A revolutionary Bible? Thomas Muntzer and Gerrard Winstanley: Roland Boer writes on the Peasants' Revolt and the True Levellers.

My guess is that most readers of this magazine would find a 'revolutionary Bible' an oxymoron, much like Christian communism or religious secularism. Surely you cannot put that textbook of repression and conservatism in a touching embrace with revolution? But that is exactly what I want to do, even to the point of suggesting that they have often been the closest of friends.

More than one revolutionary has drawn on the Bible for inspiration. Indeed, the list of such revolutionaries is a long one, running through to our own day with the grass roots 'base communities' of liberation theology in South America and Africa. But I will restrict myself to two of my favourite examples: Thomas Muntzer and the Peasants' Revolt in 16th-century Germany and Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers from 17th-century England.

By revolutionary movements I do not mean Christian social thought, the social gospel or social justice movements within religious institutions, nor even those who draw on the Bible for the deeper doctrines of social democracy. However much I regard them as somewhat distant allies on a common front, I would like to invoke the old distinction between reform and revolution. What strikes a deep chord for me are not the various efforts at tinkering with the system, no matter how salutary those efforts might be (William Wilberforce's campaign in the late 18th and early 19th century against slavery in the British Parliament is one of the most momentous achievements), but those movements for whom the Bible provides the motivation for and language of utter change, a sweeping away of the old and constructing the new; in short, revolution.

Thomas Muntzer and the Peasants' Revolt

One of the most famous of biblical revolutionaries would have to be the firebrand Thomas Muntzer, who was in operation for a few years in the early 16th century. I begin with a snippet from one of his sermons:

   What a pretty spectacle we have before us now--all the eels and
   snakes coupling together immorally in one great heap! The priests
   and all the evil clerics are the snakes, as John, who baptised
   Jesus, called them, Matthew 3, and the secular lords and rulers are
   the eels, symbolised by the fishes in Leviticus 11 ... O, my dear
   lords, what a fine sight it will be when the Lord whirls his rod of
   iron among the old pots, Psalm 2.

The key biblical text was Daniel 2 with its vision of a massive image with the proverbial feet of clay: the image smashed by a huge stone that itself becomes a mountain. As far as Muntzer was concerned, the message was clear: God is bringing in a heavenly kingdom that will crush all earthly corrupt kingdoms. His audience contained the two princes of Saxony, and the sermon was delivered in Allstedt on 13 July 1524. Muntzer went on to proclaim: 'He to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth is taking the government into his own hands'. The princes, however, did not heed his call to become part of the heavenly kingdom of Daniel 2 and to 'seize the very roots of government, following the command of Christ', so he took things into his own hands, only to come to a grisly end after the fateful battle of Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525. Eight thousand peasants had lined up with him, expecting God to intervene and make their hoes and pitchforks invincible. They were to become the army of the kingdom that 'shall stand forever' (Daniel 2:44). Unfortunately, as is the way of these things, the heavy artillery and trained foot soldiers of the princes prevailed and the peasants were thoroughly routed. Muntzer literally lost his head on 27 May in Thuringia and his head and body were put on display as a warning to all such revolutionaries.

ROLAND BOER writes on the PEASANTS' REVOLT AND THE TRUE LEVELLERS 

What is it about Muntzer that makes him a biblical revolutionary? For some he was a religious crackpot, while for others he was the first spark of the radical edge of the Protestant Reformation, and for others still he was one of the many paths that the ferment of those years might take. There is, however, a distinct feature of Muntzer that marks him off from many of the others: he saw resistance to oppression as the heart of the biblical message. That message was not merely some add-on, a political and social cause for which he found the Bible useful. Rather, the Bible itself mandated that he must, in obedience to God, denounce and overthrow the powers that oppress both spiritually and materially. In other words, the eternal kingdom of God was a revolutionary one, and he was called to be a leader in that revolution.

Luther--the one who had stood up to the powers of Rome in the name of the Bible--found all of this unacceptable. Muntzer (c. 1489 to 27 May 1525) was in fact a contemporary of Luther. His early life was reasonably conventional: born in the village of Stolberg in the Thuringia region of what became central Germany, he took his MA degree in biblical studies on his way to the priesthood, to which he was ordained in 1513. However, his stay in Wittenberg between 1517-19, where he met Luther and heard his denunciations of the Church, turned his life around. The criticisms of priestly graft and veniality struck a deep chord.

