List of noted children of clergy is a list of notable persons concerned with individuals whose status as a child of a cleric is important, preferably critical, to their fame or significance.
Western religions
Christian
Pre-Schism
Saint Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland, son of a British deacon and grandson of a priest
Catholic
George Bariț – son of an Eastern-rite Catholic priest who once trained for the priesthood.[1]
Amy Coney Barrett, United States Supreme Court justice, daughter of a Catholic deacon.[2]
Chester A. Arthur – President of the United States, son of a Baptist minister.
John Ashcroft – father was an Assemblies of God congregation minister.
Jane Austen – English novelist; daughter of George Austen an Anglican clergyman. Her maternal grandfather and her brother James, were also clergymen.
Christopher Awdry – English author who continued The Railway Series of books featuring Thomas the Tank Engine first created by his father Rev. Wilbert Awdry
John Logie Baird – was a Scottish engineer, innovator, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, was the youngest of four children of the Reverend John Baird, the Church of Scotland's minister for the local St Bride's Church and Jessie Morrison Inglis, the orphaned niece of a wealthy family of shipbuilders from Glasgow.[24][16]
Cleanth Brooks – literary critic who wrote Community, Religion, and Literature: Essays (1995).
Gordon Brown – former prime minister of Great Britain, son of a Church of Scotland minister.
Measha Brueggergosman – Canadian soprano, opera singer and concert artist; her father is a Baptist pastor.
Walter Brueggemann – influential Old Testament scholar and writer during the early 21st century. He often speaks of the influence of his father, a German Evangelical pastor. Published over 100 books.[27]
Jamal Harrison Bryant – founder/Pastor of Empowerment Temple AME Church Baltimore MD, author of "World War Me: How to Win the War I Lost", is the son of Bishop John Richard Bryant of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Jeremy Camp – contemporary Christian musician. His father is pastor at Harvest Chapel, a Calvary Chapel church in Lafayette, IN.
Bart Campolo – First humanist chaplain at the University of Southern California; an American humanist speaker and writer he is the son of Tony Campolo.
Wilf Carter – widely acknowledged as the father of Canadian country music, was Canada's first country music star, inspiring a generation of young Canadian performers. Son of a Baptist minister,
Donald Grant Creighton – university teacher, noted historian, and author was the son of the Reverend William Black Creighton, a Methodist.[37]
Rivers Cuomo – lead vocalist, guitarist, keyboardist, and songwriter of the rock band Weezer, was raised in a Zen Buddhist Center, which his father left to become a Pentecostal preacher.[38]
Silas Dodu – Ghanaian physician and academic, son of Edward Maxwell Dodu, a Presbyterian Minister who served as the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana from 1955 to 1958
Florence Dolphyne – Ghanaian academic and linguist, first female professor in Ghana, daughter of a Methodist minister
Aretha Franklin – "The Queen of Soul" and daughter of a Baptist minister.
James Oliphant Fraser – businessman and political figure in Newfoundland, one of ten sons and a daughter born to the first Presbyterian minister on the island.[49]
Andrew Henderson Leith Fraser, British officer in colonial India, son of a Protestant minister, Alexander Garden Fraser (1814–1904).
Bob Hawke – Australian Prime Minister, son of a Congregationalist minister
Lee Hays – American folk-singer and songwriter, with The Weavers. Son of William Hays, a Methodist minister, he was concerned with overcoming racism, inequality, and violence in society.
Anne Heche – American actress. Father was a Baptist minister and church organist.[58]
Anne Hutchinson – born Anne Marbury (1591–1643), Puritan spiritual adviser, mother of 15, and an important participant in the Free Grace Controversy that shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638.
Bill Hwang - Co-founder of the Grace and Mercy Foundation, a charitable organization with more than US$500 million (2018) in assets. An investor, Hwang lost US$20 billion over the course of ten days in late March 2021.
William Arthur Irwin – distinguished Canadian journalist and diplomat, known as the man who made Maclean's, truly "Canada's National Magazine."[63]
Phil Jackson – former NBA player and coach; both parents were Assemblies of God ministers.[65] His older brother Chuck speculated years later that Phil threw himself passionately into sports because it was the only time that their very strict parents allowed Phil and his brothers to do what other children were doing.[66]
Wyclef Jean – Haitian-born rapper, musician and actor, who remains active in Haitian issues. Son of a Nazarene pastor.
Kevin Jennings – American educator, author, and administrator who started the nations' first gay-straight alliance together with a female student and published six books on gay rights and education.
Kelis – American musical artist. Father is a Pentecostal minister.
Leontine T. C. Kelly – retired Methodist bishop who won a Thomas Merton Award and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Daughter, sister, widow, mother, and mother-in-law of Methodist ministers.
Sam Kinison – comedian/Actor (musician?), son of a Pentecostal Preacher
Paper Lions Canadian indie rock band includes brothers John and Rob MacPhee, sons of Rev. Roger MacPhee, a Presbyterian minister.
