Reflection on the life of evangelical theologian and activist Ronald J. Sider

Albert Mohler’s “Christian world view” was on full display in his ugly
piece on the legacy of Ronald Sider

John Fea   |  August 6, 2022

https://t.co/F1XHu6wOwg


Albert Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Louisville, likes to talk about how he discerns current
events through his “Christian world view.” Well, Mohler’s “Christian
world view” was on full display yesterday in his reflection on the
life of evangelical theologian and activist Ronald J. Sider. Sider
died last week and Mohler wasted little time stomping on his
grave–from a “Christian world view,” of course.

Let’s break down his piece at World, where he serves as editor of the
magazine’s online opinion newsletter.

Mohler writes:

Among the vexing aspects of life in a sinful world is the fact that
moral qualities are fractured and maldistributed. In other words, we
confront persons with bad ideas who are kind, gracious, and principled
even as we meet people with good ideas who are rude, unprincipled, and
ungracious. This can be both confounding and confusing. At the same
time, this observation can make us think more carefully.

A close reading of Mohler’s article on Sider reveals that he may have
hit a daily double here. In other words, in this piece Mohler appears
to be both the person with the “bad ideas” and the one who is “rude,
unprincipled, and ungracious.”

He continues:

I think Ron Sider would agree with this, but I will not have the
privilege of asking him about it in this life. Sider died on July 27
at age 82 of a sudden cardiac arrest. One of the most important
figures in what became known as the “evangelical left,” Sider shocked
and rocked the Christian world with his 1977 book, Rich Christians in
an Age of Hunger. He sought to combine liberal politics with his
traditional Mennonite theology and, deeply troubled by what he saw as
injustice, Sider sought to rally evangelical Christianity into a
movement for liberation against poverty and oppression. The problem
was that Sider’s solutions, based in a mix of liberalism,
liberationism, and easily falsified economic errors, would only add to
the problems.

Notice the word choices here. Mohler says Sider was “deeply troubled
by what he saw as injustice.” Mohler could have said Sider was
troubled by injustice. But instead he went with the phrase “what he
saw as injustice.” I will let you decide what Mohler is trying to
communicate here.

He continues:

In Rich Christians, Sider called evangelical Christians to abandon
capitalism and its excesses and embrace a new economic approach.
Predictably, Sider’s approach just happened to be a mash of
collectivism, state control, income redistribution, and predictably
leftist (if oddly arranged and inconclusive) economic arguments. His
arguments sounded to some like liberation theology and to others like
third-world propaganda. Carl Henry and Ronald Nash rightly criticized
Sider’s argument as Marxist, while others offered in-depth critiques
of Sider’s unexpectedly influential work.

Mohler misrepresents Sider’s position with buzzwords that are bound to
fire-up his Christian Right band of followers. For example, I don’t
think Sider ever called himself a Marxist. At a May 2004 conference
Sider said “I don’t think God is a Marxist, but frequently the Bible
suggests that people get rich by oppression or are rich and don’t
share what they have–and in both cases, God is furious.” (Eyal Press,
“Closing the Religion Gap,” The Nation, August 30/Sept.6, 2004.
11-16). Sounds pretty biblical to me.

Some of us evangelicals believe that there is plenty of biblical
support for what Mohler disparages here as “collectivism.” In fact,
one might even argue that the founding fathers of the United States
had a “collectivist” streak in them as evidenced by their embrace of
classical republicanism or civic humanism. Moreover, I don’t think
Sider has ever argued for anything close to “state control.” But he
did believe that government has a moral responsibility to promote the
common good. Mohler uses the word “predictably” twice in this
paragraph when, in fact, it is Mohler’s critique of the Evangelical
Left, not Sider’s nuanced biblical approach to civic engagement, that
is more “predictable.” One more thing about this paragraph: Carl F.H.
Henry did indeed occasionally critique Sider. But Henry also signed
the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. More on
that document below.

Mohler writes:

A direct refutation of Sider’s approach came from David Chilton in his
book, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators. Chilton
dissected Sider’s economics, but also offered a theological critique.
Sider, said Chilton, “has allowed his economic views to be shaped by
an increasingly vocal, socialistic camp in our society, not by the
word of God.” Sider would offer several revisions of his book,
attempting to clarify that he did not want state collectivism and
economic control, but in the eyes of his critics, myself included, he
never resolved the larger problem of making economic proposals that
would actually hurt, rather than help, those in poverty.
He never resolved the larger problem of making economic proposals that
would actually hurt, rather than help, those in poverty.

Certainly Mohler can find a better critique of Sider than the
essentially self-published work of a Rousas Rushdoony
reconstructionist and dominionist like David Chilton. Wait, I take
that back. Actually, in light of Mohler’s remarks last month about
Christian nationalism, this make perfect sense. (Mohler would have
been better served by referencing University of Michigan philosopher
George Mavrodes’s critique of Sider’e economics).

Biography matters. Ronald J. Sider was born into an austere Mennonite
family in Canada. He later stated that his father never voted, and his
cousin, an influential bishop, identified voting as a sin. Sider’s
Anabaptist background was always actually in the foreground as well as
the background. He was troubled by perfectionism but sincerely
committed to a simple lifestyle. He and his wife Artubus lived in an
inner-city neighborhood in Philadelphia, cooked out of the
More-With-Less-Cookbook, and wore used clothing bought at local thrift
shops. After graduate work at Yale, he taught at schools including
Messiah College and Palmer Theological Seminary.

