I wanted to share with you all a piece I had a chance to write for an essay contest last month:
My piece explores how the “land-use rituals” found in the Hebrew Bible could apply to land use justice in our modern world. More specifically, I explore the practice of “the Jubilee” and its implications for economic life. My argument is that Jubilee tried to achieve various purposes for ancient Israel: family stability, caring for the least of these, long-term economic growth, and ecological sustainability.
Jubilee also functioned as a crucial part of the social safety net. The safety net didn't come through redistribution but pre-distribution: the land was equally allocated to tribes from the beginning, and Jubilee maintained that. Family units could then lease their agricultural land in ancient Israel for any length of time up to the next Jubilee if they needed the cash. But they would be economically secure in knowing they would not permanently lose access to agricultural land and, thus, economic opportunity. Moreover, in a society where the primary economic resource was agricultural, Jubilee ensured that if the land returned a bountiful harvest, all families would share in the bounty, and no one would go hungry.
Third, Jubilee was designed to support long-term economic growth. Ancient Israel was called in Genesis 1 to "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it." Economic growth and prosperity were necessary for the survival of society; otherwise, they would be vulnerable to famine (not enough food) or war (not enough people). By giving all families of the community the ability to own and work the land, they ensured that the incentives were to maximize the land and the harvest. Jubilee was also not a wholescale redistribution of wealth. Notably, urban dwellings in walled cities were exempt from the Jubilee, presumably because they were built with human hands and not appropriated from God's creation.
I argue that while America has many good things in our contemporary economic life, we have largely failed to achieve these values in their holistic intention, and how the Jubilee can help us consider where we could improve.
The essay contest was sponsored by Progress and Poverty, a publication that explores the modern ideas of a 19th-century economic thinker named Henry George, who believed strongly in Land Value taxation as a cure to the economic woes of his day. I find a lot of overlap between how he thought about land and how the Jubilee treated land, and thus, I propose that we consider George’s Land Value Tax as a pillar of how our modern world could apply Jubilee principles. If you missed my prop 13 article earlier this month, that would be a good reference point to why land value taxation can be beneficial and how California has embraced its exact opposite:
And ultimately, the Jubilee was not simply an economic ritual. In the words of scholar Christopher Wright, it also was a "spiritual barometer" of the health of Israel's relationship with God. So ultimately, it’s a challenge to us as the American church to consider whether our modern land use rituals speak to our underlying spiritual health and vitality.
As always, I would love to hear folk’s thoughts on the piece!