List of Protestant authors
This list of Protestant authors presents a group of authors who have expressed membership in a Protestant denominational church or adherence to spiritual beliefs which are in alignment with Protestantism as a religion, culture, or identity. The list does not include authors who, while considered or thought to be Protestant in faith, have rarely expressed or declared their affiliation in a public forum. Anglicanism, which is a hybrid of Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy has not been included due to the diversified foundational beliefs of the church. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are also not included.
Criteria for inclusion on the list are those authors that have received worldwide recognition for their contributions in religious literature. Areas of specialty and denominations are added according to consensus, as needed. Current specialties include the following:
The list of authors is categorized according to denomination.
African-American Protestants
- Jupiter Hammon (1711–died c. 1806) – former slave and poet from New York
- Phyllis Wheatley (1753–died c. 1784) – former slave and poet from Boston, Massachusetts and Senegal, Africa
Anabaptists
- Petr Chelčický (born c. 1390–died c. 1460) – 15th century political leader from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic)
Baptists
- John Ankerberg (born 1945) – apologist from Chicago, Illinois
- Alfred James Broomhall
- Benjamin Broomhall (1829–1911) – missionary and administrator of the China Inland Mission from Bayswater, London
- Marshall Broomhall
- John Bunyan (1628–1688) – allegorical author of The Pilgrim's Progress from London, England
- Bob Cornuke (born 1951) – biblical archeologist from Colorado Springs, Colorado
- Martha Foster Crawford – writer and missionary
- Thomas Dixon (1864–1946) – novelist, playwright, state legislator, and author of The Clansman from North Carolina
- John Gill (1697–1771) – biblical scholar and expository author from Horsleydown, Southwark, England
- Billy Graham (1918–2018) – radio, television, and crusade evangelist from Charlotte, North Carolina
- David Jeremiah (born 1941) – radio and television evangelist, pastor, and expository author from El Cajon, California
- Adoniram Judson (1788–1850) – missionary to Burma; translated the Bible from English to Burmese
- Benjamin Keach (1640–1704) – author of scriptural parables and catechism from Southwark, South London, England
- William Garrett Lewis
- John Piper
- Bernard Ramm – Christian apologetics
- John Rippon
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon
- Rick Warren
Church of God (Anderson, Indiana)
- Daniel Sidney Warner – Church of God minister and founder of Gospel Trumpet Flyer
Church of Ireland
- Jakob Abbadie – Swiss writer
Congregationalists
- John Adams – religious worker whose poems speak of "flaming piety"
- Thomas Binney – Congregationalist theologian and poet
- Samuel Dyer
- Jonathan Edwards
- William Ellis – missionary who wrote Madagascar Revisited
- George MacDonald – Congregationalist pastor
- John Milton – Paradise Lost
- Marilynne Robinson – Gilead, 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner
- John Updike – Rabbit, Run, raised Lutheran, later belonged to Congregationalist and Episcopalian congregations
Free Church of Scotland
- Horatius Bonar – minister in the Free Church of Scotland and a poet
- Alexander Campbell Cheyne – Scottish ecclesiastical historian
- Henry Drummond – Free Church of Scotland writer
- George Adam Smith – books concerning the Bible
Lutheran
- Mikael Agricola – founding figure in Finnish literature
- Marva Dawn – theological writing
- Garrison Keillor – humorist
- John Warwick Montgomery – Christian apologetics
- Hallgrímur Pétursson – priest, poet, and hymnodist
Methodists
- William F. Albright – Methodist archaeologist who writes on Bible archaeology
- Esther E. Baldwin – missionary, teacher, translator, writer, editor
- Julia Colman – temperance educator, activist, editor, writer
- Edward Eggleston – Methodist minister and author
- Arno Clemens Gaebelein – Methodist minister and writer
- Annie Ryder Gracey – author and missionary
- Phoebe Knapp – Methodist hymnwriter
- Augustus Baldwin Longstreet – Methodist minister and humorist
- Mary A. Miller – Methodist historian, editor, and publisher
- William Williams Pantycelyn – Methodist hymnwriter
- George Whitefield
Brethren
- K.V. Simon – poet from India
Pentecostal
- Benny Hinn – preacher and author
- Jimmy Swaggart - preacher and author
Plymouth Brethren
- Arthur Charles Gook – English to Icelandic translations of literature, poems, and hymns
Presbyterian
- Pearl S. Buck – parents were missionaries, but she later left the religion
- Elisabeth Elliot – missionary
- Johnny Hart – cartoonist, on the evangelical end of Presbyterianism
- Emrys ap Iwan – Welsh Presbyterian minister who wrote for newspapers, etc.
- Timothy Keller – Senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, author of The Reason for God.
- Catherine Marshall – author of "Christy" and "A Man Called Peter"
- John Ortberg – Senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, author of If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat.
- Robert Louis Stevenson – wrote on religious matters at times
- Thomas Vincent
- Andrew Young – poet and botanical writer (later an Anglican priest)
- Frederick Buechner – novelist, theologian, and minister
Puritan
Reformed Church
- Nicolaas Beets – novelist and poet
- Corrie ten Boom – memoirist
- Edward Tanjore Corwin – history writing
- James Isaac Good – history writing
- Martha Hooper Blackler Kalopothakes – missionary, journalist, translator
- Andrew Murray – religious and inspirational writing
United Church of Canada
- Ralph Connor – Canadian clergyman and bestselling novelist
Other
- Alice May Douglas – author of poetry, juvenile literature, non-fiction; newspaper editor
- C. S. Lewis - British writer and lay theologian.
- E. W. Kenyon
- Edith Jessie Archibald – suffragist and writer
- Ethel Barrett – Christian author and children's author
- Mary Charlotte Ward Granniss Webster Billings – writer, activist, hymn writer, evangelist, missionary
- Ted Dekker – bestselling novelist
- Henry Grattan Guinness
- Lillian Resler Keister Harford – church organizer, editor, author
- Joshua Harris – Calvinist pastor and writer
- Jerry B. Jenkins – co-author of the Left Behind books and Gil Thorp comics
- Jakob Jocz – third generation Hebrew Christian
- Hal Lindsey – end-times author
- Josh McDowell – Christian writer
- Ra'ouf Mus'ad – Protestant playwright of Coptic ancestry
- J. Dwight Pentecost
- Legh Richmond – The Dairyman's Daughter
- Geraldine Taylor
- Hudson Taylor
- Kenneth N. Taylor – linked to Moody Bible Institute
- Daniel Sidney Warner – Holiness author and Reformation minister
- Ravi Zacharias – evangelical writer from India