Roger Finke is a Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at The Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives. He currently serves as the President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

Roger Finke earned his doctorate in sociology at the University of Washington in 1984, and held faculty positions at Concordia College in Illinois, Loyola University of Chicago, and Purdue University before joining the faculty at The Pennsylvania State University in 2000.

Professor Finke co-authored two influential books with sociologist of religion Rodney Stark. The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy received the 1993 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion received the 2001 Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Section. These books extended what is often called the New Paradigm or the Rational Choice theoretical perspective, conceptualizing denominations as competitors in a religious market. The Churching of America was methodologically noteworthy for demonstrating the utility of quantitative historical data on church membership. Additionally, Finke is the co-author of The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-first Century and Places of Faith: A Road Trip Across America's Religious Landscape. He is author or co-author of numerous peer-reviewed articles appearing in edited volumes and journals such as American Sociological Review, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Review of Religious Research, Social Science Research, and The Sociological Quarterly.

Rodney Stark is an American sociologist of religion. He grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota in a Lutheran family. He spent time in the U.S. Army and worked as a journalist before pursuing graduate studies at The University of California, Berkeley. After teaching at the University of Washington for 32 years, Stark moved to Baylor University in 2004, where he is co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is an advocate of the application of the Rational choice theory in the sociology of religion, which he calls the theory of religious economy.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, Stark worked with William Sims Bainbridge on the Stark-Bainbridge theory of religion, and co-wrote the books The Future of Religion (1985) and A Theory of Religion (1987) with Bainbridge. Nowadays their theory, which aims to explain religious involvement in terms of rewards and compensators, is seen as a precursor of the more explicit recourse to economic principles in the study of religion as later developed by Laurence Iannaccone and others.

Volker Finke (born March 24, 1948 in Nienburg, Lower Saxony) is a German football manager and former player. He managed SC Freiburg from July 1991 to May 2007. This made him the longest-serving manager in the history of professional football in Germany. Until 1990, Finke worked as a sports and social studies teacher at the Albert Schweitzer school in his hometown of Nienburg.

Volker Finke's first club was TSV Havelse until 1969. After that he moved to Hannoverscher SC, where he stayed until 1975.

In 1975, Finke started his career as a coach at TSV Stelingen. He led the club to five promotions, after which he returned to TSV Havelse, where he stayed until 1990. He led the club up the German second division, which was the best position in the club's history. After one season in SC Norderstedt, near Hamburg, he finally changed to SC Freiburg in 1991. There he made them rise from the second German league to the first German league in 1993, 1998 and 2003, as well as the qualification for the UEFA Cup in 1995 and 2001.

Roger Dean Miller (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs. His most recognized tunes included the chart-topping country/pop hits "King of the Road", "Dang Me" and "England Swings", all from the mid-1960s Nashville sound era.

After growing up in Oklahoma and serving in the United States Army, Miller began his musical career as a songwriter in the late 1950s, penning such hits as "Billy Bayou" and "Home" for Jim Reeves and "Invitation to the Blues" for Ray Price. He later started a recording career and reached the peak of his fame in the late-1960s, but continued to record and tour into the 1990s, charting his final top 20 country hit "Old Friends" with Willie Nelson in 1982. Later in his life, he wrote the music and lyrics for the 1985 Tony-award winning Broadway musical Big River, in which he also acted.

Miller died from lung cancer in 1992, and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame three years later. His songs continued to be recorded by younger artists, with covers of "Tall, Tall Trees" by Alan Jackson and "Husbands and Wives" by Brooks & Dunn, each reaching the number one spot on country charts in the 1990s. The Roger Miller Museum in his home town serves as a tribute to Miller.

Dieter Hildebrandt (born May 23, 1927 in Bunzlau, Lower Silesia, Germany, now Boleslawiec, Poland) is a German Kabarett artist.

Born in Bunzlau, Lower Silesia, Hildebrandt attended school until he became a Flakhelfer of the Luftwaffe in World War II. After four months as a Flakhelfer Hildebrandt was conscripted to the German Wehrmacht.

According to documents released in June 2007, Hildebrandt may have joined the Nazi Party on 20 April 1944.

On 8 May 1945, Hildebrandt was taken captive by the United States Army, but was released a few months later.

In the years after the war, Hildebrandt finished his schooling and moved to Windischeschenbach in Bavaria. In 1948 he started studying theatre sciences in Munich. During that time he founded a student-performed cabaret show,“Die Namenlosen”, in Schwabing. After finishing his studies Hildebrandt worked with Sammy Drechsel to found and develop the “Münchner Lach und Schießgesellschaft”, a successful cabaret venue where he worked alongside cabaret artists such as Klaus Havenstein and Bruno Jonas. He stopped working with Drechsel in 1972, to work for radio and TV stations.