I am both Muslim and Christian
(In Islam the Cross has a different meaning. In one Qu'ranic passage
Jesus figuratively or literally ascends from the cross and it is Judas that takes his place.)
Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.
On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.
She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim.
Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she's ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she's also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.
Different reactions.
Friends generally say they support her, while religious scholars are mixed: Some say that, depending on how one interprets the tenets of the two faiths, it is, indeed, possible to be both.
Said Kurt Fredrickson, director of the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. "The basic (question) would be: What do you do with Jesus?"
Christianity has mostly regarded Jesus as the son of God and God incarnate, both fully human and fully divine. Muslims, though they regard Jesus as a great prophet sent by God, whom God revealed himself to, born through a unique miracle and that he will return to world one day to vanquish evil but do not consider him the unique son of God.
The Muslim view of Jesus is not unheard of in Christianity and this was at one time the chief dispute in early Christian doctrine. At least half of early Christians even held a view that denied much more of the miraculous and unique nature of Jesus than Muslims currently adhere to. The view of Jesus as fully human, fully divine and eternal would become predominant but not universal.
Redding, as a theologian shared her perspective.
"People within one religion can't even agree on all the details', she said. "So why would I spend time to try to reconcile all of Christian belief with all of Islam?"
Redding, who will begin teaching the New Testament as a visiting assistant professor at Seattle University this fall, has a different analogy: "I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I'm both an American of African descent and a woman. I'm 100 percent (all of) these."
"At the most basic level, I understand the two religions to be compatible. That's all I need."
She says she felt an inexplicable call to become Muslim, and to surrender to God — the meaning of the word "Islam."
"It wasn't about intellect," she said. "All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.
"I could not not be a Muslim."
Officials at the national Episcopal Church headquarters said it's up to the local bishop to decide whether such a priest could continue in that role.
Redding's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, says he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting. Her announcement, first made through a story in her diocese's newspaper, hasn't caused much controversy yet, he said.
But Redding has been embraced by leaders at the Al-Islam Center of Seattle, the Muslim group she prays with.
"Islam doesn't say if you're a Christian, you're not a Muslim," said programming director Ayesha Anderson. "Islam doesn't lay it out like that."
Anticipating that most of the resistance will be political and based upon false impressions rather than (esoteric or informed) religious ideology Anderson sees the warmth and acceptance as a positive. "I think this thing that's happened to me can be a sign of hope," she said.
Finding a religion that fit
The oldest of three girls, Redding grew up in Pennsylvania in a high-achieving, intellectual family. Her father was one of the lawyers who argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that desegregated the nation's public schools. Her mother was in the first class of Fulbright scholars.
Though her parents weren't particularly religious, they had her baptized and sent her to an Episcopal Sunday school. She has always sensed that God existed and God loved her, even when things got bleak.
Redding is 55 and single is a classically trained singer, and has sung at jazz nights at St. Mark's. She graduated from Brown University, earned master's degrees from two seminaries and received her Ph.D. in New Testament from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She felt called to the priesthood and was ordained in 1984.
As much as she loves her church, she has always challenged it. She calls Christianity the "world religion of privilege." She has never believed in original sin. And for years she struggled with the nature of Jesus' divinity.
She found a good fit at St. Mark's, coming to the flagship of the Episcopal Church in Western Washington in 2001. She was in charge of programs to form and deepen people's faith until March this year when she was one of three employees laid off for budget reasons. The dean of the cathedral said Redding's exploration of Islam had nothing to do with her layoff.
Ironically, it was at St. Mark's that she first became drawn to Islam.
In fall 2005, a local Muslim leader gave a talk at the cathedral, then prayed before those attending. Redding was moved. As he dropped to his knees and stretched forward against the floor, it seemed to her that his whole body was involved in surrendering to God.
Then in the spring, at a St. Mark's interfaith class, another Muslim leader taught a chanted prayer and led a meditation on opening one's heart. The chanting appealed to the singer in Redding; the meditation spoke to her heart. She began saying the prayer daily.
In March 2006, she said her shahada — the profession of faith. She became a Muslim.
