SOMERSET, N.J. (WordNews.org) April 24, 2012 – Despite Sunday’s rain, the Rev. DeForest Soaries Jr. torched credit card offers members of his congregation have received in protest to easy credit that leads to shackles of debt.

Soaries, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens, urged members to bring credit card offers to the church so they could come together to publicly burn them in the church parking lot. He said the message to financial companies was clear: Stop targeting vulnerable borrowers.

The pastor was inspired to take action after reading a New York Times article stating credit card lenders issued 1.1 million new cards last December to people with questionable credit, up 12.3 percent from a year earlier.

“The time has come for us to stop making people rich off of our ignorance,” Soaries, a former New Jersey secretary of state who once ran for Congress, told the crowd. He is also the author of “dfree: Breaking Free from Financial Slavery.”

“For the last six years, we have been working to make not only my congregation debt free, but people across America. Some people are slaves to debt because they were extended loans – from credit cards to mortgages – they could not afford,” he said. “As banking institutions are bouncing back, they are back to business as usual in targeting risky borrowers. The burning of the credit card offers will hopefully send a strong message to the financial industry that we will not be victims anymore.”

Soaries said easy credit “can turn into a vicious cycle.”

“I have members of my church whose homes are in foreclosure because they were given mortgages they can’t afford,” he said “I have members who have so much credit card debt they feel overwhelmed when thinking about how to pay it off.”