Jesus is not just an object of faith; he also was a figure in history.

In his New York Times best-selling book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus Christ, Reza Aslan draws imaginatively on centuries of scholarship to present a portrait of Jesus as an unlettered Jewish peasant who emerged as a political revolutionary, a rebel against Rome and its representatives in Palestine, including the Temple priests. Dale Martin, a scholar of religion at Yale, calls the book “a serious presentation of one plausible portrait” of the person at the center of the New Testament story.

Aslan will present Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus on Thursday, February 13, at Elmhurst College.

As one of the most powerful voices of liberal Islam in the United States, Aslan explores the intricate interplay between faith and politics in the Muslim world, presenting Islam as an ever-evolving faith and culture that currently is in the midst of a cataclysmic internal battle for reform and modernization.

Aslan is a research associate at the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, a Middle East commentator for NPR’s Marketplace, and a Muslim affairs analyst for CBS News. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post and The Nation, and has appeared on Meet the Press, Hardball, The Daily Show, Real Time with Bill Maher and Nightline. His internationally acclaimed book No god but God: the Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam was praised by The New York Times as “grippingly narrated and thoughtfully examined … [a] literate, accessible introduction to Islam.”

Aslan’s talk will begin at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 13, in Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel on the Elmhurst campus. A book-signing will follow the lecture. Admission is $10 for the general public and free for Elmhurst College students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Tickets are available online or at the door. For more information, call (630) 617-3390.