The Bible May Be Your Friend – But the Christian Church Ain’t

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Lessons From the German Peasant War

About 500 years ago in Germany, the economic conditions for the masses resembled those in today’s developed countries. Back then, the people went to war against the aristocracies, including the Christian church of the time, the Catholic Church. This was known as the German Peasants’ War.

They went to war because of the Bible. Which they could read. Thanks to Gutenberg. And thanks to Martin Luther, who translated it into German. And who argued, clearly and eloquently, against the Church of the time and its tremendous corruption.

So those danged peasants took that Bible thing to heart and believed in it and all. And on the basis of the Bible, they stopped submitting to the people in Germany who demanded their obedience.

Whoops! Turned out Martin Luther didn’t mean all that Bible stuff he was talking about!

What he meant was that instead of the corrupt Catholic Church exploiting peasants in Germany, a different Christian church should take over and also exploit them. What he said was that the peasants in Germany should be “slain like mad dogs.”

Turns out real Christianity is hard. Especially for the Christian church.

Unfortunately for the German peasants, they were Christian – But Not organized.

Even more unfortunately for the German peasants, the German aristocracy (princes) were very very organized. The German peasants weren’t asking for all that much, but the German princes treated them like they were uprising against a corrupt and discriminatory system. And crushed them with military force.

Huh. The more things change, the more they don’t change at all. At this very moment, as I write, there are people being literally crushed by military force (and starved). Even though they are basically just modern-day peasants not asking for all that much.

Guess who supports that crushing and starving and sieging? Vocal elements of the American version of the Christian church. Ain’t Biblical, but it sure is churchy.

Sigh. Ain’t humanity great?!

Yup, that German Peasants’ War of 1524-1526 is eerily relevant to the world today.

Back then, the German peasants were being increasingly cut off from the natural world and its resources (forests, streams, meadows, etc.) because greedy private interests wanted that stuff all for themselves. That really sucked for the German peasants.

Hey – guess who is planning to sell off tons of public lands right fucking now?

No, not the Christian church. Come on dude. It’s the current greedy aristocracy of the US today! So guess who that would suck for now?

Not so strangely enough, another big issue for the German peasantry of the early 1500s was tremendous wealth inequality. And being excluded from political decisions. And corruption. Oh so much blatant corruption.

The masses of people have been enduring the same issues these days for quite awhile now. As they say, history may not repeat, but it does rhyme.

And, after 500 years, humanity circled right back around to another era in which the Christian church aligned itself with the corruption of the wealthy and the greedy to promote their interests at the expense of well, you know, what the Bible says and everything.

It wasn’t like the German peasants wanted to go to war. As the outcome proved, they weren’t particularly good at it. But in another eerie parallel to the present day, the rents they were being charged kept rising. They were literally facing homelessness crises and homeless folks known as vagabonds were a growing part of the population. The peasants were running out of ways to be able to live.

The Christian church back then was worse than it is now, collecting rents for the wealthy. It had an authority it seeks to regain today in the US.

The peasants couldn’t stand being bled dry any more, and eventually ended up killing about two dozen German nobles.

Holy shit! Say what? That got the attention of the non-peasants. Cuz slaying peasants like mad dogs is perfectly acceptable. But going after a smattering of nobles must mean the end the world.

Yeah the more things change….

In a radical, non-Churchy thing, the uprising peasants had sworn brotherhood to each other. Brotherhood is an inherently egalitarian concept, at odds with the hierarchy of submission demanded by the society and Christian church of the time. In other words, those German peasants were ahead of their time.

Under the influence of the dreaded ‘brotherhood’ thing, the peasants took out after monasteries and convents. Turns out the people in the monasteries and convents were not very nice to the peasants! They hoarded food and resources the peasants desperately needed to survive. They exploited the peasants economically every way they could figure out to do so. And then they didn’t even like the Bible and the implications of the Reformation ideals any more than Martin Luther himself did!

Boo monasteries and convents.

The peasants, who produced the food on which society relied, wanted emancipation. Although not formally slaves, economic pressures from the wealthy stripped them of freedom. They desired a Christian theology to support their emancipation, which they found in the Bible, but not in the Church.

The Bible gave the German peasants a sense of possibility.

The military response to their efforts gave them a sense of just how limited their possibilities were. And if they had any doubts, they learned just how firmly the nobility and the Church disliked the concepts of equality and brotherhood.

So how did it happen that the Christian church, in spite of the Bible, became the enemy of the masses?

Well, in another parallel to today’s conditions, luxury spurred greed. Nowadays, it is neoliberal economic doctrine that elevated the social worth of the rich. Purposely or not, neoliberal economic doctrine led to a massive increase in luxury for the wealthiest. From the oligarchs of Russia, to the J.K. Rowlings of Britain, to the Bezos of the US, the economies tipped toward ever more luxuries for the super-rich. Which has corrupted the entire economic system.

Advances in technology in the 16th century had made possible the accumulation of luxuries possible for the Catholic Church and the nobles of the time. Like now, advances made the peasants more productive but not better compensated.

Like the US now, Germany had little social unity at the time.

