Church in Romania and involved in the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania.
• Tim Walberg – non-denominational Protestant
• Scott Craig - Pastor of Bighorn Canyon Community Church. He's been representing district 33 in the South Dakota House of Representatives since January 11, 2013.

Sources

• Political graveyard clergy/politicians section

References