Joseph Martin McCabe (12 November 1867 – 10 January 1955) was an English writer and speaker on freethought, after having been a Roman Catholic priest earlier in his life.

He criticised Christianity from a rationalist perspective, but also was involved in the South Place Ethical Society which grew out of dissenting Protestantism and was a precursor of modern secular humanism.

"[4] From 1898 to 1899 he was secretary of the Leicester Secular Society, and he was a founding board member in 1899 of the Rationalist Press Association of Great Britain.

[7] McCabe's freethought stance grew more militant as he got older, and he joined the National Secular Society in the year before he died.

McCabe was also involved with the Rationalist Association and in 1925 they arranged for him to debate the early Canadian young earth creationist George McCready Price.

According to McCabe the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus contain numerous conflicts, contradictions and errors and are unreliable as they had been fabricated over the years by many different writers.

McCabe came to the conclusion that Jesus was an Essenian holy man who was turned into a God over the years by hearsay and oral tradition.

[9] The real bulk of McCabe's work was in historical criticism of the Roman Catholic religious system in which he was raised and educated.

"[12] In 1920 McCabe publicly debated the Spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle on the claims of Spiritualism at Queen's Hall in London.