The catch was that Muntzer took these criticisms further than Luther--the revolutionary Muntzer showed how much of a reformer Luther really was, and a conservative one at that. From here on Muntzer was on a path of increasingly radical readings of the Bible. For Luther, who had initially recommended that he take up the parish of Zwickau in 1520, it was a sign of straying further and further from the true path. For Muntzer, of course, it was a gradual path to the truth itself. Well, not all that gradual: within a year he was on the road again, having been expelled from Zwickau. In Prague, his next port of call, he lasted but six months and was out by Christmas in 1521. Indeed, by the time of the apocalyptic and revolutionary work known as the Prague Manifesto, which he wrote towards the end of his time there, his initial enthusiasm for Luther's reforms must have seemed lukewarm at best.

Here he is again, in the Prague Manifesto:

   O ho, how ripe the rotten apples are! O ho, how rotten the elect
   have become! The time of harvest has come! That is why he himself
   has hired me for his harvest. I have sharpened my sickle, for my
   thoughts yearn for the truth and with my lips, skin, hands, hair,
   soul, body and life I call down curses on unbelievers ... Help me
   for the sake of the blood of Christ to fight against these high
   enemies of the faith. I will confound them before your very eyes in
   the spirit of Elijah. For the new apostolic church will start in
   your land and then spread everywhere.

From then on Muntzer became what would later be called a professional revolutionary; on the run, challenging the authorities, finding a safe haven for a time where he would attempt yet another coup. In Allstedt, a town in his home area of Thuringia, he became the pastor and fomented unrest for little over a year before he had to flee again in the middle of 1525. The man was no intellectual slouch, managing to produce in the midst of everything voluminous correspondence, a highly creative and original liturgy (the first in German) and texts such as Counterfeit Faith and Protestation or Proposition among many others.

By now Luther had had enough. After Muntzer refused to meet with him privately, Luther attacked him in his Letter to the Princes (July 1524), a direct response to Muntzer's Sermon to the Princes. Muntzer replied with his Vindication and Refutation and let Luther have it, invoking one biblical text after another and calling him a wily black crow, a boasting, venal and wily fox, a 'Doctor Liar'. Luther also urged Duke John of Saxony to take action, so the Duke closed the printing press in Allstedt and called Muntzer to a hearing. Muntzer was a rebel on the run, attempting a coup in Muhlhausen mid-1524 that at first failed, and then succeeded for a few months in early 1525. This was the famous 'Eternal League of God', established by popular election from the citizens of the city, based on God's justice, the removal of those with power and wealth and the exercise of justice by and for the poor, outlined in the revolutionary Muhlhausen Articles. 'In this whole matter', he wrote, 'we want action taken without vacillation, without any delay, and in accordance with the word of God'. Soon afterwards, Muntzer would lead his ragtag peasant army to meet their maker at the battle of Frankhausen.

What are we to make of Muntzer? Was he a religious crackpot, reformer gone off the rails, apocalyptic plotter, hopeless dreamer, or impractical prophet? Is not history full of such figures, concerning whom we can only shake our heads and wonder? Except, of course, for those who do succeed, who then become heroes in hindsight. There are two ways Muntzer is usually understood: if we take the two dimensions of his thought and work as religion and politics, then one becomes central and the other marginal. Either Muntzer was a religious thinker (and a formidable one at that) who unfortunately became mired in politics, or he was a political operator who just happened to speak in religious language. If we follow the first option, then his disagreements with Luther are theological and not political: contrary to Luther, Muntzer wanted to abolish infant baptism, he argued that the elements (bread and wine) of the Eucharist were merely emblems of Christ's sacrifice, and he espoused what he called the 'living word of God'.

