The word is synonymous now with a pageant of privilege. But its ancient meaning is radical

Simon Barrow is the co-director of Ekklesia, a Christian think tank which examines religion in public life

By Simon Barrow

One of the most remarkable achievements of the Queen’s courtiers on the occasion of her diamond jubilee is the way in which a thick curtain has been drawn between the patronage, power and unaccountable wealth embodied in monarchy, and the deepening inequality and injustice felt by those living at the sharp end of “austerity Britain”.

It is as if we naturally lived in parallel universes. This is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the misuse of the term “jubilee” itself. In the colourful symbolism of this weekend’s celebrations, the word has become synonymous with the pageant of inherited privilege. People are called on to the streets to laud and honour those who will forever live in opulent isolation from them.

But there is an entirely different meaning, history and narrative of jubilee buried beneath this weekend’s flotillas and bunting. It not only predates modern royal usage by many centuries, it also encourages the very opposite of obeisance to celebrity riches. It is the ancient Hebrew tradition of seeking the equalisation of land, property and ownership rights through seven cycles of “sabbatical years”.

This biblical jubilee also shaped the commitment of Jesus and the early Christians to stand alongside the poor and dispossessed, rather than with the representatives of empire. “Remit our debts, as we remit the debts of others” is at the core of what we call the Lord’s prayer. The phrase was later sanitised into “forgive us our sins”, in order to turn wrongdoing into a purely personal matter removed from the harsh realities of economic and political injustice.

That switch, as much as the burying of the subversive demands of the Torah which set out the original demands for a jubilee of sharing, suited those who wanted to turn Christianity (and, indeed, all religion) into a tool of the establishment and the status quo.

So the royal jubilee was invented as a rationale for accepting, personalising and ritualising the most spectacular political and economic divisions in our society. This represents not just a denial of its original, subversive symbolism, but also a massive reversal of expectations. Inequality is now seen as the norm, regardless of how much harm it does to our shared humanity.

In historical terms there are extensive disputes about how far original jubilee injunctions on land reform and redistribution of wealth were implemented. In ancient Israel, too, there were those whose sole business was to thwart the equalisers. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann talks of “two trajectories” in the Hebrew scriptures. One is a centralising, wealth accumulating, monarchical tradition. The other is a radical, popular and prophetic movement – one that leads Mary to celebrate the birth of Jesus by singing about how God “throws the mighty from their thrones”.

The original jubilee isn’t obscure history, nor something to be dismissed under the rubric of “religion”. In recent times, people of many beliefs and none have picked up the levelling language of jubilee to campaign for debt cancellation and poverty elimination. The current Jubilee Debt Campaign continues to turn the spotlight on tax evasion, speculative finance and unaccountable corporate capital.

The royal jubilee calls us to celebrate privilege. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

Interestingly, churches in Britain tend to marginalise their roots in the radical jubilee, falling instead for a collective, choreographed curtsey to royalty. They forget that in their Bibles the monarchy was established in defiance of the divine will expressed by the prophets. They warned that it would lead to the false worship of power, expropriation of wealth, standing armies and oppressive taxation. Rightly, it would seem.

However, there is always the opportunity to stop and head in a new direction. At a time of massive financial crisis, the “jubilee economics” of making wealth accountable to ordinary people rather than the other way round is precisely what is needed. That and pageants which celebrate the need to build a common life rather than one that benefits only the few.

The Guardian