World's First Muslim Christian (!?)

Excerpted from FirstThings.com

This part seems totally logical:
As a matter of simple logic, the idea that Redding could be both Christian and Muslim is untenable. Boston College philosophy professor Peter Kreeft has described the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity as “the central Christian doctrine.” And Frank Spina, an Episcopal priest and professor of Old Testament and biblical theology at Seattle Pacific University, was correct when he told the Seattle Times in response to Redding’s conversion: “The essence of Christianity was not that Jesus was a great rabbi or even a great prophet, but that he is the very incarnation of the God that created the world. . . . Christianity stands or falls on who Jesus is.”
On the other hand, the idea that Jesus is not divine is equally central to Islam. The Qur’an, which Muslims believe is the direct word of God, denies Jesus’ divinity multiple times. Sura 4:171 warns People of the Book (Christians and Jews) to “believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not ‘Three’—Cease! (it is) better for you!—Allah is only One God. Far is it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son.” Going beyond that, Sura 5:17 declares that “they indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary.” And Sura 5:73 denounces adherence to the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity as a form of disbelief.
This conflicting view of Jesus’ divinity is all one needs to know to understand that it is impossible to be Christian and Muslim at the same time. This doctrinal difference is anything but incidental: It goes to the two faiths’ very conceptions of the deity. A necessary part of being Christian is accepting that Jesus was divine. This is enshrined in the catechism of the Episcopal Church, which teaches that God the Son is part of the Holy Trinity. Likewise, a necessary part of being Muslim is denying Jesus’ divinity: The idea that Christ was God violates the tenet of tawhid (the oneness of God) that is central to both the Qur’an and Muhammad’s teachings.

What seems perfectly logical and reasonable to you is a point of near mockery to other more "tolerant" and "evolved" sensibilities of the absurd:
The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, who was ordained in 1984 and has been affiliated with St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle for the past six years, became Muslim in early 2006. Redding first became intrigued by Islam in the fall of 2005, when a local Muslim leader spoke at her cathedral. Her interest deepened after an interfaith class the following spring. Redding told the Seattle Times that her mother died around that time, and she could not cope with that death except by “total surrender to God.” In March 2006 she recited the shahada, the declaration of faith that makes one a Muslim.
When Redding went public with her conversion fifteen months later, in June 2007, she felt that she did not need to relinquish her position at St. Mark’s. “I am both Muslim and Christian,” Redding said. “I’m 100 percent both.”
Perhaps the true punchline to the joke ScappleFace made four years ago is how the Diocese of Olympia reacted. The diocese’s newspaper was actually the first to announce that Redding had become Muslim, and its bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, said that “he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting.”

This kind of soft theology will get people nowhere. Neither true Muslims nor true Christians are likely to learn anything from this sort of interfaith mingling.
The question is whether such doctrinal compromise actually creates interfaith opportunities. Not only is this approach unlikely to bolster interfaith activities, but it may actually undermine them. The available evidence suggests that interfaith dialogue is least effective when those engaging in it do not have their feet firmly planted in their own faith traditions. The point of interfaith dialogue is to learn about religions that are foreign to us—and an integral part of accomplishing this is being upfront about theological differences. When a church involved in interfaith dialogue soft-pedals Christian doctrine in the interest of painting a picture that appeals to its dialogue partners, its credibility can be undermined. A couple of years ago, I spoke with a member of a conservative church that had recently begun interfaith dialogue with a mosque. Before that, the mosque had dialogued with a more liberal church. Mosque leaders were pleased to have more conservative dialogue partners: They expressed satisfaction that “now we’ll get to see what Christians really think.”

So what's the point?
The highest purpose of interfaith dialogue is not to create some strange hybrid religion that reconciles two faiths that make competing truth claims. Rather, at its best, interfaith dialogue can help people build relationships of understanding, respect, and cooperation even though they adhere to faiths that cannot simultaneously be true.