Atheists: Was Jesus a Marxist?
What do Jesus and Marx have in common, and what can an atheist get out of the New Testament?
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@LeBonkJordan
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
my left ear loved this video
@OctavioIV
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
What if Jesus and Marx were both fans of ice cream(?
@penandsword4386
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Jesus was a Myth.
@FatherAidan
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Very late to the party, but I want to make some comments about theism and ontology: I'm skeptical we can call Eagleton an atheist, as you do at 1:03. Eagleton certainly doesn't accept certain ontological and metaphysical claims about God that some theologians have defended–but he himself also argues that the best theologians (theists themselves) agree with his own metaphysical positions (a good summary of this: Marilyn Edelstein's "Thinking Otherwise about God, Marx, and Eagleton"). I think it's far more accurate to describe Eagleton as a theist with a distinctive and elusive theoontology. The argument goes along the lines of, "God doesn't exist, but is the cause of existence." This is not dissimilar to Paul Tillich's definition of God as the "Ground of Being." This is a subtley different claim than the claim that God has being qua being, but to call the position atheistic is erroneous. Perhaps I am missing some information in some book or interview where Eagleton claims "atheism" for himself… but I can't find anything so explicit on the internet, and what I have read by Eagleton seems fairly theistic to me. (His shatteringly good review of Dawkins' "The God Delusion" is a good example.) I bring all this up because atheist (counter-)apologists are often quick to make damaging and reductive assumptions about the ontologicla basis for theistic positions, and thus when they encounter nuanced and subtle thinkers like Eagleton, they label them wrongly. Again, open to some evidence I've simply missed, but in the absence of that, I think such mislabelling may be what has happened to Eagleton here. I'm tired of internet discourse gatekeeping about what belief in God must entail ontologically. It's ignorant of the long history of theological discourse, and ignorant of the philosophical diversity of modern Christians.
@Studiosmediamilk
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
When someone who studied theology tells you he's an atheist, you gotta repect that, because it is a decision made out of study, research and reason.
@lordstronghold5802
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
I'm not a "new Atheist" as I hate Sam Harris and that crowd but I'm really not convinced by the argument that Christianity has something to offer the moral philosophy of liberation movements today. The problem with the Marxist interpretation of Jesus' life is that's not representative of most, or even the dominant, interpretation of Christianity over its 2000 year history. The teleology of Marxism might like to appropriate the story of a major cultural figure (Jesus) to support its political project but that does not mean that Christianity is fundamentally a religion of peace or justice or liberation. Anyone who makes that claim has to reckon with a whole host of very horrendous events, including (but not limited to) the Crusades, the Inquisition, anti-Semitism (which happens to originate in Christianity – see any work by philosopher of religion Gil Anidjar), early modern witchcraft trials, manifest destiny, residential schools (industrial schools in the US), anti-LGBTQ2+ campaigns, etc. Just because someone can squint and see something "revolutionary" does not mean that Christian moral philosophy is actually going to help in addressing a problem.
@dallasjacob99
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Christian Marxist-Leninist here, All modern churches not under socialist, and democratic, and like the Unitarian Universalists are cringe, even the UU's are too liberal. You are saved by your faith, and your faith is shown by action. Your actions should be fueled by rational discernment, thus was given by the tree the knowledge, we all know what is right, and what is wrong. The chuch is more about collecting funds for theocracy, than it is about helping the poor. A protestant America, would not fulfill anything other than Clerical Fascism. Only Christian socialism, and communism will the church do anything based in America.
@ziziroberts8041
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
John the Baptist got the ball rolling. Rubbing elbows with royalty. Oops. Off with his head! Jesus made a big mistake when he took his act to the big city. Disturbing the peace on a holiday weekend. Executed Roman-style.
@Coffeeisnecessarynowpepper
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
05/24/2023 10:20am
@PeleSahota
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Militant atheist here: Jesus was an apocalypticist who thought the world was going to end soon. It's difficult to reconcile that with a communist policy programme. He was also Jewish so although he would have believed 'salvation' for Jews was possible, it doesn't follow he believed roman salvation was possible or equally possible. There is no evidence he ate meat. I don't think Marxism implies animal rights, but Jesus would have had a profoundly different relationship to animal life than modern Marxists for whom animal farms are perfectly OK.
@dominusfactum
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Christianity was first wave Marxism.
@rekall76
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
i like john s. hall's retelling of 'the jesus story' (king missle, 1990) in that, while being obvious satire, maintains that even just the idea of such a person having existed improves humanity as a whole
@maximilianoramirezromero9771
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Also Jesus is a biscuit
@hugolxxx
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Marxism and Utopianism have a huge Christian influence. Read utopia by tomas more
@mabo3506
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
The problem in Christianity is the Christians. They hear the 'Good News', receive it by faith, then go home and carry on being moulded by the local media into polarised thinking regarding others in another country, another religion, another ideology. Striving to live a good Christian life within their society and be respectable they conform to national perspectives because of repetitive indoctrination through the media and local society. Bobbing on the sea of community consciousness they fail to see the bigger picture and who are our real enemies globally. They are right beside us ruling us, familiar smiling faces lying and deceiving people to create situations leading to division and even wars. We all, Christian and agnostic and atheist are living lives in a fog of lies and prejudice that divides us to distrust and then hate one another, whereas we could rather respect and accomodate each other irrespective of personal choices we have made.