In Rich Christians, Sider had argued: “All income should be given to
the poor after one satisfies bare necessities.” Imagine just for
argument, that this principle is correct—how would you define “bare
necessities?” That was one of the insurmountable problems with Sider’s
approach. He did lean into guilt as a moral principle that he tried to
translate into economic life. A more committed Marxist would argue
that Sider was just making a consumer choice for a simpler lifestyle.

Some of the paragraph on the More-With-Less-Cookbook and the thrift
shops appears to come directly from page 259 of historian David
Swartz’s book Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of
Conservatism. But Swartz writes as a generally detached historian.
Mohler writes in a way that makes it virtually impossible to read
these two paragraphs and not perceive them as a disgusting attack on
the Christian way of living Sider pursued. The context matters.

He was also avowedly political. As the 2020 election approached, I was
called by a reporter for a major newspaper and asked to respond to the
formation of “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden,” of which Sider was
co-founder. The reporter asked me to comment on the group’s public
statement which called for evangelicals to support Joe Biden as
president. I offered a robust response. The reporter then suggested
that the new group was a surprising development. No, I explained,
Sider had also organized “Evangelicals for George McGovern” in 1972,
in his house no less.

Perhaps sometime in the future, let’s say, for example, the year 2040,
a reporter will ask a prominent Christian leader if she found the then
eighty-one-year old Al Mohler’s endorsement of an immoral presidential
candidate to be a “surprising development.” “No,” the Christian leader
will explain, “Mohler voted for Trump in 2020 and announced it on
Twitter no less.”

Mohler writes:

Sider was crucial to the emergence of evangelical events, statements,
and organizations that attempted to push evangelicals toward the
political left. The most important milestone was a gathering in a
ramshackle Chicago YMCA that produced the 1973 Chicago Declaration of
Evangelical Social Concern. The liberal momentum Sider wanted to build
among evangelicals fell apart for two main reasons. First, the left
soon devolved into identity politics, first over race and feminism.
The LGBTQ revolution was also on the horizon. Second, evangelicals did
mobilize in the years after that Chicago gathering, but the energy was
on the right, not on the left. As Sider lamented, “we called for
social and political action, and we got eight years of Ronald Reagan.

I would argue that Sider tried to push evangelicals less toward “the
political left” and more toward a biblical approach to politics.
Yesterday, in my own reflection on Sider’s life, I wrote about his
role in the convening of Catholics and Evangelicals for the Common
Good. These conversations at Georgetown University included a
conservative political scientist, multiple George W. Bush voters, a
Rick Santorum political adviser, and a former Bush speechwriter. There
was nothing about this gathering that remotely suggested Sider was
trying to push the evangelicals in the room toward “the political
left.” Scot McKnight got it right in this tweet:


Mohler’s choice of words are once again worth noting here. His uses
the word “ramshackle” as more than just an adjective to describe the
building where the Chicago Declaration was signed. He wants to portray
Sider, Jim Wallis, Donald Dayton, Samuel Escobar, Frank Gaebelein,
Carl F.H. Henry, Richard Mouw, John Perkins, and others present at the
Chicago YMCA in 1973 as two-bit organizers who couldn’t even afford a
proper hotel to advance their Christian agenda.

Sider never approved of abortion or same-sex marriage, which limited
his reach to the left. But he widened what he called pro-life concerns
to include just about every political interest of the economic
progressives, including climate change. He would eventually support
the most radically pro-abortion presidential candidate in American
political history.

Why does Mohler single-out “climate change” in this paragraph? He
apparently does not believe that climate change is a pro-life issue.
But if the science is correct, and the planet is heating-up to such an
extent that it will one day be difficult for human beings to live on
it, it is hard not to think about climate change as a “life” issue.
But Mohler, of course, won’t be around to explain to his great, great,
great grandchildren why he did nothing about climate change and, as
part of the public record, criticized someone like Sider who was
trying to call our attention to this serious issue.

And what about Mohler’s criticism of Sider’s support for Joe Biden? As
a pro-life Christian, I have a different view than Mohler about the
best way to curb abortions, but as I read his piece I could not help
but imagine future students of Southern Baptist history coming across
a sentence in one of their textbooks that might go something like
this: “Mohler would eventually support the most corrupt, immoral and
incompetent president in United States history not in spite of his
Christian faith, but because of it.”

More Mohler:

He was a serious man who lived a serious life, and he avoided any
personal scandal. He forced evangelicals into many serious ethical and
theological debates—and those debates were important. But if
evangelicalism deserves a future, it will have to be a future that
resists and rejects the arguments of the evangelical left. Ironically
enough, Ron Sider helped us to see that.

Mohler says the debates that Sider introduced were “serious” and
“important.” Really? For some reason I didn’t get that impression from
his piece. Mohler’s fundamentalism will not permit him to say anything
positive about Sider’s profound contributions to the advancement of
the Kingdom of God.

By the way, Mohler will be taking his Christian nationalism to the
“Free State of Florida” next month where he will offer a keynote
address at the conference of the National Conservative Movement. While
he’s there, perhaps he can drag Sider through mud a little more in
conversations with Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Peter Thiel, Michael
Anton, and Mollie Hemingway.

Source:
https://t.co/F1XHu6wOwg


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