"[Y]ou shall hallow the 50th year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and everyone of you to your family." - Leviticus 25:10

God called ancient Israel to honor a time of Jubilee every 50 years. During the Jubilee year, debts were forgiven and land that had been sold to repay debts was returned to the original owners. "[W]hat was sold shall remain with the purchaser until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released, and the property shall be returned" (Lev. 25: 28).

In a similar manner, Christians around the world are asking that debts incurred by nations in the global South be forgiven.

During the past 30 years, developing countries have borrowed large sums of money from international lending institutions, governments of industrialized countries, and commercial banks. In many cases, these investments failed to create the economic development and revenue that planners envisioned. Nonetheless, developing countries continue to repay these debts. For many years, debt repayments from developing countries to the global North have exceeded the flow of new investments, loans and grants to developing countries. Debt relief - Jubilee - has become an important aspect of justice for countries in the global South.

In 1999, the UCC's General Synod XXII passed a resolution calling for Ending the Stranglehold of Global Debt on Impoverished Nations.

Jubilee and the International Debt Crisis a resource from the UCC's Globalization Coordinating Committee, addresses the problem of third world debt and the need for debt cancellation.