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.
[3] He worked as a research fellow from 1921 to 1927;[4][5] 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.
[6] 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).
[7]) Through the Landslaget for frilyndt kristendom and its journal, Fritt ord (Free Word), Schjelderup came in contact with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, founder of the German Faith Movement.
[10] But in a book published in 1935, På vei mot hedenskapet (On the Way to Paganism), he criticised the Nazi German politics of nationalism, militarism, racism and anti-Semitism which coloured the German Faith Movement,[11] and in 1936, after a coup toppled Hauer from its leadership, he decided, and stated as much in a newspaper article, that the political wing had gained the upper hand and it had ceased to be a religious movement.
[5] Shortly after the war he was ordained,[7] worked one year as a chaplain in Oslo, and was appointed by King Haakon VII of Norway and the Gerhardsen Cabinet as Bishop of Hamar in 1947.