By Tony Benn
Born into a family steeped in the tradition of Christian non-conformism, Tony Benn would later go on to become Britain’s best known socialist. Benn’s mother, Margaret Wedgwood Benn was a theologian and founder member of the League of the Church Militant, the predecessor organization to the Movement for the Ordination of Women.
An inspiring force in Benn’s life, Margaret would teach her young son that the story of the Bible was based on the struggle between “the Kings who had power, and the prophets who preached righteousness.”
Later in his life, Benn would assert that he was a “Christian agnostic,” unsure of the existence of God, but someone who believed in “Jesus the prophet, not Christ the King,” the historical Jesus — “the carpenter of Nazareth” — who preached social justice and egalitarianism.
This is the main text of a lecture delivered in November 1980 at Mansfield College Chapel, Oxford in which Benn looks into the revolutionary history behind Christ’s message and its relationship to socialist thought.
— Max Shanly
When Jesus was asked by one of the scribes “What commandment is the first of all?” St Mark’s…
