As members of Christ’s body, we are called to cancel debts.

December 12, 2019 10:04 AM

This North Carolina Church Is Doing Something Radical: Paying Off People’s Debts. Anne Helen Petersen writes: On Wednesday night at Jubilee Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a group sits around the same sort of rickety conference table you’d find in churches all over the town, the state, the country. In the cabinets behind them, there are old Baptist tracts and stacks of New Testaments with covers declaring GOOD NEWS AMERICA, GOD LOVES YOU. But no one’s reading Galatians tonight. They’re reading Karl Marx.

Further reading: Co-pastor John Thornton, Jr. has a regular newsletter in which he writes about Christianity, socialism, and his work at Jubilee Baptist. He also was interviewed recently on the podcast Left Anchor.

posted by Cash4Lead (32 comments total)

Yaz Minsky on the centuries-old roots of Christian socialist and anarchist thought.
posted by lumensimus at 10:19 AM on December 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

A perfect name for such an institution.
posted by panhopticon at 10:25 AM on December 12, 2019 [9 favorites]

A similar story from a church in Philadelphia (also well named: Circle of Hope) was on a recent This Is Uncomfortable podcast episode.
posted by Flannery Culp at 10:44 AM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

The Poor People’s Campaign and the religious left

The religious origins of european socialism

What lies behind capitalism? a Christian exploration
posted by The Whelk at 10:50 AM on December 12, 2019 [5 favorites]

This North Carolina Church Is Doing Something Radical Christian

You know, like they're supposed to. It's only radical because so few churches do. Maybe these good folks can lead by example.
posted by tzikeh at 10:55 AM on December 12, 2019 [34 favorites]

Radical christians are some of my favorite people. I never went to church, but i first got into activism through a local chapter of catholic worker, which then continued into another chapter when I moved to Chicago, though that chapter was mostly secular. There's also a local Friends church that is very politically involved in leftist ways.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:34 AM on December 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

Hey, I went to Jubilee with my Dad (otherwise an extremely secular, new age-y, occasional Episcopalian) for a few years after my parents split, in part because it was a couple of blocks from Dad's apartment. It was a nice place. I didn't believe in God, then, but the people in charge of the operation were/are all awesome. The "youth group" met over brunch at a place that had an all-you-can-eat bagel and muffin bar. We spent a lot of time discussing existentialism (cool), camping (meh), pot farms in Appalachia (more widespread that you think),and whether or not it was morally okay to think Irish folk singers were hot even if you did not actually care for Irish folk music at all (mixed opinions). Most importantly, I heard My Bloody Valentine for the first time thanks to Jubilee Youth Group, and I've always had warm feelings about the place ever since.

This doesn't surprise me.
posted by thivaia at 11:40 AM on December 12, 2019 [23 favorites]

I just realized I was referring to the wrong North Carolin Jubliee Church. Scratch the above comment, please. My bad for not RTFA.
posted by thivaia at 11:41 AM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm happy you shared that and I got to read it thivaia
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 12:22 PM on December 12, 2019 [14 favorites]

Wasn't this an episode of South Park?
posted by Delia at 12:24 PM on December 12, 2019

> I'm happy you shared that and I got to read it thivaia

Same, thivaia.

As a (former-ish?) Lutheran from a super-lefty congregation in NC, it's always cool to hear about experiences of Christianity outside of the 'hates women, loves guns, defends pedophiles' variety that seems to have sucked most of the oxygen out of the room.
posted by cirgue at 12:30 PM on December 12, 2019 [5 favorites]

Oh, and also in chicago, when I was religious, I went to an Episcopalian church that had a lesbian pastor. She blessed my and my lesbian fiance's cats. (yes, i know)
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:44 PM on December 12, 2019 [9 favorites]

Terminology is very important when dealing with Christians. I showed this article to a born again Christian who denies evolution and climate change, but supports immigration and Antifa. She is supportive of LGBTQ rights but despises sexually demonstrative displays in Pride parades.

She rejected the article right at the subtitle when it said "instead of fear and moralism". Fear of God is critical to the devout, and anything suggestive of "rejecting morals" is an immediate no, even though to us it's understood this isn't what the author meant.

When I pushed her past that, she rejected the article again due to two quoted uses of profanity.

We can all smirk at her prissy absolutism, but when progressives push these people away, regressives are right there to scoop them up and feed them soma while harvesting their bile... and there are a lot of them.
posted by CynicalKnight at 1:54 PM on December 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

My LGBTQ choir sang Bach's Magnificat a few years ago, and it was clear some people had a bad history with church and had trouble connecting to a liturgical piece at first, but:

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

A gay choir busting that out is pretty awesome.
posted by nakedmolerats at 2:48 PM on December 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

but when progressives push these people away

I don't understand the point you are trying to make, that Buzzfeed should be more careful to avoid any terms that could possible be misinterpreted or perceived as profane? If using the word "shit" two times and using the word "moralism" according to its normal dictionary meaning lead your friend to reject the article and conclude that they meant something they clearly did not, I don't think that's on progressive-elitsm or bubble-mentality or anything like that.

