Well, for me there's a lot. I did an MA in philosophy of religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and now I'm doing a PhD in Process Studies at Claremont Lincoln University, with an aim of eventually getting hired on as a university professor somewhere (bad as the job prospects are these days, especially in academia). But in any case, knowing philosophy and religion in-depth is more-or-less my job description.
First and foremost is
Alfred North Whitehead. He was the father of modern process thought and Claremont is this philosophical school's Mecca. Of course this also means I admire a great deal of his followers, the most prominent of which include
Charles Hartshorne,
John Cobb, and
David Ray Griffin. I could name many others in this tradition, of course.
Then there's the pragmatists and neo-pragmatists.
William James,
John Dewey,
Hilary Putnam, and
Richard Rorty are all awesome (although Rorty is much-maligned).
I also love
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest whose book
The Phenomenon of Man got me interested enough in religion for me to want to make a career out of it in the first place.
Emile Durkheim deserves to be mentioned as well. Actually, Durkheim is more of a sociologist than a philosopher, but he fits plenty of philosophy into his sociology.
I've recently become interested in
Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose book
Truth and Method explores the nature of human understanding.
Judith Butler is my favorite postmodern, post-structuralist thinker.
Lastly -- and these are more theologians than philosophers -- I really appreciate the work of
Ivone Gebara and
Chung Hyun Kyung.
I could go into why I like each thinker, but I'd be writing all night, and it's late already.
