Jubilee Economics: The Purpose, Practices, and Possibilities for a Better Future - by Kelley Nikondeha (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Writer, speaker, and community development practitioner, Kelley Nikondeha (Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach Us about Freedom) offers a timely and inspiring look at the idea of jubilee in the Bible, when every fifty years, the enslaved were set free, debts were forgiven, and the and given rest, or returned to its original owners. Today, most consider jubilee to be aspirational, mere metaphor, an impractical, ill-advised economic tool, and many theologians and economists doubt it was ever practiced. And they would all be 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). 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 in antiquity, to offering 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, a surprising array of tools to implement, test, and evaluate in various economic situations as we face a feral world where precarious economies abound.

About the Author

Kelley Nikondeha is a writer, speaker, liberation theologian and community development practitioner. She marries biblical texts and various cultural contexts to discover what jubilee looks like in our troubled world. She combines theological insight with economic practice in partnership with her partner/husband, Claude Nikondeha, a social entrepreneur and friend of the poor. Together they founded of Communities of Hope (an NGO in Burundi), Kazoza Bank, and have two ongoing partnership projects with the UNCDF (United Nations Capital Development Fund) around economic development and reforestation of Burundi's national park. As theologian and practitioner, they look at community thriving, economics practices, and community-level banking in their community development work in Burundi (East Africa).