Jesus is a...what?



The head of the religion department at Luther College in Iowa recently argued that Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity, was in fact, a Muslim. “‘Was Jesus a Muslim?” asks Prof. Robert F. Shedinger in the beginning of a book he published this year entitled Was Jesus a Muslim? “I will answer with a very qualified yes.”

 

“Even as a Christian I have to answer yes to that,” said Shedinger, who is the head of the religion department at Luther College in Iowa. Shedinger also argued that Islam is a better fit for Jesus since it is not a religion but a “social justice movement.” “I had to rethink what Islam is… I came to the conclusion that it was a social justice movement and I think that’s who Jesus was in the first century so I conclude Jesus is more like a Muslim,” he said.The vast majority of scholars, historians, Muslims, and Christians date the birth of Islam to 622 ADE when the Prophet Muhammad claimed to have received visions that were eventually compiled into the Koran. Jesus, on the other hand, is believed to have existed more than 600 years earlier, at around 0 BCE.



Prof. Robert F. Shedinger of Luther College has an interesting idea as to who Jesus really was.