Unlike Luther, for whom revelation was contained in the Bible that we then need to interpret for ourselves, Muntzer believed in a continued and present revelation and prophecy. God still spoke directly with human beings, especially through visions and dreams. His favourite biblical stories were those dreams and visions, and his favourite characters were the dreamers like Jacob, Joseph, Daniel and Solomon. He felt the spirit of God coursing through him. These days we tend to diagnose people who claim God speaks with them as mentally unstable and quietly put them away in institutions, but that is merely another way of marginalising those who challenge us and make us uncomfortable. In Muntzer's time it was much simpler: the rulers tortured and executed him. For Muntzer, the sign of the true minister or pastor was precisely that God used him as a prophetic vessel. Needless to say, the Catholic priests, Luther and the other reformers, and even biblical scholars fell a little short. For him, they were variously pleasure-loving pigs, devilish monks, treacherous parsons and a pack of devils. Not much has changed.

Friedrich Engels in The Peasant War in Germany first made the other way of interpreting Muntzer--as a political agitator who made use of religious language, and used the Bible for political ends. Engels argued that Muntzer could not help speaking in religious and biblical terms, since it was the only language in which the peasants could voice their grievances and was the dominant way of thinking about the world as such. (Later on, Ernst Bloch would pick up this line of thought in his reading of Muntzer.) This means, of course, that had Muntzer been able to use more secular and economic terms he would have expressed the peasants' grievances in terms more familiar to us. The problem with this reading is not merely that it sidelines the role of religion in Muntzer, but it also makes him a calculating politician. I suspect Muntzer might have lived a little longer had he been one.

We cannot really separate the political and religious elements all that easily, especially in Muntzer's situation. They are so closely intertwined it hardly makes sense to separate them at all. Are not his favoured biblical texts inescapably political? The apocalyptic texts of Daniel and Revelation promise the obliteration of the oppressive powers at God's hand, sweeping them off the face of the earth for good. In this light a long list of biblical rulers appear, from the Pharaoh in Egypt, through Ahab the king of Israel and Herod in the New Testament to Luther himself. A continuous line runs down to Muntzer's own day, and so he too is a prophet denouncing oppression and seeking to overthrow the oppressors.

Muntzer would have been a spectacular preacher, and an inspiring leader, but I would not have liked to be under his military leadership, given that his tactical skills were a little lacking, nor indeed would I have liked to have been his wife, the former nun Ottilie von Gerson, whom he married a little less than two years before that fateful day on the battlefield at Frankhausen. I suspect he was unbearable at home and would have tossed much in his sleep as God spoke to him in his dreams.

Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers

Gerrard Winstanley, by contrast, would have made a good and interesting friend, if a somewhat eccentric one. A little naive, especially in terms of politics, with a fondness for both writing manifestos and reading the Bible, Gerrard Winstanley was nothing less than one of the first Christian communists in the true sense of the term. He writes that 'In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury ... but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another'. Class exploitation--indeed, lording it over one another in general--is simply not biblical, argues Winstanley.

Indeed, if we follow the Bible, then communist living is the only acceptable form: no masters or private property, holding everything in common. Key texts for Winstanley included Acts 4:32 or, as he paraphrases it: 'And when the Son of man, was gone from the Apostles, his Spirit descended upon the Apostles and Brethren, as they were waiting at Jerusalem; and Rich men sold their Possessions, and gave part to the Poor; and no man said, That ought that he possessed was his own, for they had all things Common'. Texts like these remain central to Christian communism to the present day. But Winstanley knew his Bible, drawing together a number of texts to make a coherent program for communist living. If Jesus said, 'if you have food and raiment, you should therewith be content', then we find the ideal communist life in the Garden of Eden, with the law of Moses, the government of David, and the rule of Esther, to name but a few. He also drew from Genesis the argument that since all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve, no one is better than another for any reason. We are all equal before God and there is no basis for any class distinction. But Genesis --especially the story of the Fall--also explained the origin of exploitation, hierarchy, the evil of monarchic rule and, above all, the origin of private property. The effects of the Fall must then be overcome by means of a restoration of communal life before the Fall, a restoration that began with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In other words, what we find is a religious and political program under the new covenant that came with Jesus Christ.

Winstanley was not a sole operator; he was very much part of the Diggers, or the 'True Levellers' as they were originally known. Coming out of a long tradition of English radicalism and inspired by the thoughts and writings of Winstanley, they formed rural communes. Moving into common land, the Diggers dug up the land (hence their name), constructed a few buildings and then made the food from the land freely available to all. These short-lived communes embodied an effort to construct a new social order based on small egalitarian rural communities, where private property, wages and social status no longer operated.