Before she took the shahada, she read a lot about Islam. Afterward, she learned from local Muslim leaders, including those in Islam's largest denomination — Sunni — and those in the Sufi mystical tradition of Islam. She began praying with the Al-Islam Center.
Around that time, her mother died, and then "I was in a situation that I could not handle by any other means, other than a total surrender to God," she said.
There were moments when practicing Islam seemed like coming home.
In Seattle's Episcopal circles, Redding had mixed largely with white people. "To walk into Al-Islam and be reminded that there are more people of color in the world than white people." she said.
She found the discipline of praying five times a day — one of the five pillars of Islam that all Muslims are supposed to follow — gave her the deep sense of connection with God that she yearned for.
It came from "knowing at all times I'm in between prayers." She likens it to being in love, constantly looking forward to having "all these dates with God. ... Living a life where you're remembering God intentionally, consciously, just changes everything."
Friends who didn't know she was practicing Islam told her she glowed.
Aside from the established sets of prayers she recites in Arabic fives times each day, Redding says her prayers are neither uniquely Islamic nor Christian. They're simply her private talks with God or Allah — she uses both interchangeably. "It's the same person, praying to the same God."
In many ways, she says, "coming to Islam was like coming into a family with whom I'd been estranged."
A shared beginning
Indeed, Islam, Christianity share a common belief in one God, and there are similar stories in their holy texts. The Quran makes reference to the Bible as the "Word of Allah" and Muslims accept a universal covenant with God, announced by Jesus and the Prophet Mohammad. Muslims believe as Christians do that God revealed himself to Jesus.
She noted that "Allah" is Arabic for the word God just as "God" is an English word, one that predates Christianity.
Muslims believe in Jesus' birth to the Virgin Mary, that he was a messenger of God, that he ascended to heaven alive and that he will come back at the end of time to destroy evil.
But there are differences, too.
Muslims regard the Quran as the word of God, delivered through the angel Gabriel to Mohammed. While they believe the Old Testament and the Gospels include revelations from God, they believe those revelations, they believe the Gospels have been misinterpreted and the Old Testament or Torah in particular has been mishandled by humans.
Most significantly, Muslims and Christians disagree over the divinity of Jesus.
They do not believe in the Trinity, in the divinity of Jesus.
For many Christians, belief in Jesus' divinity lie at the heart of the faith, as does the belief that there is one God who consists of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Redding's views, even before she embraced Islam, were more interpretive than literal.
She believes the Trinity is an idea about God and cannot be taken literally.
She does not believe Jesus and God are the same, but rather that God is more than Jesus.
She believes Jesus is the son of God insofar as all humans are the children of God, and that Jesus is divine, just as all humans are divine — because God dwells in all humans.
What makes Jesus unique, she believes, is that out of all humans, he most embodied being filled with God and identifying completely with God's will.
She considers Jesus her savior. At times of despair, because she knows Jesus suffered and overcame suffering, "he has connected me with God," she said.
Matter of interpretation
Many religious scholars understand Redding's thinking.
While a popular but not uniform Christian view is that Jesus is God and that he came to Earth and took on a human body, other Christians believe his divinity means that he embodied the spirit of God in his life and work, said Eugene Webb, professor emeritus of comparative religion at the University of Washington.
Webb says it's possible to be both Muslim and Christian: "It's a matter of interpretation. But a lot of people on both sides do not believe in interpretation. "
Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky, agrees with Webb, and adds that Islam tends to be a little more flexible. Muslims can have faith in Jesus, he said, as long as they believe in Mohammed's message.
Islam expressly accepts that Christians are people of God and that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. Muslims also believe in the other miracles in the life of Jesus including the Resurrection. Acceptance of Jesus as being a Savior in fundamental to Islam.
Other scholars are skeptical.
Christian scholar Neil McKinley expressed a distinction that he says is difficult even for Christians. “We know that the only one living and true God is. It’s on account of the things God has created and His upkeep of them that we know that the one living and true God is. ‘
“Now then, here’s where it gets difficult... When we carefully search the Scriptures to find out about the nature of God, we discover, to quote the Westminister Confession of Faith, that ‘In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity…’ So, the nature of God is three persons of equal unity. Which is to say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of the same substance… Note, therefore, that God is three Persons in unity.”