I don't think that a church that is *literally* reading Karl Marx is going to be well-received by the vast majority of christian church-goers in the U.S., and no amount of deference to those people, or attempts to employ ultra-diplomatic language is going to do anything except derail the efforts that churches like this are making. There are other segments of the community that can take on that effort if they want.
posted by skewed at 2:52 PM on December 12, 2019 [21 favorites]

If using the word "shit" two times and using the word "moralism" according to its normal dictionary meaning lead your friend to reject the article and conclude that they meant something they clearly did not, I don't think that's on progressive-elitsm or bubble-mentality or anything like that.

This. How far backwards are we supposed to bend to coddle the delicate sensibilities of such people? Until our heads are in our buttholes down to the shoulders?

Keeping up appearances is not the cause of our problems as a society, but it's a big contributor to why those problems don't get solved.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 3:14 PM on December 12, 2019 [13 favorites]

How far backwards are we supposed to bend to coddle the delicate sensibilities of such people?

As far, if not farther, than the Trumps and Bolsonaros and Fords, etc, are willing to bend to recruit them. The culture war will be one of attrition, and we need as many people on the side of justice and progress as possible lest we all end up on our knees in the dirt staring over the precipice of a mass grave.

I am not joking.
posted by CynicalKnight at 3:22 PM on December 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

You did your best, she rejected it. You can keep at it if you like, but I don't think you can blame someone who'd want to move on to another potential recruit after that.
posted by mediareport at 3:26 PM on December 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

She rejected the article right at the subtitle when it said "instead of fear and moralism". Fear of God is critical to the devout...

The Jubilee Church members are devout Christians. Conservatives don't have a monopoly on that name.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:06 PM on December 12, 2019 [12 favorites]

We can all smirk at her prissy absolutism

Prissy absolutism is a cheat code for rejecting things without having to engage with them.
posted by sobell at 5:10 PM on December 12, 2019 [8 favorites]

CynicalKnight, you don't have to use the Buzzfeed News article if you don't think it's suited for the person you're trying to reach. Try this transcript of one of John Thornton Jr.'s sermons instead.

One of the most important things a writer or communicator needs to know is their audience. Anne Helen Peterson is writing for a majority/national/generally liberal audience that responds to criticism of the hellfire-and-brimstone sort of religious institution. John Thornton Jr.'s usual newsletter posts are written for the kind of people who respond well to swearing as something that puts him on their level of informality and "realness". His sermons, however, are written so that even your friend might be comfortable with them.
posted by storytam at 5:49 PM on December 12, 2019 [12 favorites]

CynicalKnight, you don't have to use the Buzzfeed News article if you don't think it's suited for the person you're trying to reach.

Exactly. I know people bust on Bono a little for his activism, but the way he did things was kind of astute - he would be pretty diligent about trying to figure out the person's mindset and then meeting them where they were and talking to them there. Increasing aid to developing nations to fund HIV treatment was his thing, and he was able to convince a few members of the Bush administration to change their minds by drawing a comparison between that and how Jesus talked about treating and caring for lepers in the Bible. (There was an article I read that discussed him doing this, and one anecdote they shared was that right before a meeting he was having with one senator or another, he actually asked the driver to circle the block about two or three times because he was frantically flipping through his own Bible to try to find the exact quote he was thinking of to show him.) And his approach worked.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:08 PM on December 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

Oh, and also in chicago, when I was religious, I went to an Episcopalian church that had a lesbian pastor. She blessed my and my lesbian fiance's cats.

If her name was Bonnie, she's now a bishop in the Detroit area: https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2019/06/03/diocese-of-michigan-elects-bonnie-a-perry-as-11th-bishop/

And she is fully awesome.
posted by rocket at 7:33 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

As far, if not farther, than the Trumps and Bolsonaros and Fords, etc, are willing to bend to recruit them. The culture war will be one of attrition, and we need as many people on the side of justice and progress as possible lest we all end up on our knees in the dirt staring over the precipice of a mass grave.

I am not joking.

So.... what do you think the solution is? Because it sounds like what you're advocating for is that we keep contorting ourselves to be as close as possible to the ideology of the groups we're trying to take out of power, so that we don't spook the people who want those groups in power. Which... how does that work, are we supposed to become diet conservatives to trick these people? I genuinely don't get it and am desperate for someone to explain this reasoning in a way that makes sense.
posted by palomar at 5:23 AM on December 13, 2019 [8 favorites]

Oh, and also in chicago, when I was religious, I went to an Episcopalian church that had a lesbian pastor. She blessed my and my lesbian fiance's cats. (yes, i know)

Is this the "progressive Episcopalian ministers are great" thread? No? Well it is now.

