Apocalyptic Jubilee

Build It Bloodless and They Will Come

Perhaps revival is a better word for what we nowadays like to call revolution. The term revolution has taken on a negative connotation, as violence is almost always associated with it. Revival, on the other hand, carries little to no negative baggage and can transform societies just as effectively—if not more so.

To put bloodless into context, let me remind you of Malcolm X’s words from 1964:

“America is the only country in history in a position to bring about a revolution without violence and bloodshed. But America is not morally equipped to do so.”

Later, in The Black Revolution, he concludes,

“Revolutions are fought to get control of land, to remove the absentee landlord and gain control of the land and the institutions that flow from that land. The black man has been in a very low condition because he has had no control whatsoever over any land. He has been a beggar economically, a beggar politically, a beggar socially, a beggar even when it comes to trying to get some education.
In the past type of mentality, that was developed in this colonial system among our people, that today is being overcome. And as the young ones come up, they know what they want. And as they listen to your beautiful preaching about democracy and all those other flowery words, they know what they’re supposed to have.
So you got a people today who not only know what they want, but also know what they are supposed to have. And they themselves are creating another generation that is coming up that not only will know what it wants and know what it should have, but also will be ready and willing to do whatever is necessary to see that what they should have materializes immediately. Thank you.”

The plight of the civil rights movement has been largely assuaged at the ballot box. Yet experience has revealed socioeconomic inequality as an even deeper threat to modern civilization than racial or cultural motives. The hubris of financial persuasion has directly subverted the electoral process—in America of all places—through Citizens United, which granted First Amendment rights to corporations, even those created solely for “electioneering.” Indirectly, the media is awash with irrational bias tailored to every demographic, with advertising often contradicting the virtuous precepts of any respectable philosophy or religion.

 Now, revival, as I mean it here, is the growth or renewed activity of something after a long period of dormancy. That something—actually, two somethings—bring us back to the title: apocalypse and jubilee. I refer to the Greek etymological root of apocalypse, meaning “to uncover” or “reveal,” and the Abrahamic tradition of jubilee, specifically the ideas of debt forgiveness and letting the earth lie fallow. 

The second reason for observing Jubilee, as found in the Jewish Encyclopedia, states:

“The physico-economic and socialistic theories are that rest from labor is an absolute necessity both for animal and for vegetable life; that continuous cultivation will eventually ruin the land. The law of the Sabbatical year acts also as a statute of limitation or a bankruptcy law for the poor debtor, in discharging his liability for debts contracted, and in enabling him to start life anew on an equal footing with his neighbor, without the fear that his future earnings will be seized by his former creditors. The jubilee year was the year of liberation of servants whose poverty had forced them into employment by others. Similarly, all property alienated for a money consideration to relieve poverty was to be returned to the original owners without restoration of the amount which had been advanced.”

Today, jubilee is associated merely with annual carnivals, and apocalypse has become a synonym for World War III. There has been a long period of inactivity regarding the original meanings of these ideas—meanings rooted in the cultures that birthed them. A revival of these concepts is urgently needed in the 21st century, not just as a philosophical exercise, but as a public health concern for humanity and the socioeconomic, spiritual, and psychological well-being of the individual.

Dire consequences can be nonviolently averted. A bloodless revival is possible—one infused with a sense of Apocalyptic Jubilee, where misconceptions, misgivings, and debts are vanquished—not the people who hold them. A world where value and common sense guide commerce, where forgiveness balances revenge on the scale of justice, and where money’s detrimental forces are kept from poisoning the well.