When the leaders of the world descend upon Calgary this June as part of the Group of Seven (G7) forum, no doubt the conversation will be directed towards international economic issues.

While debt will likely be a topic of conversation, especially with perceptions of debts owed from balances of trade by certain world leaders, less likely will be the conversations around how debt affects some of the poorest nations in the world.

Faith communities from across Canada will be joining in interfaith conversations in Calgary as part of the 2025 Jubilee year, to offer an alternative conversation on economics and debt relief for the 3.3 billion living in nations where debt servicing exceeds spending on education or healthcare.

Sarah Arthurs, Executive Director for the Calgary Interfaith Council, said that the conversations were being initiated by various global faith groups as part of the Jubilee year.

“The Vatican has declared 2025 as a year of Jubilee. That comes from the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament Scriptures about the year of Jubilee, which was this idea that on certain years, all deaths were forgiven,” she said.

Rabbi Mark Glickman of Calgary’s Temple B’nai Tikvah said the concept behind the Jubilee was that every seven years a sabbatical year is prescribed in the Bible where the land is left fallow to rest, and people are allowed to rest as well.

“It is truly a time of renewal and refreshment. Then after the seventh sabbatical year, there’s a second year—it’s 49 plus one, so every 50 years—and during that year, the land all goes back to its original owners. In the time when there was slavery, the slaves were all released on that [Jubilee] year,” he said.

“You’re supposed to, as the Bible says, proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. As an American, that verse has special resonance to me because it’s written on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.”

He said that religiously, this was a way of God making the allocation of resources equitable again.

“The theology of the sabbatical year is that, in Judaism, God wants us all to have what we need in order to live healthy and joyful lives and the laws of the sabbatical year are set up to ensure that,” Glickman said.

Religion and the economy are not so separated

That faith groups would be interested in weighing in on the state of the economy in that light should not be seen as unusual, said Rabbi Glickman.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Religions don’t repeat themselves; each religion is its own, but often they rhyme. So one common theme woven through, we have a lot, but one common theme woven through many of the world’s great religions is the fact that money is a religious issue and the distribution of wealth is a religious issue,” he said.

He said that didn’t necessarily mean leaning into particular ways of organizing economies, like socialism, but rather addressing fairly the inequality between the few who have many resources and the many who have few resources.

“At a time when there is also so much poverty for many of us, in many religions, means that something in the world is fundamentally askew and in need of repair,” Glickman said.

Among the groups involved in bringing those conversations to Calgary are Kairos Canada, which represents faith groups from the Anglican, Catholic, Christian Reformed, Lutheran, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Quaker, and United Church communities, alongside Jubilee USA, which represents both Jewish and Catholic voices.

The Calgary Interfaith Council is also participating through facilitating interfaith prayer services at the forum, and having CIC board member Reverend Tony Snow lead groups to visit Treaty 7 territories around Calgary and participate in Indigenous-led land ceremonies.

Arthurs said that having conversations at the G7 with stakeholders was wonderful because it meant that people could look differently at the way the economy is organized and how it is framed within North American culture.

“It’s his wonderful resetting of the social and economic model that’s a bit certainly counter-cultural to what our capitalistic, Western individualistic model would say, but beautifully so,” she said.

“We’ll be having plenaries and workshops, but we’ll be using the arts and music, poetry and dance as part of the learning. The purpose of the event will be about galvanizing people to sign a petition for the request for debt to be forgiven.”

She said that previous similar interfaith forums held at other G7 events have resulted in more than just talk.

“The year 2000 was also a Jubilee year, and they were able to get $100 billion of debt cancelled for 36 low-income countries. So they have that as a legacy to encourage our movement forward,” Arthurs said.

The G7 Jubilee People’s Forum is being held from June 12 through 15. For more information, see www.kairoscanada.org/jubilee-2025-canada and www.calgaryinterfaithcouncil.org.