Segment · Episode 106
Taking Issue — Usury
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- Usury
- Council of Nicaea
- King James Bible
- +8
Usury
Usury is the charging of interest on a loan, especially where the practice is treated as morally suspect or outright forbidden. In biblical and early Christian usage, the term often refers not to excessive interest but to any profit taken from lending, particularly when it deepens the vulnerability of the poor.
Why this topic matters
Usury matters on the show because it exposes how dramatically later Christian economies diverged from the moral assumptions of biblical law and early church teaching. The discussion keeps returning to the gap between what the texts plainly prohibit and the financial systems modern believers now treat as ordinary or even necessary.
It also opens into bigger questions about interpretation, social ethics, and historical memory. Usury sits at the intersection of poverty, profit, class protection, and anti-Jewish history, making it a vivid example of how communities renegotiate scripture when inherited teachings become inconvenient for the world they want to build.
Where to start
Start here for the best in-depth listening on Usury: featured segments, featured episodes, and the episode with the most mentions.
Top mention · Episode 106
19 mentionsUsurer Error
The episode that talks about this topic the most
- Usury
- Council of Nicaea
- King James Bible
- +8
Quotes from the Data
“Usury is something I don't think a lot of people are aware was a huge deal not only in the Bible, but within early Christianity up to like the Reformation and even since.”
“In the Hebrew Bible it seems to refer to charging any interest at all.”
“If indeed someone has fallen into the error of presuming to affirm—and I've never seen this word before in my life—pertinaciously, that the practice of usury is not sinful, we decree that he is to be punished as a heretic.”
“And this is a part of the renegotiation of the text. Like, you can not like it all you want, but this is very clear in the Bible. And early Christians for an awful long time tried to hold fast to this, and then we just decided that we know better and we don't care.”
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