Martin Luther on Gossip

Martin Luther (1483-1546) spoke against gossip in his large catechism.

It is a common, pernicious plague that everyone would rather hear evil than good about their neighbors. Even though we ourselves are evil, we cannot tolerate it when anyone speaks evil of us; instead, we want to hear the whole world say golden things of us. Yet we cannot bear it when someone says the best things about others.¹

Luther also said, with his characteristic wit and wisdom, “Those who are not content just to know but rush ahead and judge are called backbiters. Learning a bit of gossip about someone else, they spread it into every corner, relishing and delighting in the chance to stir up someone else’s dirt like pigs that roll in manure and root around in it with their snouts.”²

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¹Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and James Schaffer, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. Charles Arand et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 421.

²Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and James Schaffer, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. Charles Arand et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 422.

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Note: We are in the middle of a long blog series working through my doctoral research into the problem of gossip. We have listened to many voices along the way--proponents of gossip, those who have exacerbated or exploited the problem, those who are ambiguous or ambivalent, and now opponents of gossip both secular and religious.

Last week, we surveyed the contributions of business leaders, social workers, educators, and Jewish moral teaching against gossip.

Starting today, we're going to interact with Christian teachers throughout church history.