My next-door neighbor is the minister at the local Episcopalian church. She and her wife have been married for much longer than the state has recognized their union, but the church has always recognized it. Earlier this summer, I came home to find a dead sparrow in our driveway. Before I could dispose of the creature, my neighbor poked her head over and offered to perform a funeral for the bird (and certainly JUST for the bird's sake, not for the sake of the very distraught 6- and 2-year-olds who had also noticed it in the driveway). I got to dig the grave, my wife got to find the headstone, and my daughter got to pick the funerary dirge. Which is how we all came to be huddled around a shallow grave, as the sun set upon a fine July evening, transposing into minor key as we all sang a somber chorus of "Supercallifragilisticexpealidocious."
posted by Mayor West at 6:34 AM on December 13, 2019 [10 favorites]

And his approach worked.

Adding "first, be a rock star" to my activism to-do list.

(Good story and good example! Though I kinda doubt my own efforts at persuasion are going to be that effective no matter how much work I put into finding just the right words.)
posted by asperity at 6:37 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

So.... what do you think the solution is?

The two things I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Use G-rated language. It costs you literally nothing to say "heck" instead of "fuck" in polite company.
2. Avoid left-wing shibboleths like Marx--there are plenty of Christian writers who cover the same territory.

There are almost certainly other small things.

I get that there are moral lines you Will Not Cross, and you shouldn't cross those, but for the trivial stuff, you can agree to disagree and just be polite. Fight over human rights, economic fairness, basic freedoms, rule of law and the other important stuff but you can try to not swear for an hour a week. (And the same is true going the other way; I don't necessarily expect someone to believe in their heart that (e.g.) my preferred forms of entertainment are morally uplifting but I do expect them to respect my decisions on that.)

(There is a concept in (at least my corner of) Christianity of food sacrificed to idols. tl; dr: pagan temples cheaply sold off food that had been sacrificed to idols. Some Christians bought this with a clear conscience and others didn't because of its origin. Paul's response was basically, do whatever you think is right but respect the decisions of those who do differently. In other words, agree to disagree on the small things but also accommodate the other as much as is reasonable.)
posted by suetanvil at 9:40 AM on December 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

1. Use G-rated language. It costs you literally nothing to say "heck" instead of "fuck" in polite company.
2. Avoid left-wing shibboleths like Marx--there are plenty of Christian writers who cover the same territory.

I think there must be some confusion over what people are talking about here, because this is just not a reaction to this article that I can understand. This was an article in Buzzfeed, about a church that on its own, was reading Marx, and trying to do Christian things that they thought were in accordance with both their Christianity and (at least some aspects) of Marx. This wasn't an article on how to persuade conservative christians on the validity of Marxism, or socialism, or to convince them of anything. This was about some christians doing something they liked to do. Maybe this is scandalous or scary to some other christians, and maybe Buzzfeed's casual profanity is offputting to some christians, but they weren't being spoken to.

It's mildly infuriating to have a discussion that's not about group X, but then have people interjecting on behalf of group X that maybe we should tone it down, and even change the topic(!) so as to be more inclusive to group X. Not every conversation is going to be inclusive to every group, and a failure to be inviting to a group that really doesn't seem interested in a particular topic is not a problem. This article was about Jubilee church, they're "a quasi-socialist, anti-burnout, anti-racist, LGBTQ-affirming church focused on debt forgiveness and worker solidarity." Not quoting congregants who use the word "fuck" colloquially isn't going to win them any friends at the local megachurch, but even if it did, that's apparently not what they're looking to do.
posted by skewed at 10:11 AM on December 13, 2019 [9 favorites]

If saying "heckin'" will get me more dog pics I guess I can do that.
posted by asperity at 12:51 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Even by the end of the article, the long term prospects of the church seemed unclear.
posted by Selena777 at 1:57 PM on December 13, 2019

I have a lot of sympathy for CynicalKnight's concerns, but I think, as storytam says, that there are so many different voices and resources on any given way of thought that, if you're looking for an entry point, you can choose the ones that suit your needs rather than demanding that they all express themselves in exactly the same ways.

Also, if we're talking about fighting for hearts and minds, then beyond entry points there eventually has to be some effort made to increase the other side's willingness to engage, or at least to not reject out of hand. The majority of fundamentalist Christians seem willing, for example, to accept profane language, profane actions, the degeneration of left-wing "virtue", and outright illegal actions on the part of Trump, the rest of the Republican party, and various voices on Fox news, talk radio, and so on. Some of them accept these things because they're hypocrites and don't actually care about the sin as long as they like the sinner. Others are willing to accept these things, or at least continue to walk alongside the people who do them, because to them the ends justify the means.

If some of them value, say, freeing people from the cycle of poverty as an end, can they be persuaded to walk alongside people who read Marx and say "fuck" if it's in service of that goal? Instead of maintaining strict non-offensiveness on the left, can people on the right who actually want to help others learn to tolerate those "faults"?

If the goal is to convert, then I think you have to find the entry points that work for your audience, and work on eventually expanding tolerance.
posted by trig at 6:19 AM on December 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

The institute for Christian Socialism
posted by The Whelk at 2:18 PM on December 15, 2019