Children from the local Scouting group helped the Rev. John Jackman celebrate at Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as the church marked the end of its latest Debt Jubilee Project to purchase and repay medical loans.
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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Some issues, like immigration or student debt, are too divisive to unite Trinity Moravian Church.
“We’ve got quite a spread of political beliefs,” says the Rev. John Jackman, who leads the 114-year-old red-brick church near Winston-Salem’s old textile mills. Conservative Republicans sit with liberal Democrats. President Trump’s supporters have mixed with his staunchest critics. “It’s definitely a purple congregation,” says Jackman.
But four years ago, when Jackman suggested a new church mission to reduce medical debt for residents of the broader Winston-Salem area, there was no disagreement. “It’s the easiest money I’ve ever raised,” he says. “I just tell people what we’re doing, and they write me a check.”
fairness issue
Few issues have been more politically explosive in recent years than health care, leading to fierce debates between Democrats and Republicans over the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and other flash points.
Yet members were motivated by the feeling that the medical debts their neighbors faced were extremely unfair Trinity MoravianNo matter their politics, rush to write a $25 or $50 check to pay the bills. He helped lead a movement by churches across the state and country, and he North Carolina government officials motivated To deal with medical debt. The effort was praised by conservative radio host Glenn Beck.
The small church’s success also highlights a piece of common ground in American health care — widespread frustration shared across the political spectrum that so many patients are drowning in debt.
Earlier this year, Trinity completed its eighth medical loan campaign, which the church calls its Loan Jubilee Project. It raised over $17,000. This helped pay off more than $2.2 million in debt. Medical debt may be purchased with pennies on the dollar because creditors believe that most debts will not be paid.
Nationwide, an estimate 100 million adults Have some type of health care debt. More than half of American adults have had such debt at some point in their lives.
At Trinity Moravian Church, which has about 200 members, stories of crushing medical bills weren’t hard to find.
“I see people going into debt every minute of every day,” says Katherine Coe, who works in the hospital system’s accounting department. “We’re all just one medical bill away from financial ruin.”
“I see people going into debt every minute of every day,” says Katherine Coe, a member of Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Coe works in the accounting department of a large health system.
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Coe grew up in Trinity with her grandmother. She walked away from the church as an adult before rejoining the congregation last year. Coe, who describes herself as conservative, voted for Trump.
Terry Mabey, who has been coming to Trinity for decades, is on the other side of the country’s political divide. She says she can’t stand the president, whom she says “has no real concern for the people of this country.”
Mabe, 70, has also looked closely at medical debt. She worked in the construction industry.
“Between projects you are sometimes without a job,” he said. “Then you get sick. The next thing you know, you owe $5,000, $10,000 that you can’t pay. You’re barely paying your house bills. Then you’re like: ‘I can’t pay this. What do I do now?'”
Terry Mabe, a longtime member of Trinity Moravian Church, used to work in the construction industry and has seen the impact of medical debt on coworkers.
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Both Coe and Mabey say partisan differences don’t matter. “There is no political divide when it comes to medical debt,” says Coe. “It all brings us together.”
beginning of the pandemic
Jackman says he got the idea to do something about medical debt during the pandemic, when large numbers of people turned to the church for help.
He recalls, “I was hearing that they couldn’t pay their electric bill because they had to spend a few days in the hospital and then they got this huge bill and the bill went up so much.” “And I started hearing this over and over again.”
Jackman learned of a non-profit called Undue Medical Debt that buys unpaid medical bills from hospitals and debt collectors so the debt can be paid off.
The church’s first campaign, in 2022, set a goal of raising $5,000 to defray the approximately $500,000 in medical bills owed by residents of surrounding Forsyth County, NC. The campaign reached its goal in just six weeks, driven mostly by donations of less than $50.
Jackman, who has been a pastor for more than four decades, attributed some of the success to the ethos of the church. “One of our ideas is that we can’t fix everything, but we have to fix what we can where we can,” he says.
The Rev. John Jackman says the church’s medical loan campaign has brought together people from across the political spectrum. “It’s the easiest money I’ve ever raised,” he says.
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Trinity members, regardless of their political leanings, also say they see something broken in a system that pushes sick people into debt.
Paul Sluder, 78, who has no affiliation with any political party, worked for a credit union. He says that before retiring he had collected a lot of debt.
He says that most people wanted to clear their dues. If they fell ill, they often had no option but to fall into debt.
“You have no control. You have to take care of yourself or your loved ones,” says Sluder. “It’s incredibly unfair, and I think the system is broken.”
Paul Sluder is a former debt collector who says people shouldn’t go into debt if they get sick. “The system is broken,” he says.
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Surveys show that there is a lot of similarity when it comes to medical debt.
one in 2025 survey For unpaid medical debts, nearly 75% of Republicans and nearly 90% of Democrats said collection agencies should not be allowed to garnish patients’ wages to pay off medical debt. And in recent years, there have been bipartisan measures to expand protections medical debt has passed In both blue and red states.
Coe, a Republican, says she would support even greater limits on how much medical debt people can be forced to carry. “Why can’t we limit medical debt to a certain dollar amount, and then have it either written off or forgiven?” she asks.
After completing the most recent loan campaign, Trinity hosted a special ceremony, which was facilitated by children from the local scouting group.
Jackman stood in front of the congregation and held a piece of paper containing a long list of names, people from the county whose debts had been bought out and retired by the church.
“On this day of Jubilee,” Jackman declared, “we act to forgive the debts of as many of our neighbors as God has forgiven our debts.”
As the congregation stood, Jackman lit a lighter and burned the list of 1,631 names, symbolically extinguishing the $2.2 million debt. The paper was consumed by the yellow flame. Scouts launch confetti poppers. The choir sang, and the congregation began to cheer.
Rev. John Jackman burned a list of names of people from around Forsyth County whose debts were purchased and retired by the church.
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Afterward, members went downstairs for a spaghetti lunch served by the Scouts in the church basement.
beyond anger
Reflecting on the day’s festivities, several members of the congregation said they hoped their work on medical debt might inspire others to bridge political differences and work together.
“There’s so much division, so much anger,” says Cynthia Tesh, 72.
“We need to take care of each other,” she says. “If we start taking care of each other, things will change. If we start taking care of not just ourselves but other people, things will change.”
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