Was Immanuel Kant a Christian?

[Cassius]

Basically, I've been researching this topic a little lately (for essay purposes) and what information I can find about his belief, or lack of it, seems either contradictory or plain confusing (thus befitting the man very well ). So, I now turn to the finest brains on the Atlas Forum for help in this hour of need

[windjammer]

Hmmmm, he supported the French Revolution, didn't he?

[TJ in Oregon]

I think he was an agnostic. He believed that if there was no God, men would need to make one up, but I don't think he ever came to a conclusion as to whether God was real or made up.

[anvi]

Yes, Kant was a Christian.  He was a critic of rational theology, but only for the purposes, as he himself put it, of showing the limits of reason in order to make room for faith.  Though he rejected authoritarian justifications for doing good, he defended the notion of human freedom as a regulative ideal that pointed the way to God.  And, he would ultimately come to defend the idea that human reason must think of the world as having a teleology.  Definitely a Christian, though not necessarily a rationalist theologians favorite kind of Christian.