By William Bole

Ever since Seattle erupted into a free-trade fighting zone during the World Trade Organization's 1999 meeting, the very scheduling of a global economic gathering has become a provocation to activists worldwide. What happened suddenly in Seattle has transmigrated into rituals of resistance 
like that enacted in Quebec City at the 34-nation Summit of the Americas, in April. Whether these rites have helped make the global economy more sacred or less profane is disputable. They have at least demonstrated that the party of globalization has a potent opposition, or perhaps that economic globalization itself has matured into a two-party system.

The opposition party is scattered and wide. You could call it a big church, and indeed quite probably the most phenomenal piece of it is a largely faith-driven movement of protestors with their own rituals. They probably wouldn't whack down a chain-link fence like the one erected to keep 
out demonstrators in Quebec City, but they love putting on chains to symbolize the bondage of poor nations. They don't toss Molotov cocktails, as black-masked anarchists did in Seattle two years ago, but they did burn a laptop computer outside a rich-nation summit in Okinawa last summer.

These are debt campaigners, who collected the world's largest petition signed by over 24 million supporters of debt cancellation for the most desperately poor countries. More than that, they dragged rich nations into pledging more international debt relief than anyone could have imagined a few years ago. And they did so while intoning obscure verses from the Hebrew Scriptures calling for debt forgiveness every "seven times seven" years, among other social deeds aimed at restoring economic equilibrium.

Now, the debt-relief forces, having been animated by the biblical tradition of the Jubilee Year, are arrayed for a new engagement, possibly on the wider stage of global finance and trade. 

While Quebec City was this year's Mecca of global resistance, for debt relievers it will be Genoa, Italy. That is where fleets of them are expected to come and call for an ultimate round of sweeping debt cancellation when the G-8 meets there July 20-23, with provisional member Russia added to the rich seven. Last year in Okinawa, Jubilee activists were furious when the G-8 deemed the "digital divide" a more respectable item of deliberation than poor-nation debt. So in a heretical gesture against the digerati, they torched a laptop.

Campaigners want the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, basically controlled by the seven, to wipe clean the debt slate of the worst-off countries. G-8 leaders say they and their institutions have forgiven quite enough debt -- up to one-half of that owed to them by 22 hard-pressed countries. Actually the more realistic figure is a bit under one-third, which represents the effective cut in debt-service payments.

At any rate, even after those 22 countries get all of the debt relief coming to them under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, they will still put out more in debt payments than they spend on healthcare or education, on average.

How much steam the Jubilee debt-relief engine has left in it is hard to judge. It is, after all, a millennial movement. And the millennial theme is a quickly "diminishing asset," as readily acknowledged by Adrian Lovett of Drop the Debt, a London-based successor to the Jubilee 2000 campaign.

World Bank and IMF officials argue the Third World debt is now sustainable, meaning it no longer hinders development and social wellbeing. Of course, they said that in the mid-1990s when the debt burden was clearly catastrophic. Still, the load has been lightened and admittedly there is much else to do, like beating back the internal demons of corruption and strife in many a debt-stricken land.

Beyond Genoa, what comes of Jubilee intensity in a post-Jubilee time? Does it follow the letter of Leviticus, the prime biblical text calling for absolute debt forgiveness? Or is that a case of financial fundamentalism, as some intimate? Do the millennial forces regroup on the broader battlefield of globalization? How?

Much of this is still to be revealed. In Rome, Pope John Paul II clearly feels the debt crusade isn't over, though the Holy See is also looking beyond Genoa to complex questions such as free and fair trade.

At least one thing is clear: debt-relief disciples haven't been afraid to ride this once-arcane policy debate, this affair of international finance, onto some stretch of transcendental terrain, some ground of ultimate concern. 

It is hard to think of a squishier sentiment from any hard-nosed "realpolitik" perspective, yet equally hard to picture a spunkier start for a far-reaching faith-rooted movement of global engagement, if that is to come.

William Bole is an associate fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. A longer version of this article appears in the June 18-25 issue of America magazine.