@christophersnedeker2065
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
I personally think as a Christian that it's better to think of Jesus as apolitical then as a proponent of any given system. I take the view expressed in George MacDonald's sermon on the temptation in the wilderness that the third temptation represents the temptation to political utopianism. I think Jesus made a point that the human condition doesn't have a purely political solution.
Matthew 4 8-9
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
"We shall now look at the third temptation. The first was to help himself in his need; the second, perhaps, to assert the Father; the third to deliver his brethren.
To deliver them, that is, after the fashion of men–from the outside still. Indeed, the whole Temptation may be regarded as the contest of the seen and the unseen, of the outer and inner, of the likely and the true, of the show and the reality. And as in the others, the evil in this last lay in that it was a temptation to save his brethren, instead of doing the Will of his Father.
Could it be other than a temptation to think that he might, if he would, lay a righteous grasp upon the reins of government, leap into the chariot of power, and ride forth conquering and to conquer? Glad visions arose before him of the prisoner breaking jubilant from the cell of injustice; of the widow lifting up the bowed head before the devouring Pharisee; of weeping children bursting into shouts at the sound of the wheels of the chariot before which oppression and wrong shrunk and withered, behind which sprung the fir-tree instead of the thorn, and the myrtle instead of the brier. What glowing visions of holy vengeance, what rosy dreams of human blessedness and all from his hand would crowd such a brain as his! not like the castles-in-the-air of the aspiring youth, for he builds at random, because he knows that he cannot realize; but consistent and harmonious as well as grand, because he knew them within his reach. Could he not mould the people at his will? Could he not, transfigured in his snowy garments, call aloud in the streets of Jerusalem, "Behold your King?" And the fierce warriors of his nation would start at the sound; the ploughshare would be beaten into the sword, and the pruning-hook into the spear; and the nation, rushing to his call, learn war yet again indeed, a grand, holy war–a crusade, no; we should not have had that word; but a war against the tyrants of the race–the best, as they called themselves who trod upon their brethren, and would not suffer them even to look to the heavens. Ah! but when were his garments white as snow? When, through them, glorifying them as it passed, did the light stream from his glorified body? Not when he looked to such a conquest; but when, on a mount like this, he "spake of the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem"! Why should this be "the sad end of the war"? "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Not even thine own visions of love and truth, O Saviour of the world, shall be thy guides to thy goal, but the will of thy Father in heaven.
But how would he, thus conquering, be a servant of Satan? Wherein would this be a falling-down and a worshipping of him (that is, an acknowledging of the worth of him) who was the lord of misrule and its pain?
I will not inquire whether such an enterprise could be accomplished without the worship of Satan,–whether men could be managed for such an end without more or less of the trickery practised by every ambitious leader, every self-serving conqueror–without double-dealing, tact, flattery, finesse. I will not inquire into this, because, on the most distant supposition of our Lord being the leader of his country's armies, these things drop out of sight as impossibilities. If these were necessary, such a career for him refuses to be for a moment imagined. But I will ask whether to know better and do not so well, is not a serving of Satan;–whether to lead men on in the name of God as towards the best when the end is not the best, is not a serving of Satan;–whether to flatter their pride by making them conquerors of the enemies of their nation instead of their own evils, is not a serving of Satan;–in a word, whether, to desert the mission of God, who knew that men could not be set free in that way, and sent him to be a man, a true man, the one man, among them, that his life might become their life, and that so they might be as free in prison or on the cross, as upon a hill-side or on a throne,–whether, so deserting the truth, to give men over to the lie of believing other than spirit and truth to be the worship of the Father, other than love the fulfilling of the law, other than the offering of their best selves the service of God, other than obedient harmony with the primal love and truth and law, freedom, whether, to desert God thus, and give men over thus, would not have been to fall down and worship the devil. Not all the sovereignty of God, as the theologians call it, delegated to the Son, and administered by the wisdom of the Spirit that was given to him without measure, could have wrought the kingdom of heaven in one corner of our earth. Nothing but the obedience of the Son, the obedience unto the death, the absolute doing of the will of God because it was the truth, could redeem the prisoner, the widow, the orphan. But it would redeem them by redeeming the conquest-ridden conqueror too, the stripe-giving jailer, the unjust judge, the devouring Pharisee himself with the insatiable moth-eaten heart. The earth should be free because Love was stronger than Death. Therefore should fierceness and wrong and hypocrisy and God-service play out their weary play. He would not pluck the spreading branches of the tree; he would lay the axe to its root. It would take time; but the tree would be dead at last, dead, and cast into the lake of fire. It would take time; but his Father had time enough and to spare. It would take courage and strength and self-denial and endurance; but his Father could give him all. It would cost pain of body and mind, yea, agony and torture; but those he was ready to take on himself. It would cost him the vision of many sad and, to all but him, hopeless sights; he must see tears without wiping them, hear sighs without changing them into laughter, see the dead lie, and let them lie; see Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted; he must look on his brothers and sisters crying as children over their broken toys, and must not mend them; he must go on to the grave, and they not know that thus he was setting all things right for them. His work must be one with and completing God's Creation and God's History. The disappointment and sorrow and fear he could, he would bear. The will of God should be done. Man should be free,–not merely man as he thinks of himself, but man as God thinks of him. The divine idea shall be set free in the divine bosom; the man on earth shall see his angel face to face. He shall grow into the likeness of the divine thought, free not in his own fancy, but in absolute divine fact of being, as in God's idea. The great and beautiful and perfect will of God must be done."