The first Digger colony of 100-200 members was established on common land at St George's Hill in Surrey in 1649. They issued an open invitation for all to tear down the enclosures, come and join them and make the most of the free food, clothing and shelter available. Other communes followed in Little Heath, Surrey, Wellingborough in Northhamptonshire, Iver in Buckinghamshire, and there may also have been communes in Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Bedfordshire and Gloucestershire. In each case they were there long enough to sow and harvest crops and construct buildings. The declaration by the Diggers of Wellingborough gives as good a sense as any of their aims and activities:

   A Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons why we the Poor
   Inhabitants of the Town of Wellingborrow, in the County of
   Northampton, have begun and give consent to dig up, manure and sow
   Corn upon the Common, and waste ground, called Bareshanke belonging
   to the Inhabitants of Wellinborrow, by those that have Subscribed
   and hundreds more that give Consent ... we have spent all we have,
   our trading is decayed, our wives and children cry for bread, our
   lives are a burden to us, divers of us having 5.6.7.8.9. in Family,
   and we cannot get bread for one of them by our labor, rich mens
   hearts are hardened, they will not give us if we beg at their
   doors; if we steal, the Law will end our lives, divers of the poor
   are starved to death already and it were better for us that are
   living to dye by the Sword then by Famine. And now we consider that
   the Earth is our Mother, and that God hath given it to the children
   of men, and that the common and waste Grounds belong to the poor,
   and that we have a right to the common ground both from the Law of
   the Land, Reason and Scriptures; and therefore we have begun to
   bestow our righteous labor upon it, and we shall trust the Spirit
   for a blessing upon our labor, resolving not to dig up any mans
   property, until they freely give us it ...

Context, as always, is important. Their immediate context was the English Civil Wars (1642-51), of which the Diggers were the most radical group. Dismissing the Royalists, Parliamentary forces ('Roundheads') under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, the Fifth Monarchy Men who wanted government placed in the hands of a returned Jesus Christ, and even the Levellers who wanted a 'level' parliament based on private property, the True Levellers or Diggers pushed for the abolition or 'levelling' of private property itself.

The second context is that of the long history of the enclosures. With the first stirrings of change that would later emerge as capitalism, the lords began enclosing their lands for the purpose of grazing cattle. Peasants were forced off the land and then rehired as labourers, and then later fed into the factories. The disorder and banditry that followed, the effort to assert the importance of private property by the extraordinary punishments (often death) for petty 'crimes' (such as 'stealing' firewood or bread or hunting for food in the lord's domain) and the massive arrogance and corruption of the collapsing feudal system were all part of the social and historical context of the Diggers. They were part of the reaction to the enclosures, and the great fear was that they would begin to pull down the enclosures in order to work the land. What they in fact did was cultivate the remaining commons, encouraging people, especially those dispossessed by the enclosures, to join them as the movement grew.

It hardly needs to be said that the Diggers have become the stuff of legend: communists before their time, the first hippies and counter-culture, the first greenies, seeking to live in harmony with nature, and so on. It also helps that the Diggers took a vow of non-violence, calling for the restoration of 'ancient peace and freedom'. Once again Winstanley refers to the Bible: 'He beats swords and spears into pruning hooks and ploughs; he makes both elder and younger brother freemen in the earth'. They simply wanted to live in communal peace. Once the common people saw how easy it was to step out of social class, refuse to work for their lords or pay rent for the land they lived on, and to gather in self-sufficient communes, the ruling classes would wither away. Without produce from the fields or rent for their use, the aristocracy would have no choice but to disappear or join the communes. It is a beautiful, if somewhat idealistic, picture.

