Kristian Vilhelm Koren Schjelderup, Jr.

Kristian Vilhelm Koren Schjelderup (18 January 1894 – 28 March 1980) was a Norwegian Lutheran theologian, author, and bishop of the Diocese of Hamar in the Church of Norway from 1947 to 1964. He was noted as a warm-hearted and intellectual, liberal theologian.

He was born in Dybvåg as the son of bishop Kristian Vilhelm Koren Schjelderup and Henriette Nicoline Hassel. He had several brothers and sisters. His younger brother Harald Krabbe Schjelderup became a professor of psychology.

Kristian Schjelderup moved with his family to Kristiansand in 1903, where his father was appointed bishop in 1908. He graduated as Cand.theol. in 1918, and earned the Dr.theol. degree in 1923. He worked as a research fellow from 1921 to 1927; during this time, seeking to reconcile belief and knowledge in the modern world and inspired by Rudolf Otto, who he had come to know during a semester at the University of Marburg, he travelled to the Far East to study Hinduism and Buddhism. He also studied psychoanalysis with Oskar Pfister in Zürich and translated works by Sigmund Freud. In 1932 he and his brother Harald jointly published Über drei Haupttypen der religiösen Erlebnisformen und ihre psychologische Grundlage (On Three Major Types of the Form of the Religious Experience and their Psychological Bases). He published multiple articles, including a series on the historical origins of Christianity, later published in book form as Hvem Jesus var og hvad kirken har gjørt ham til (Who Jesus was and what the Church made of him) which criticised liberal theology for indecisiveness and aroused serious disagreements in the theology department of the university.

In 1928, Schjelderup applied for a position as vicar in the parish of Værøy and Røst, but although he was the only applicant, the Minister of Church Affairs, Sigvald Mathias Hasund, did not appoint him. However, a few years later he obtained a position at a research institute in Bergen, Christian Michelsens Institutt for Videnskap og Åndsfrihet. He was a pacifist from his youth onward.

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