Upworthy · 1 day ago

Politically Diverse Members of North Carolina Church Unite to Erase $2.2 Million in Medical Debt

At Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a politically divided congregation - Trump voters and liberal Democrats sharing the same pews - has found unlikely common ground in erasing their neighbors' medical debt. Through a partnership with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, small donations of $25 and $30 are leveraged to cancel roughly $100 of debt for every dollar given, allowing the church's eighth Debt Jubilee campaign to retire $2.2 million in debt with just $17,000 raised. The recipients never apply or ask - they simply open a letter one day to find the burden gone. "There isn't a political divide when it comes to medical debt," says Catherine Coe, a self-identified conservative who works in hospital accounting. "It all brings us together." What this congregation has quietly discovered is that shared vulnerability - the knowledge that any of us is, as Coe puts it, "just a single medical bill away from financial ruin" - can do what political argument rarely does: make the differences between people feel suddenly, genuinely small.