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Is Jesus left wing? (You better believe it!)

Here’s something you might not hear at church: Your Jesus is not the real Jesus.

The conservative right wing have co-opted Jesus as their personal mascot. But their Jesus is not the Jesus I see in the Bible. The latest cover article of The New Statesman magazine looks at this issue in an excellent way. You can read a lengthy extract below, or the full original at the New Statesman website here.

What would Jesus do?

Mehdi Hasan
Published 15 December 2010

Conservatives claim Christ as one of their own. But in word and deed, the son of God was much more left-wing than the religious right likes to believe.

Was Jesus Christ a lefty? Philosophers, politicians, theologians and lay members of the various Christian churches have long been divided on the subject. The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once declared: “Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.” The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, went further, describing Christ as “the greatest socialist in history”. But it’s not just Russian ex-communists and Bolivarian socialists who consider Jesus to be a fellow-traveller. Even the Daily Mail sketch-writer Quentin Letts once confessed: “Jesus preached fairness – you could almost call him a lefty.”

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