[Remember: Christmas Is Your Chance to Discover that Jesus was a Revolutionary!]
By Sander Hicks
Jesus.
Does that name automatically make your eyes glaze? Maybe you link that name to homophobia, misogyny, or genocide.
But there is another Jesus out there, in history. The quests for the historical Jesus uncover a revolutionary, an insurgent, a creative, witty, working-class organizer, the spark for a poor people's movement.
Eugene Debs kept a single picture of Jesus in his prison cell. He wrote, “Pure communism was the economic and social gospel preached by Jesus Christ… Private property was to his elevated mind a sacrilege.” Debs saw what many on today’s Left overlook: Jesus’ teachings give us tools to make us better organizers.
Jesus’ grassroots campaign grew into a mass movement that threatened both Rome and the Temple establishment. The ensuing martyrdom fueled a movement built on rigorous honesty, forgiveness, mutuality, and shared purpose. Rome eventually co-opted the religion. They edited the Bible and modified Jesus’s core teachings to make him more palatable.
Top Ten Ways Jesus Was a Revolutionary
1. Jesus was working class, although that term didn’t exist at the time.
He worked with his hands as a “tekton,” Koine Greek for skilled cabinet maker. Most people in his world were illiterate, and scholars such as Bruce Chilton argue that Jesus likely was too — a teacher shaped by oral storytelling traditions, not elite religious education. As a marginalized “mamzer,” or “bastard” child, he likely grew up shunned by village religious authorities. Outsiders often become either broken or fearless; Jesus chose radical love for all outsiders.
2. Jesus rejected nationalist tribalism
Although emerging from an oppressed Jewish community under Roman occupation, Jesus refused religious nationalism. His parable of the Good Samaritan subverted ethnic hostility by portraying the “enemy” Samaritan as the true moral hero. His teaching dismantled the idea of a chosen in-group and insisted on universal compassion.
3. Jesus practiced radical nonviolence
The early Jesus movement was fierce in its refusal of violence. “Turn the other cheek” was not passivity; it was strategic noncooperation meant to expose the shame of the oppressor. Father John Dear, an activist scholar of Christian nonviolence, notes how closely Jesus’ teachings align with those of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.: movements of suffering love that transform opponents rather than destroy them. The Left loses its soul when it dehumanizes its enemies. Jesus insists that every human can turn toward truth.
4. Jesus led a movement of communal sharing
Jesus was an early “anti-capitalist” who denounced greed, the rich, and hoarded wealth. “Woe to you who are rich,” he said, “You cannot serve God and money.” His lifestyle —rootless, nomadic, dependent on communal generosity — embodied anti-consumerist simplicity.
The feeding of the 5,000 was not magic; it was radical mutual aid. The early Christian community in Acts deepened this ethos: “They sold their possessions and distributed to all, as any had need.” Marx echoed this directly in his line “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
5. Jesus had queer dimensions
Homophobia and misogyny shaped biblical scholarship for centuries, flattening Jesus into a figure acceptable to later patriarchal norms. Queer theory exposes the heteronormative bias that predictably surfaces whenever scholars challenge orthodox assumptions—especially around Jesus’ emotional and sexual life.
Clement of Alexandria’s Letter to Theodore preserves a fragment from a lost version of Mark in which Jesus raises a young man from the dead who then spends the night with him, clothed only in a linen garment, as Jesus “taught him the mystery of the kingdom.” Morton Smith, the controversial and iconoclastic scholar who discovered the text, was viciously attacked—but never disproven.
In the Gospel of John, “the disciple Jesus loved” reclines against Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper, while the suppressed Gospel of Thomas gestures toward an intimate, esoteric bond between teacher and disciple. The Gospel of Philip records Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene and calling her his koinōnos—his companion or partner. Alongside Mary were Joanna and Susanna—independent women whose inclusion violated social norms. Jesus affirmed women as full disciples, not auxiliaries.
Even within the canonical Gospels, Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:12 on “eunuchs” has been interpreted by progressive scholars as recognizing gender-nonconforming or third-gender people in the ancient world. Rather than marginalizing them, Jesus names them with honor—holding them up as exemplary participants in the kingdom movement.
