Jubilee Economics: The Purpose, Practices, and Possibilities for a Better Future

Most consider jubilee to be aspirational, mere metaphor, an ancient practice that has no application for our current economics systems, dismissed as an impractical, ill-advised economic tool. Among theologians and economists many doubt it was ever practiced.

And they would be wrong. Recent scholarship, archeological records, tell a different story. And contemporary practitioners are now showing its robust capabilities for resetting economic systems and turning to more just economic practices.

Jubilee is a curious yet captivating economic program woven throughout various parts of Scripture, which includes both instruction and poetry about debt cancellation, land return, and freedom from debt slavery. But over the last century it has often been consigned to the canon of utopian thinking. In non-religious spaces we sometimes hear of proposals like the Jubilee 2000 campaign, an endeavor to eliminate the debt of the most under-developed and heavily indebted nations.

A large part of the experience of being human, of struggling to survive, of our engagement in culture and society is wrestling with debt, individually and collectively. For civilization that predated Rome that also included a view to debt cancellation, a tool at the ready for ancient civilizations.

When Jesus arrived on the scene, he announced his own Jubilee Campaign, drawing from the priests and prophets, giving rise to a fresh conversation around debt and economics.

Jubilee is a conversation that Nikondeha has continuously engaged in, in her work as a liberation theologian in partnership with her husband, a community development practitioner, banker, and organizer in Burundi (East Africa). In this book and her community development work Nikondeha explores the purpose, practices, and possibilities of jubilee economics that for too long have been dismissed as merely theoretical. Her work highlights historical precedent and current engagement that revitalize our economic conversation - and action. From a careful consideration of the history of debt cancellation in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages and insight into the jubilee canon in Scripture, Nikondeha provides a new perspective and practice sprouting from the purpose of debt relief. Grounded in collaborative work in Burundi with her husband, where together as theologian and practitioner their work in jubilee economics has been an active economic engagement -as well as on the ground challenge--to their understanding of the biblical texts.

This book offers the possibility of better conversations about our economic life, not just abroad, not just at national and community levels, but at home as well. Jubilee offers us principals, purpose and practices to explore together. We are handed a surprising array of tools to implement, test, and evaluate in various economic situations. As we face a feral world where precarious economies abound, it is good to seek and have options as systems show devastating fault lines.

We can reach for ancient wisdom from our ancestors, our priests and prophets in Jubilee and supplement that with insight from innovative contemporaries. And together we can engage conversations for better economies, rooted in the rich loam of jubilee.