This is the fifth in a series of interviews with Philippe Kiener. These interviews are accompanied by quotes from my new book ‘To Right Every Wrong’, songs and suggestions for meditation, discussion and action.

One of my concerns is that Christians want to have a monopoly on Jesus. And I think we need to liberate Jesus from Christianity so that all people of goodwill can relate to who Jesus is and discover the … the dynamic revolutionary potential of the teachings of this carpenter- prophet from Palestine. I think it’s absolutely crucial. I often talk to Christians about Muslims discovering who Jesus is, and and the Beatitudes and how that can relate to their lives. But and they say all they have to become Christians to relate to Jesus. Well, that’s nonsense. We… Jesus called his disciples to be with him and he … he imposed no theological requirements on them at all. But he created a space for them to reflect critically on their engagement with the world and allowed them to debate who he was in relation to their struggle. Jesus had a much more open and tolerant and expansive way of engaging the world than most Christians to do. And most Christians have tried to kind of constrain Jesus, capture Jesus, and then even market Jesus. And I think we need to free Jesus from Christianity, so that anybody can relate to Jesus, and find for themselves the relevance of the radical teachings of the Masih or the Messiah

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