The neighbouring lords, however, were a little more suspicious and hard-nosed. At the original commune at St George's Hill in Surrey, the local lord of the manor, Francis Drake (not the explorer), turned out to be a conservative thug (yes, they existed even then). He resorted to hiring other thugs to beat up the Diggers, and engaged an arsonist or two to burn down their buildings. Drake also took them to the courts, which then as now were stacked in favour of the powerful. The Diggers fared badly: forbidden to speak in defence, they were convicted of being Ranters and were told the army would drive them off their land if they did not leave. Winstanley protested to the Parliament, but it did little good; the Diggers left St George's Hill soon afterwards. A similar story, with local variations, appears in each of the communes: the lord of the manor used various means, both legal and illegal, to drive the Diggers out. The Digger communes were largely finished by 1651, only two years after they had begun.

As for Gerrard Winstanley: he never seemed to give up his ideals of Christian communism, although they moved him towards Quakerism in his later life. Unlike the fiery Muntzer, Winstanley lived to a reasonable age (1609-76). But what is so fascinating about Winstanley are his writings, both the individual works and those he penned on behalf of the Diggers.

The man certainly loved writing, and I can envisage animated discussions lasting long into the night should I have had the chance to meet him. From The Mysterie of God concerning the whole Creation, Mankind in 1648 to The Law Of Freedom in a Platform in 1652, he wrote twenty-three longer and shorter pieces that have survived, from declarations and manifestos to whole books. It all makes for fascinating reading, but let me cut to the chase and identify the major themes. To begin with, like Muntzer, Winstanley's radical communist politics emerged from his reading of the Bible. It is neither a language he prefers to use, nor is the biblical material a mere add-on to the politics. For Winstanley, the Bible and radical politics are woven from one cloth. Further, Winstanley was a highly creative non-conformist who saw himself as part of the heritage of the Reformation. But he was very suspicious of the clergy and especially the university teachers of theology and biblical studies (with good reason, it seems).

Biblical texts and allusions saturate his books, the manifestos and declarations on behalf of the Diggers and the various other writings. Yet, he does have his favourite texts. The story of the Fall is one, although it is a distinctly collective Fall: despite God's creation in which all are equal and have equal access to Earth's bounty, the Fall shows itself in the fact that some lord it over others; that money has come to determine human relations, creating wealth and poverty; that private property, especially in land, has arisen so as to oppress the poor; and that murder and theft characterise human relations. The restoration of God's will on earth, which is one with Christ's resurrection, means a restoration of the human condition before the Fall, and thus the abolition of domination, money, private property, murder and theft. Winstanley finds many texts that express such a wish, but his favoured ones are those of the prophets and the words of Jesus in the New Testament. Here he is on Christ:

   Does not Christ tell you, that if you have food and raiment, you
   should therewith be content? And in this common freedom, here will
   be food and raiment, ease and pleasure plentiful, both for you and
   your brethren; so that none shall beg or starve, or live in the
   straits of poverty--and this fulfils that righteous law of Christ,
   Do as you would be done by: for that law of Christ can never be
   performed till you establish commonwealth's freedom.

For all Winstanley's claims to read the 'plain Text of Scripture, without exposition upon them', he made extensive allegorical use of the Bible. Thus, one after another, characters and events from the Bible provide allegorical reference points for the history of England and its major historical figures. We find Adam (or A-dam), Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Jonah and so on, all lined up on the side of either the propertied and moneyed oppressors, or on the side of the poor and oppressed. Indeed, this is a refrain throughout the various texts: that he speaks on behalf of and as one of the poor oppressed people of England. What is so charming about Winstanley's writings is that these great themes from the Bible give the Diggers and common people of England the unhindered right to till, manure, sow and reap in the soil of the commons and waste lands and, like biblical people, to enjoy their bread in the sweat of their brow.

So what is it about the Bible that enabled those like Muntzer and Winstanley to find such deeply revolutionary themes within it? The key lies, I would suggest, in the profound multi-valency of the Bible. It is both folly to the poor and the scourge of the ruling classes. On the one hand, sections of it may be used with great ease to justify all manner of class distinctions, subservience to the masters and submission to a god of the rulers. On the other, it also contains myriad stories of rebellion, of rumbling against the rulers, of judgement against those who oppress. And it contains the various elements that have been the staple of Christian communism for centuries, if not millennia. While Muntzer seized on the apocalyptic judgements against the oppressors and inspired the peasants to revolt, Winstanley drew heavily on the images of communal life and justice for all, without distinctions in terms of status, wealth or power.

Roland Boer is Reader in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University.