Title: Where Luther Got It Wrong: The Peasants' Revolt - Way To LEAD
Headings: Where Luther Got It Wrong: The Peasants’ Revolt
Where Luther Got It Wrong: The Peasants’ Revolt
Content: They wanted to use their tithes (10% or more of their crops) to pay their pastor rather than sending those tithes on to an external church entity that sent them a pastor not of their choosing. They called for an end to serfdom, and the restoration of hunting and fishing rights. Luther sympathized with the peasants’ plight. He denounced the unjust practices. Many peasants found a ringing voice in Luther’s writings, especially his most famous treatises, On Christian Freedom, which had been published in 1520, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In On Christian Freedom, Luther stated, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” Luther meant this theologically. Christians were not subject to Moses’ law, only to Christ’s law to love one another, as Paul had said in Romans 13:8. The peasants, however, heard this as a type of manifesto.