The Episcopalian Church USA has a priest who is also a Muslim.

On being Christian and Muslim
an interview with the Rev. Dr.
Ann Holmes Redding
By Norah M. Joslyn

A little more than a year
ago, the Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding found herself
at the doorway of a new
world, Islam, and wasn’t quite sure how she got there.
As she reflected on
her journey, she realized Jesus was her guide. Now both a
practicing Muslim
and an Episcopal priest, Redding shares her thoughts on how the
two faiths
inform each other.
“The way I understand Jesus is compatible with Islam,”
Redding explains, “and
although there are Christians and Muslims who think I
must convert from one to
the other, the more I go down this path the
more
excited I am about both Christianity
and Islam.”
Redding credits her
upbringing for early
exposure to interfaith relationships. She
was
baptized by an African Methodist Episcopal
minister but the only
Sunday school she
attended was Episcopal. She attended a
Unitarian youth
group in high school when
the Episcopal group disbanded. She
was
influenced by a cooperative community near
where she grew up that was
comprised of
mostly Quakers, Unitarians and Jews. Her
father was a
prominent civil rights lawyer
whose work brought him and the family into
contact with people of many faith
backgrounds.
After an introduction to a
Muslim prayer practice in early 2006, Redding knew
she had been wrestling
with a call to Islam. She approached a Muslim woman and
told her so, and the
woman replied, “Christianity has been good to you and you to
it, and you
don’t have to choose.” That made all the difference in Redding’s choice
to
practice Islam.
“What Islam has done for me is shed this light on
Christianity and shown for me
anew what a glorious way Christianity is,” she
explains.
“We Christians, in struggling to express the beauty and dignity of
Jesus and the
pattern of life he offers, describe him as the ‘only begotten
son of God.’ That’s how
wonderful he is to us. But that is not literal,” she
continues. “When we say Jesus is
the only begotten one, we are saying he’s
unique in some way. Islam says the same
thing. He’s the only human aside from
Adam who is directly created by God, and
he’s different from Adam because he
has a human mother. So there’s agreement—this
person is unique in his
relationship to God.” Christianity also says that we are all part
of the
household of God and in essence brothers and sisters of Jesus. Muslims
take
the figurative language of “only begotten,” make it concrete and
contradict it: God
“neither begets nor is begotten.”
“I agree with both
because I do want to say that Jesus is unique, and for me, Jesus
is my
spiritual master,” Redding says. “Muslims say Mohammed is the most
perfect.
Well, it depends on who you fall in love with. I fell in love with
Jesus a long time ago
and I’m still in love with Jesus but I’d like to think
my relationship with Jesus has
matured.”
She added that what Islam does is
take Jesus out of the way of her relationship
with God, “but it doesn’t drop
Jesus. I was following Jesus and he led me into Islam,
and he didn’t drop me
off at the door. He’s there, too.”
“It’s a family situation,” Redding says.
“When you put the three Abrahamic faiths
(Christianity, Islam and Judaism)
together, you see so clearly that they work together
and belong next to each
other because they shine lights on each other all the time.”
Redding explains
that Abraham is the father figure who holds the three faiths
together. In the
Hebrew bible is the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. In Islam, the story
is
the same but it is Ishmael, not Isaac. In the Hebrew bible, Hagar, an Egyptian
slave,
gives birth to a son before Sarah does but Ishmael is written out of
the story. Christianity
has genealogies of Jesus that also try to redefine
the family. Islam reminds us that it
was Ishmael who was the firstborn and
restores that branch of the family.
“For me it’s so gloriously, wonderfully
paradoxical and very real,” Redding exclaims.
“The most powerful and moving
part of my life is moving back and forth between
worshiping with Christians
and Muslims. I am now connected to a group of people
who have always been
part of my family but whom I didn’t know.”
What about profession of faith?
How can the two coexist? Redding says if you
take your shahaddah (official
entrance into Islam), saying “there is no God but God
and Mohammed is the
prophet of God,” with the intention of becoming a Muslim,
accurately and
before at least one witness, you’re a Muslim. That does not
contradict
anything in Christianity. She says the reverse is true for her;
the renunciations and
affirmations Christians make at their baptism do not
contradict anything in Islam.
“The renunciations [of Satan, evil powers and
sinful desires] any Muslim can say,”
Redding says. “The affirmations are
tough for any Christian who is at all progressive
because there are certain
of us [Christians] who have taken these and made them in
to something like
fraternity hazing—you have to say these words in order to be part
of the
club. I see them as taking Jesus as the human example to follow toward
God.
Most Muslims see Mohammed rather than Jesus as the pattern of life to
follow, and
I do not see him as the only example. I just am not willing to
put ‘onlys’ in front of all
those affirmations about Jesus.
People have
seen a transformation in Redding. The words she has heard are,
“you just
glow.” She says it’s as if someone took the shade off her and everything
is
illuminated.
“We are called to be childlike and yet become adults and
fully human beings,”
Redding says. “For me to become a human being
means
to identify solely with the will of God.
Islam gives me the tools to do that.
Some of us
just need more tools.”
“Interfaith work is not just sitting in
a room
with a group of people and acknowledging our
similarities and
differences. For me, interfaith
work happens when I respect others and
God
enough to reexamine my own beliefs.” Redding
explains. “It means
saying to God, ‘I love and
trust you enough to see what happens when
we
put these pieces together.’ Let’s see how big
God really
is.”

Redding worships with the Al Islam Center of Seattle and at St.
Clement’s, Seattle. She
has a Ph.D. in New Testament and recently accepted a
position to teach graduate courses in
theology at Seattle University. She
wants to start an institute for the study of the Abrahamic
faith traditions,
a supportive environment where people can look at Judaism, Islam
and
Christianity together and see how they reflect on each other, where they
can explore their
own tradition and others without an agenda to convert.