Redding knows there are some Christians and Muslims who will not accept her as both.
"I don't care," she says. "They can't take away my baptism." And as she understands it, once she's made her profession of faith to become a Muslim, no one can say she isn't that, either.
While she doesn't rule out that one day she may choose one or the other, it's more likely "that I'm going to be 100 percent Christian and 100 percent Muslim when I die."
Deepened spirituality
These days, Redding usually carries a headscarf with her wherever she goes so she can pray five times a day.
On Fridays, she prays with about 20 others at the Al-Islam Center. On Sundays, she prays in church, usually at St. Clement's of Rome in the Mount Baker neighborhood.
One thing she prays for every day: "I pray not to cause scandal or bring shame upon either of my traditions."
Being Muslim has given her insights into Christianity, she said. For instance, because Islam regards Jesus as human, and divinely inspired, it reinforces for her that "we can be like Jesus. There are no excuses."
Doug Thorpe, who served on St. Mark's faith-formation committee with Redding, said he's trying to understand all the dimensions of her faith choices. But he saw how it deepened her spirituality. And it spurred him to read the Quran and think more deeply about his own faith.
He believes Redding is being called. She is, "by her very presence, a bridge person," Thorpe said. "And we desperately need those bridge persons."
In Redding's car, she has hung up a cross she made of clear crystal beads. Next to it, she has dangled a heart-shaped leather object etched with the Arabic symbol for Allah.
"For me, that symbolizes who I am," Redding said. "I look through Jesus and I see Allah."
*Non-religious historians generally assert that that the similarity of the Qu'ran and the Bible stems from shared myths, history, culture and conditions in the Near East, with stories freely exchanging and being used to create a variety of related religious narratives. Jesus' role barely settled after Nicea and Arian persistence, the nascent movement around the Prophet Mohammad took the most accommodating view of Jesus, according him a similar status to Christians without jeopardizing the core monotheism or hazarding the divisive arguments on the Trinitarian/Unitarian concept that Christians would struggle with for centuries.
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UNDERSTANDING CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES OF JESUS,
A PRIMER ON 'CHRISTOLOGY'
Some theologians find the message of Jesus to be of primary importance. For others the man is more important than the message,- and the interpretation of that status of Jesus has kept theologians busy for centuries. What is his relationship to man? How many Gods are there and was he human? Was he divine? Was he both? And what does it mean to be either or both?
Savior, Christ, King, Son of God
Most Christians believe that, as the Messiah, Jesus was designated as Savior of humanity. The Christian concept of the Messiah is that he rejects the old covenant, denounces much of what has come before him, denounces virtually all of his immediate contemporary leaders of faith, and announces a new universal faith based upon his teachings. The context of Jesus' message thus defines him and sets him apart. He is not part of a religious tradition but a singular figure.
Another central status of Jesus is that of embodiment of redemption, again as Savior of the world and of our own lives. Jesus' life on earth is emblematic of the Embodiment of the Christian belief that, through the life, death and resurrection there is the eventual delivery of humanity from evil. Sinning and erring humans can be reconciled to God and goodness and are thereby offered salvation.
The title "Messiah" means the designated (or anointed.) The Greek translation Χριστός Christos) is the source of the English word Christ. God chooses or designates Jesus.
Other titles such as King or King of Kings receives little use in actual biblical scripture. It is a designation that is implied by the crown of thorns to jeer Jesus by his enemies and tormentors. It seems that in Timothy where the title "King of Kings" is used, that God (the Father) is being mentioned and not Jesus himself. Most directly it is used in Revelations- the King of Kings refers to the future prophecy of a victorious Jesus, God and good over evil, thus Jesus as King it is an announcement of a faith and hope.