John D. MacArthur – American businessman and philanthropist, son of a Baptist preacher.
Clarence Mackinnon – Canadian minister and academic who embraced Darwinism and played key role in the formation of the United Church of Canada in 1925.[72]
Preston Manning – Canadian Reform politician, son of Ernest Manning who was premier of Alberta and concurrent with his political career was an evangelist on radio with "Back to the Bible Hour."
W. S. Merwin – American poet, credited with over fifty books. Merwin's writing influence derived from his interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Son of a Presbyterian minister.
Kelly Minter – Christian singer-songwriter and author.
Marcus Mumford – American-born singer, songwriter, and producer best known as the lead singer of the British folk band Mumford & Sons. Parents until 2015 were leaders within the Vineyard Movement in the U.K.
Reinhold Neibuhr and H. Richard Niebuhr – Neo-orthodox American Protestant theologians. Sons of a minister in the Evangelical Synod of North America, now the United Church of Christ.
Donny Pauling – American former porn producer, now a Christian speaking publicly about what goes on behind the scenes. His father was a Pentecostal Church of God minister and currently a pastor of the Assembly of God church.[84]
Jaroslav Pelikan – Lutheran religious historian who converted to Russian Orthodoxy later in life.[85][86]
Katy Perry – American pop singer-songwriter, daughter of two pastors.
Nathan Phelps – Canadian author, speaker on religion and child abuse, and an LGBT advocate is the son of anti-gay American pastor Fred Phelps, who gained infamy though his picketing of military funerals and gay pride gatherings.
Helen Phillips – most known for opera, but also did interpretations of "Negro spirituals."
Henrik Pontoppidan – a Danish realist writer and Nobel Prize Laureate in 1917 and his brother Knud Pontoppidan a Danish psychiatrist and doctor were sons of a vicar and belonged to an old family of vicars and writers that had included the famous pietistic priest Erik Pontoppidan.
E. J. Pratt – "The leading Canadian poet of his time." The son of a Methodist minister who himself studied for the Ministry before pursuing an academic career.
Katharine Purvis – she wrote "When the saints are Marching in", originally a Christian hymn.[91]
Onésime Reclus – French geographer. Father minister in the French Reformed Church.
Elisée Reclus – French geographer, writer and anarchist. Father minister in the French Reformed Church
Erik Reece – American writer, the author of two books of nonfiction and writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where he teaches environmental journalism, writing, and literature. Son and grandson of a Baptist minister.
Cecil Rhodes – British born, was prominent in 19th century South African and Rhodesian politics.
Condoleezza Rice – United States' 66th Secretary of State, daughter of a Presbyterian minister.
John Scott Russell – Scottish civil engineer, naval architect and shipbuilder who built the Great Eastern his research gave birth to the modern study of solitons.
John A. Sanford – American Jungian analyst, writer and Episcopal priest. His father, grandfather, and two great-grandfathers were all Episcopal priests.
Dorothy L. Sayers – British crime novelist, playwright, translator and Christian apologist, daughter of Anglican priest
Frank Schaeffer – American author, film director, screenwriter and public speaker. Son of the late theologian, minister and author Francis Schaeffer.
Albert Schweitzer – Nobel peace prize in 1952, French theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. Father was a Lutheran minister.
F. R. Scott – Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert. Son of an Anglican priest, he helped found the first Canadian social democratic party.
Darcey Steinke – American novelist and essayist and daughter of a Lutheran minister and direct descendant on her mother's side of William Miller, a 19th-century preacher credited as the founder of the Millerites, the forerunner of the Seventh-day Adventists.
Paul Steinitz – served as a church organist and as a conductor performed St.Matthew Passion.[100]
David Thomas – Canadian comedian and actor, son of John E. Thomas, a pastor and later a professor of philosophy.
Ian Thomas – Canadian singer, songwriter, actor and author and younger brother to famed comedian and actor Dave Thomas.[104]
Norman Thomas – Socialist, ordained in Presbyterianism as had his father.[105]
Dorothy Thompson – American journalist and radio broadcaster, in 1939 recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Paul Tillich – German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher.
James Tytler – Scottish apothecary and the editor of the second edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Tytler became the first person in Britain to steer a hot air balloon.
Vincent van Gogh – Missionary himself before becoming an artist. A pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism.
Cornel West – American philosopher, academic, activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He was the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D. in philosophy.
David Rosen – Served as Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1979–85) and serves as the Director of the American Jewish Committee's Department of Interreligious Affairs. A son of Rabbi Dr. Kopul Rosen, as are his brothers Jeremy Rosen and Michael Rosen.
^Dombrowski, Dan (1 January 2015). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 18 March 2019. Retrieved 16 September 2016 – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
^Qvortrup, Matthew (2016). "In the Shadow of the Berlin Wall". Angela Merkel: Europe's Most Influential Leader. The Overlook Press. ISBN978-1468314083.