@MaximusAugustusOrthodox
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Could you pls make a video about Christianophobia? It would be nice to see if someone would talk about this🙏
@comradecrazy6567
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
As a Christian, Jesus was very left wing, those who came before him in the bible were also very left wing such as Moses in Exodus 2:11-12 one day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and laid him in the sand. That to me sounds pretty left wing. But after Jesus, people got greedy again and so the church became more right wing.
@JemLeavitt
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Gd
@wesleywyndam-pryce5305
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
got curious about abbigails really old videos and WOW I did not expect the thunderfoot and amazing atheist mentions, oh how times have changed.
@jacjac_jac
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
This reading is what led me to become a socialist and an agnostic!! heyoo!
@yes3545
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
No
@latifoljic
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
If you're a Christian and you're not a leftist, get a basic understanding of leftist viewpoints and read the New Testament again. Capitalism is not compatible with Christianity. If you still insist on being a capitalist Christian, then good luck getting through the eye of the needle.
@Wodospad_z_Deszczoskrzydlych
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
UWU
@collinhenry9996
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Even Martin Luther King Jr has mention to Coretta Scot that you do not have to take everything in Bible literally but Dr. King a Baptist Minister use Christianity to lead his Civil Rights movement in US to end segregation.. Many people was of different faith and some was not religious but together there change society.
@collinhenry9996
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
I not Atheist but I agree with you which mention in the Bible that Jesus was helping the oppress and teach us we should treated each other equally.
I read Karl Marx book Communist Manifesto which I not communist but I agree the working class should have justice in labor force.
@ShadowBanned904
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
I don't know if Jesus is a Marxist?? But I do feel like God certainly is!!
@1973Washu
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
When people ask "What would Jesus do ?" they need to remember that flipping tables and driving the bankers out with a whip is an option.
@owlnyc666
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
A proto Marxist? Democratic Socialist?
@SasskiF
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
For a long time, I have said that Jesus and the other major profits of the major religions of the world have my respect for being huge motivational figures for progress in their time…
I just hate how other people have then taken those teachings and used them to justify stagnating that progress at the point where the profits left them.
In my opinion, the best way you could show your love and respect for Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and the others, is to do your best to continue their work. Make the world a better place then even they could envision.
Anything else and you might as well spit on their graves.
@CaptPeon
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
I was raised christian. I left the church and found Marxism BECAUSE I found Jesus. Jesus was VERY radical, the first gutter punk rebel communist.
Unfortunately, christian nationalists have dominated the narrative for way too long. For "some reason" they seem intent on dictating the actions of others, are VERY quick to judge others, and are suspiciously SLOW to criticize the hegemonic systems of oppression…. quite unlike Jesus who directly challenged the dogmatic power structures and sacrificed his life to inspire others toward achieving egalitarian ideals.
@blackfang3000
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Was Marx a Christian?
Oh-oh. Oh-oh!
@gmanon1181
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Jesus wasn't a marxist, Marx was a Christian before he totally turned against the church.
He was inspired by the Gospel's concern for the poor.
And yes, Communism will only work on Jesus terms.
For Communism to work, it must come from the people, not from the government. It must be volunteer and Pacific, not an imposition.
It's all about people getting together to live better lives and overcome poverty.
@thegnosticatheist
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Chrisianity caused suffering on a massive scale and civilisational undevelopment of whole nations. The same goes to socialism. And both work in similar way. Hm… nah, it has to be a coincidence.
@wildthecat
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Sorry one needs to make a remarkable effort to trying to fit the teachings of the The Christ into marxism… in fact Christ antagonizes marxism in principle…
@godgod6173
January 29, 2026 at 7:47 am
Everyone is anti poverty and trying to help the poor (nowerdays) the Marxist idea is a bad way and proven to be bad to remove poverty.
Comments are closed.