Retiring: Ron Sider, Social Justice Pioneer

Christianity Today ^ | October 17, 2012 | Jeremy Weber

[Alex Murphy]

Ron Sider, founder and president of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), announced yesterday (Tues, Oct. 16) that he will retire in June 2013. His replacement: a "consensus model" leadership team of two co-directors.

Sider, who founded ESA in 1973, is most known for his ground-breaking 1977 book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. CT ranked the book No. 7 on its list of the Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.

Scot McKnight, in his review yesterday of Moral Minority by David Swartz, described Sider and his influence as follows:

Sider emerged out of a quietist Brethren in Christ Canadian family; he caught fire intellectually and studied at an Ivy League school, Yale, where he studied under Jaroslav Pelikan; and Sider’s biggest influence was his radical call to evangelicals to become less consumerist, more aware of the impact of economy on the poor of this world, and the need to scale back.

[SNIP]

ESA, now part of Eastern University near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will replace Sider with two co-directors currently serving as professors at Eastern's Palmer Theological Seminary.

Paul Alexander, currently ESA's director of public policy, teaches Christian ethics and public policy at Palmer. His ESA bona fides: he "protested the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories, was once fired for organizing against unethical business practices, and was jailed by the Los Angeles Police Department for peacefully protesting unfair labor standards in California."

Al Tizon, currently ESA's director of congregational ministry, teaches holistic ministry at Palmer. His bona fides: he "engaged in community development work, ministry to street children, and pastoral ministries among the poor in his native Philippines for almost ten years as missionaries with an international agency."

[Mrs. Don-o]

Depends on what yoyu mean by the "ideology of socal justice," by which some people mean"socialism." But that is a work-hijack. There is no justice in socialism. So what did SIDER mean by "social justice"? Used to be softboiled socialism (say 30 years ago) --- but he modified that over a period of time towards the Christian definition, because he was open to Christian truth.

He was/is (to my knowledge, somebody correct me if I'm wrong) -- not on Team Obama, and definitely not a Marxist.

He has his own set of biases, but those biases are more Menno Simons than Marx.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I agree with much of what you've said. Much of the Christian Left --- and ESPECIALLY Sojourners --- serves as "useful idiots" for the hard Marxist Left.

But Sider is to be distinguished from Jim Wallis and Sojourners. They have their similarities, but are not equivalent.

As I mentioned before, Sider has always been anti-abortion and pro-marriege as instituted by Divine and Natural Law, making him a vast nuymber of enemies on the Left. That, in itself, helped make him open to more conservative voices about economics, defense and the rest. He changed over the past 30 years -- toward more conservative views.

I give Sider credit for the elements of integrity which make him quite different from Wallis.

[SC_Pete]

You may very well be right. You certainly have more background on this. My experience with others on the “liberation theology” side and leftists parading as Jesuits, makes me very wary of any Christian that confuses “social justice” with charity. Obama is on record as saying there is no salvation other than collective salvation. Heaven will indeed be a classless society but certainly not what the Marxists had in mind. And we will meet our Creator one by one, not in a community organized protest.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Amen.