Is Reza Aslan Anti-Christian? [View all]
The author of Zealot explains his views on faith and historical scholarship
By Belinda Luscombe, July 30, 2013
Reza Aslan, whose exchange with a Fox news anchor this week sparked a lot of outrage, used to be a Christian. As he discusses both in his book and his interview with Time this week, he “gave his life to Christ” at a camp when he was 15. Born in Iran to a Muslim family, his mother and sister also subsequently became Christians. His mum is still a believer.
While studying religion at university however, Aslan came to the conclusion that the claims of the Bible didn’t hold up. Nevertheless, as a scholar of religions, he kept studying it; his new book Zealot is partly a result of all that scholarly inquiry.
It’s certainly true that the book disputes many of the New Testament’s teachings. Zealot’s premise is that the life of an ordinary man sparked the world’s biggest religion. Aslan’s contention is that Jesus had no intention of starting a religion and neither did his disciples. The real brains behind the creation of Christianity, suggests Aslan, was Paul. The Christ “is an invention of the early church.”
This sounds like a position that undermines Christianity, yet in the extended answers from TIME’s interview below, Aslan treads gingerly around other core Christian beliefs. Here are his own words on faith and religious scholarship, and how to differentiate the two.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/07/30/is-reza-aslan-anti-christian/
The link has part of the interview. The entire interview is behind a paywall and in the print edition.
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