Jesus is usually seen as the Son of God despite the fact that the New Testament according to Luke and Matthew quotes Jesus referring to himself as the Son of Man in several places. Son of Man was an ancient honorific title, with pre-Biblical use in Mesopotamia. It is often but not always used to refer to humanity as a whole. This has naturally caused the debate- is Jesus symbolic of man? If are the Gospels asserting their symbolism in the text itself? If not, is "Son of Man" being used to to pointedly dispute the divinity of Jesus? Luke and Matthew apparently did not foresee the problems the phrase's use would pose to later-day theologians.
Trinitarianism
Trinitarianism forwards the principle of the Christian Godhead as one God in three manifestations: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (the Spirit of Goodness that has multiple interpretations).
Non Trinitarianism
NonTrinitarianism does not define God in terms of three divine persons. Some believe that Jesus is not, or at least was not always, God. Others see Jesus as God, but not distinct from the Father or Spirit, often describing those as merely changes in modes of existence.
Some Liberal Christians generally consider Jesus to have been an ordinary man only. Some Liberal Christians believe that miraculous and prophetic events in Jesus' life were not historical. They find a metaphorical meaning in what they consider symbolic or to some fictitious accounts of his life. Jesus' relationship with God is described in widely diverse views within this group.
In Antiquity views of the Nature of Jesus
Sporadically in the Middle Ages, and again following the Reformation until today, differing views existed concerning the Godhead.
These views may be generally classified into:
Ancient examples include the Gnostics, whom generally disbelieved the reality of Christ's human flesh. An example of the opposite view, the Arians considered Jesus a creature and thus substantially different from the Father.
Present day views of the Nature of Jesus
Jesus as a created being include Jehovah's Witnesses; Unitarians, descendants of Reformation era Socinians, view Jesus as never more than human; Latter-day Saints accept the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as separate divine personages that have the common purpose of salvation and eternal life for mankind.
Modalists, such as many Pentecostals, regard God as a single person, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit considered modes or roles by which the unipersonal God expresses himself.
Nestorianism teaches that Jesus was two persons, rather than one, rejecting the unity of Jesus' natures.
Docetism, conversely, teaches that Jesus' humanity was merely an illusion, and instead he is understood as purely divine. This view does not teach the incarnation or the mortal death of Jesus by crucifixion, and understands the resurrection in significantly different terms.
Christians predominantly profess that Jesus assumed his humanity with the Incarnation. Fully human, Jesus possessed a human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and a human body.
In his human nature, Jesus had limited human knowledge, exercised in human conditions- increasing from experience and Revelation (when God revealed himself to Jesus). Human wisdom allowed Jesus to enjoy in his human knowledge the eternal plans he had come to reveal.
The Council of Constantinople professed that Jesus possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human, and his human will submits to his divine will.
Christ as the Word, The Logos
Finally there is the idea of Christ as the "logos" or word. Logos Christology has its roots not only in the prologue to the Gospel of John but also in (Greek and Near Eastern) philosophy.
Christology itself is inextricably rooted in philosophy as much as the Scripture itself. No figure is so central to the notion of Logos Christology. Justin did not interpret the Bible apart from philosophy and he brought non-Scriptural notions to bear, some say to the point of synthesis. The universality of notions related to the power of the word, and the rational, experiential perspectives of Justin have brought his interpretations a great deal of modern popularity. The Logos lives, but what is it?
We’re provided with very useful information tracing the conception of the Logos from the word’s etymology (‘from the verb lego’) and (a nuanced) definition (‘it denotes the content, meaning, and rationality of a statement’) to its use by the pre-Socratic philosopher [c. 500 BC] Heraclitus who understood ‘the ultimate principle of the world’ as being ‘in the Logos… It is the law of the world, the impersonal world reason which guides and directs everything…’ This introduction of Logos into philosophy was then adopted by the Stoa around 300 BC who viewed it as ‘the rational principle according to which the world is built up and by which it is directed.’
This sets the stage for better understanding of Justin’s Logos Christology. Justin speaks of God begetting himself a certain rational power (Greek dynamis logike) and compares this to humans bringing forth a word, a word that is not separated from us nor does it diminish anything from us. Thus later Logos Christologists, particularly the scholar Noetus, were able to originate an embracing rational and experiential modality: oneness of God, the identity of creator and savior, the compatibility of transcendence and immanence in the image of God.
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