Trinity Moravian – At a 114-year-old church outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina, members with sharply different politics have built a “Debt Jubilee” program that has retired $2.2 million in medical debt. After its latest campaign raised more than $17,000 and cleared 1,631 name
Winston-Salem, N.C. — Inside Trinity Moravian Church, the politics are real. So are the people’s bills.
For Rev. John Jackman. the church’s mission begins with a simple truth: a congregation can hold “quite a spread of political beliefs” without letting those differences harden into distance. In Sunday pews near Winston-Salem’s old textile mills, conservative Republicans sit with liberal Democrats. Supporters of President Trump sit beside his fierce critics. Jackman, who leads the 114-year-old church, calls it a “purple congregation.”.
But four years ago, when Jackman suggested a new mission to alleviate medical debt for residents across the wider Winston-Salem area, the room didn’t splinter. “This is the easiest money I’ve ever raised,” he said. “All I do is tell people what we’re doing, and they write me a check.”
The result has been a rare kind of unity in a country where healthcare often turns into a battlefield of partisan talking points—Democrats and Republicans trading blows over the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid. and other flash points. At Trinity Moravian, the debt itself became the common language, and people moved quickly. Members rushed to write $25 or $50 checks to pay off medical bills they said felt deeply unfair.
Earlier this year. the church wrapped up its eighth medical debt campaign as part of what it calls its Debt Jubilee Project. That latest effort raised more than $17,000, helping retire more than $2.2 million in debt. Medical debt can be bought for pennies on the dollar because creditors often believe the debts won’t be paid.
The need is enormous. Nationwide, an estimated 100 million adults have some form of healthcare debt, and more than half of U.S. adults have had such debt at some point in their lives.
In a church of about 200 members, the numbers translate into faces—and into constant worry.
Catherine Coe has seen it from two angles: as a member of Trinity Moravian Church and as someone who works in the accounting department of a hospital system. She describes a cycle that feels impossible to escape. “I see people going into debt every minute of every day,” she said. “We’re all just one medical bill from financial ruin.”.
Coe’s own path back to Trinity stretches across decades. She says she grew up coming to the church with her grandmother, drifted away as an adult, and rejoined the congregation last year. She describes herself as a conservative and said she voted for Trump.
Across the political divide sits Terri Mabe. who has been coming to Trinity for decades and doesn’t hide her anger at the president. Mabe. 70. says she “can’t stand the president. ” adding that he “had no real concern for the people of this country.” She knows medical debt not as a headline but as a reality that reached people around her in construction work.
“In between projects you are a lot of times without a job,” she said. “Then you get sick. Next thing you know, you owe $5,000, $10,000 that you cannot pay. You’re barely paying your home bills. Then you’re like: ‘I can’t pay it. What do I do now?’”
Both Coe and Mabe insist the partisan divide doesn’t carry over into the lives being upended.
“There isn’t a political divide when it comes to medical debt,” Coe said. “It all brings us together.”
Jackman says his idea took shape during the pandemic, when growing numbers of people turned to the church for help. He began hearing a pattern repeated “again and again and again.”
He recalled being told that residents couldn’t pay an electric bill because they had spent a few days in the hospital and then got hit with a huge medical bill that “snowballed.”
Jackman learned about a nonprofit called Undue Medical Debt, which buys unpaid medical bills from hospitals and debt collectors so the debts can be retired.
The church’s first campaign came in 2022. Trinity set a goal of raising $5,000 to retire about $500,000 in unpaid medical bills owed by residents of surrounding Forsyth County, N.C. Jackman said the campaign hit its goal in just six weeks, fueled mostly by donations of less than $50.
He tied part of that early success to an ethos he describes as grounded in limits and responsibility: “One of our ideas is that we cannot fix everything, but we have to fix what we can in the place where we’re planted,” Jackman said.
Inside Trinity, the sense of “what we can fix” isn’t limited to those cutting checks.
Paul Sluder, 78, doesn’t identify with a political party. He previously worked for a credit union and, he said, did a lot of debt collecting before he retired. Many people, he said, wanted to pay what they owed—yet sickness removed their ability to do so.
“You have kind of no control. You have to take care of yourself or your loved ones,” Sluder said. “It’s incredibly unfair, and I think the system’s out of whack.”
That frustration echoes in public opinion. Polls cited by Undue Medical Debt in a 2025 survey found about 75% of Republicans and about 90% of Democrats said collection agencies shouldn’t be allowed to garnish patients’ wages to pay medical debt. The push to expand protections from medical debt has also moved through both blue and red states in recent years.
At Trinity, those policy instincts translate into sharper questions. Coe said she would support even more limits on how much medical debt people could be forced to carry.
“Why can’t we cap medical debt at a certain dollar amount, and after that it’s either written off or forgiven?” she asked.
After the most recent campaign ended, the church turned its accomplishment into a public ritual meant to underline that medicine shouldn’t crush people financially.
Trinity hosted a special ceremony assisted by kids from a local Scouting group. Jackman stood before the congregation and held up a piece of paper listing names of people in the county whose debt had been bought and retired by the church. “On this day of Jubilee. ” Jackman announced. “we act to forgive the debts of many of our neighbors as God has forgiven our debts.”.
As the congregation stood, he flicked on a lighter and burned the list of 1,631 names, symbolically wiping out $2.2 million in debts. The paper consumed by yellow flame. The scouts set off confetti poppers. The choir sang, and the congregation erupted in cheers.
Afterward, members went downstairs for a spaghetti lunch in the church basement, served by the scouts.
For some in the pews, the work isn’t only about money. It’s about whether people can keep choosing each other.
“There’s just so much division, so much anger,” said Cynthia Tesh, 72, reflecting on the day’s festivities. “We need to look out for one another. If we start looking out for one another, things will change. If we start considering other people and not just ourselves, things will change.”
In a country where healthcare debates so often demand sides, Trinity Moravian Church is betting that common ground can be built one debt at a time.
Trinity Moravian Church Rev. John Jackman medical debt Debt Jubilee Project Winston-Salem Forsyth County North Carolina Undue Medical Debt healthcare debt collection agencies wage garnishment
So they just paid off everyone’s medical debt?? Wild.
Honestly good for them. My cousin got crushed by medical bills too, like it never ends. But I don’t get why it even has to be churches doing this in the first place…
Wait I thought medical debt was like, permanent? If they cleared 2.2 million, that’s amazing, but doesn’t that just come back when people get new stuff. Also “purple congregation” sounds like marketing, but I guess it worked.
This is nice and all but how is it “without politics” when they’re literally sitting Trump supporters next to Democrats? Sounds like politics to me, just friendly politics. Still, I’ll take the win, wish other churches would do it instead of all the sermon talk.