Jesus emerges as more layered—and more human—than conservative Christianity allows. This opens space for socialist and progressive faith communities to affirm people across the gender and sexuality spectrum.
6. Jesus used martyrdom as a strategy
Jesus learned a lot from his cousin John the Baptist, who led a popular mass movement around virtue and moral reform. His ritual of baptism struck a chord with people. John became so popular that King Herod had him executed.
After that execution, Jesus stepped into John’s shoes. The Gospels record that Jesus seemed to enjoy that some people thought he was the new John the Baptist, or a new powerful prophet. Morton Smith claims that with this “New John” identity, Jesus was calling in an Egyptian form of “death-magic” whereby the successor takes on the mantle of the martyr to inherit their power. Jesus recognized that martyrdom could advance the struggle against Rome and corrupt religious authority. Eventually, he gave up his own life so that there might be a breakthrough in the consciousness of society.
7. Jesus had a radical mom
Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat, is considered so subversive that it has been banned in three different countries under various oppressive regimes. The brave, young, unwed mother sings,
The Lord has used his powerful arm
to scatter those who are proud.
God drags strong rulers from their thrones
and puts humble people in places of power.
God gives the hungry good things to eat,
and sends the rich away with nothing.
(Luke 1. 8-56)
8. Jesus opposed religious hypocrisy and showmanship
In multiple Gospels, Jesus warns that allegiance to the Kingdom — his justice movement — will rupture traditional family structures. Liberation demanded radical reorientation; forgiveness liberated people from cycles of familial trauma. Jesus called followers out of the past and into revolutionary purpose.
Christian nationalists today demand public prayer. Ten Commandments displays in the Deep South ignore Jesus’ explicit instruction to pray in private, not as spectacle.
9. Jesus welcomed zealots, tax collectors, prostitutes — everyone
Reza Aslan’s Zealot shows how Jesus drew from every sector of society, even those considered traitors or extremists. His movement was a big-tent coalition, not an ideologically pure sect. Social movements thrive when they unite unlikely allies.
10. Jesus stands in the lineage of Moses, Amos, Isaiah and the radicals after him
The Hebrew tradition leans heavily on Exodus, a story of mass emancipation from slavery. The essence of God is the path itself from slavery to liberation. Along the way, Moses introduced labor rights (Sabbath rest), land redistribution (Jubilee), and debt cancellation. Prophets such as Amos and Isaiah denounced the rich and demanded justice. Jesus consciously stepped into this lineage.
Scholar John Dominic Crossan argues that the most radical thing Jesus did was ignore caste rules, and create an “open table” where people of all classes, races and genders could come, eat together, and learn to heal the broken among us. Many social movements have been animated by the teachings and organizing of Jesus.
The movement around Zohran Mamdani, a proud Muslim, shows that spiritually grounded politics can inspire people today. His emphasis on human needs and communal dignity echoes themes central to Jesus’ ministry.
This moment also gives DSA an opportunity to speak more openly about spiritual dimensions within socialism. One of the early founders of DSA, Michael Harrington, came out of the Catholic Worker tradition. Today, the Religion and Socialism Working Group continues that lineage. Spiritual people should know there is a place for them inside DSA.
Christmas is based largely based on a lie: Jesus was almost certainly not born in Bethlehem, even most voices in the Bible all talk about him being a native of Nazareth. But behind the myth is a very powerful truth: Jesus is our comrade. His teachings are very much alive today. They are parallel to the core values of socialism. They are a wonderful way to undermine the hypocrisy of the “Christian” right-wing.
Christmas should be celebrated, to bring attention to the subversive teachings of a revolutionary. This is a way to give meaning to a holiday that is oftentimes overpowered by capitalist commercialism. Merry Christmas, Comrades!
Sander Hicks is the clerk of the Speaker Events Committee at 15th Street Friends Meeting (Quakers) in NYC. He is an interfaith activist and a democratic socialist.
Image credit: Andrew Springer/The Jesus Movement