On Pitchforks and Politics

"If I had a Million Dollars," I wouldn't be sittin' under this tree, waitin' for a bus.

Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, March 2019

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. (Proverbs 10:15)

How poor do you have to be to be poor? How rich do you have to be to be called wealthy?

Type the words poor and poverty into the search engine on a Bible website like Bible Gateway and you’ll leave with the impression that the wealth/poverty tension is not only present from Genesis to Revelation, but that it’s one of its central themes.

Granted, we have all kinds of conventional wisdom about the obvious, which is that there have always been rich people who are able to luxuriate in the freedom excessive means provide, and there have always been a vast majority preoccupied with scraping together the bare necessities of survival.

“Money can’t buy happiness.” Who said that, and if it’s true, why do the bulk of our dreams and striving have to do with becoming well-off? Why do Christians—who have been thoroughly taught by their holy scriptures about the folly of resting hope on wealth—still buy lottery tickets at the same rate as the general public?

A ready answer to that question comes to mind: in dangerous times we sleep better if the windows and doors of our houses are strong, secure. A surplus of cash also reduces anxiety, like window bars. And although scriptures urge us not to be anxious about where our food and shelter will come from (Matthew 6:24), I’ve met very few people who actually demonstrate a trusting attitude that reaches that far.

Staying Biblical for the moment, it’s not hard to find other great themes: justice and mercy, humility and generosity, patience and forbearance, for instance. Is poverty in the midst of abundance not first and foremost a symptom of injustice? If not, then what does justice actually mean? Is a system that allows some to become wealthy on the backs of labourers who remain poor not a symptom of an absence of mercy, of justice perverted?

And if that’s true, is it not obvious that our democracies are failing to realize what Pierre Trudeau called “The Just Society?”

It’s no accident that the Protestant Reformation and the Peasant Uprisings in Europe happened simultaneously. To read the gospel for the first time had to have revealed the injustices of the feudal system, had to have laid bare the folly of the church’s participation in a cruel, merciless, unjust politic. Some would say the choice of defying an unjust authority with pitchforks and rakes was simply stupid, but then we’re faced with the question: What other choices did hungry peasants have at their disposal?

The feudal system of land ownership and use is long gone, of course. But as we are made aware daily, “the poor you have with you always” (Matthew 26:11) seems to persist as a truism (even though we generally misinterpret Jesus’ intent with that statement.) 

We live in a very different time; the cries for justice persist, however. The gap between the wealthy and the middle and lower classes is growing, and since wealth confers power, the prospect of meaningful change is probably as illusive as it was when Thomas Müntzer led an ill-fated army of Christian peasantry against the stronghold and the army of Frankenhausen in 1525. 5,000 peasants died in that battle; hardly a soldier of the prince’s army was injured.

It’s high time that the church reconsider it’s role in dismantling the unjust systems of our day. Pitchforks and rakes won’t be part of our efforts toward promoting justice, but the example of Christ is, after all, a formidable force.