Like now, the rural peasantry of Germany had meager access to the resources that existed outside their own localities. Like now, the customs of hereditary wealth prevented the peasants from improving their lot.

Like today, it wasn’t simply the dogmas and attitudes of the Christian church had held the peasants down. The princes and various nobles did more than their share to spur the peasantry to an uprising. Today’s analogues would be the corporations. Then and now, a privileged stratum of society does whatever it wants.

The nobles of the time raised taxes and grabbed money in whatever ways occurred to them. And no one stopped them. Corporations today raise prices and grab money in whatever ways occur to them. And no one stops them.

The princes even had their own version of cryptocurrency back then.

They manipulated coin to uh, you know, scam people without adding any value except perhaps cover for crooks and evil-doers.

The nobles also ruined their own credit with their profligate pursuit of luxuries at the expense of the regular folk. Sort like the US is doing right effen now for its own oligarchy.

I rather desperately want to draw some lessons from the German Peasants War for today’s similar economic conditions. Here’s what I’ve got.

Lesson #1: Technology Changes; People Don’t.

If you give a slice of society the means to obtain untold luxury, power, and wealth, they’ll use it. To become tremendously corrupt. And to destroy regular people. And even the institutions of their own society.

It doesn’t matter what intellectual edifice you build your corruption on – Church dogma or neoliberal economic dogma – you still get cruelty, and greed, and destruction.

Lesson #2: The German Peasants Were Ahead of Their Time.

Those unfortunate German peasants believed, inspired by the Reformation of the Christian church, in equality, justice, and a better life. They were just 250 years too early; it wasn’t until the French Revolution that the masses succeeded in challenging the oppressive power structures.

Sometimes it just really sucks to be ahead of your time.

Lesson #3: The German Peasants’ War Wasn’t About Germany, Peasants, or War. It was About the Reformation of the Christian church.

Sometimes battles are not what they seem. That German Peasants’ War of 1524-26 wasn’t about peasant rights really. It was about hastening the decline and fall of the Catholic Church as the sole arbiter of Christianity.

The Catholic Church had become so riddled with corruption and avarice that it had to collapse in on itself. Everyone in Germany hated that Church as it served no one’s interests but its own. And since everyone could agree on that – down it went. Lutherans up; Catholics down.

Similar battles brew today. Probably not in 2025 but maybe in 2026. Maybe it will be small business owners (who are being squeezed out of existence) who will revolt; I don’t know. But the battle may not be what it seems. For all I know, it may be about whether political bravery and courage continue to exist in the US at all.

Lesson #4: Ideals are Hard.

Yeah, sure it may seeeem like the religious ideals of the Christian church (and the Bible) tell you one thing, but….

As Martin Luther proved, you don’t necessarily mean what you say. Or act on what you think you believe. The need or desire for money often proves far more persuasive than idealism. As I can personally testify.

Once you establish a system that rewards luxury while creating a dire need for money among those excluded from it, ideals become near impossible for anyone.

Lesson #5: Beware Your Beliefs.

The poor peasants believed that people like Martin Luther would actually follow what was written in the Bible. Ha ha ha! That was a delusion.

The Catholic Church believed it had immense power and influence over Christendom, thinking no amount of wrongdoing could damage it. The Catholic hierarchy was so entrenched that they didn’t consider they could be seen as superfluous. Germany proved them wrong.

Right now, there are a significant number of very nasty billionaires who think that democracy is superfluous. Perhaps it doesn’t occur to them that the social class of billionaires may be superfluous itself.

Hatred of the economically exploitative billionaire class does seem to be widely shared among competing and divided groups in the US. More bluntly, both the left and the right have come to hate fucking rich people and their mega-yachts. It’s possible that even the evangelical Christian church hates billionaires!

Lesson #6: Technology Matters

The Catholic Church would have been sitting pretty if it wasn’t for that damn printing press.

The technological innovation of the current era seems to be AI, short for artificial intelligence. At the current moment, artificial seems quite accurate but the intelligence part seems laughably overhyped.

Be that as it may, this AI thingy is attempting to read, write, educate, and learn. Which is pretty much what white collar workers around the world currently do. If they stop doing that, a critical mass of people who benefit from the current system will stop benefiting.

History tells us that economic changes like that create massive social changes as well. When technology changes – ideas change. Capitalism was built for an industrial revolution. What social and/or economic structure is built for an AI revolution?

Lesson #7: The Higher You Are, the Longer You Stay Fallen Once You Go.

The Catholic Church obviously didn’t go away simply because Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a door. It didn’t go away because German peasants started envisioning something better. It didn’t go away because the nobility and the peasants had common cause in resenting Church wealth.

Nope, the Catholic Church just tumbled from its exalted spot, and it hasn’t been able to clamber back up on to that pedestal. That’s the way it goes with empires. They don’t come back. The Egyptians and the Persians and the British and the Chinese and the Romans and the whoever…they don’t disappear. They just never regain what they used to have. It’s been an awfully short reign, but it looks like the US may join them soon.

Oh well.

As for me, I’m not so much pretty fed up right now as glad I’m not one of those high and mighty rich people these days. They’re crushing today’s peasants, but they won’t be able to crush whatever form this century’s Reformation takes.

Tags: Bible, society