Debt has become a critically important piece of the global economic system that has been integrated into the daily lives of many individuals. This dissertation analyzes and interprets the work of three grassroots organizations resisting indebtedness to propose ethical alternatives to consumer debt within financial capitalism. Specifically, I analyze the Debt Annihilation Team of the Circle of Hope Church, RIP Medical Debt, and the Debt Collective. This dissertation advances prior work in theological and social ethics by attending closely to the work of grassroots organizations that resist the harmful effects of debt within financial capitalism. This dissertation develops a framework to interpret the issue of indebtedness and the groups working to resist it, arguing that debt has subjectivity-shaping powers that form particular subjects. This process is ambiguous, however, capable of forming individuals in harmful or helpful ways. The theological concepts of relational anthropology and realized eschatology also provide analytical tools with which to conceptualize and interpret both the way debt structures individual lives and the struggle against those structures by debt resistance groups. By analyzing how debt resistance groups interact with and conceptualize the debt relation, this dissertation also categorizes the tactics and strategies of U.S.-based debt resistors into a four-part typology: narratives, community and interdependence of debtors, direct actions, and debt as metaphor and ambiguous relation. This typology teases apart the various methods through which these organizations resist the harmful modes of indebtedness and encourage the development of a new political subject capable of resisting the debt relation conjured by financial capitalism. If the debt relation is conceptualized as ambiguous, then there must be some method to re-form a subject that might resist debt within financial capitalism. This typology leads to the development of ethical alternatives, organized into short-term actionable items and long-term proposals to reform the debt relation into one that leads to flourishing rather than exploitation. These proposals also consider the relationship between debt and justice, arguing that a key component of a just debt is the development of a debtors’ union, which will have a voice in the political struggle over consumer debt.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität der Bundeswehr, München, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references and index.