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Ron Sider - Wikipedia Canadian-born American theologian and social activist
Ron Sider
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Ron Sider | |
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![]() Sider speaking at Christ at the Checkpoint conference in Bethlehem, the Palestinian Territories, in March 2012 | |
Born | 17 September 1939 (age 81) Stevensville, Ontario, Canada |
Education | University of Waterloo Yale University |
Occupation | Theologian, activist |
Ronald James Sider (born 17 September 1939) is a Canadian-born American theologian and social activist. He is the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, a think-tank which seeks to develop biblical solutions to social and economic problems through incubating programs that operate at the intersection of faith and social justice. He is a founding board member of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. He is also the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary in St. Davids, Pennsylvania.
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Education and career[edit source]
Sider attended the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, and received a BA in European history. While at Waterloo, he came in contact with the apologetic work of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and set his sights on a career in academia. Upon graduating in the late 1960s with Master of Divinity and PhD degrees in history from Yale University, he expected to teach early modern European history on secular university campuses, and continue his apologetic work for IVCF. In 1968, he accepted an invitation from Messiah College to teach at its newly opened Philadelphia Campus in the inner city of Philadelphia, PA. The racism, poverty, and evangelical indifference he observed at close hand made a deep impression that led him to write the book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.
What he saw as the injustice of the inner city motivated Sider to work toward developing a biblical response to social injustice. He brought together a network of similarly concerned evangelicals, which in 1973 became the Thanksgiving Workshop on Evangelical Social Concern. It was this conference that issued The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. Twenty years later, a similar gathering of evangelical leaders resulted in the Chicago Declaration II: A Call for Evangelical Renewal. In 2004 he was a signatory of the "Confessing Christ in a World of Violence" document.
He signed his name to a full-page ad in the 5 December 2008 New York Times that objected to violence and intimidation against religious institutions and believers in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8. The ad stated that "violence and intimidation are always wrong, whether the victims are believers, gay people, or anyone else." A dozen other religious and human rights activists from several different faiths also signed the ad, noting that they "differ on important moral and legal questions," including Proposition 8.[1]
Publications[edit source]
Sider has published over 30 books and has written over 100 articles in both religious and secular magazines on a variety of topics including the importance of caring for creation as part of biblical discipleship.
In 1977, Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, was published. Hailed by Christianity Today as one of the one hundred most influential books in religion in the 20th century, it went on to sell over 400,000 copies in many languages. He later authored Good News Good Works (published by Baker Book House), a call to the church to embrace what Sider sees as the whole gospel, through a combination of evangelism, social engagement and spiritual formation. Its companion book tells stories about effective ministries that bring both evangelism and social transformation together.
Completely Pro-Life, published in the mid-1980s, calls on Christians to take a consistent stand opposing abortion, capital punishment, nuclear weapons, hunger, and other conditions that Sider sees as anti-life. Cup of Water, Bread of Life was published in 1994. Living Like Jesus (1999) has been called Sider's Mere Christianity. Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America (1999, 2007) offers a holistic, comprehensive vision for dramatically reducing America's poverty. Churches That Make a Difference (2002) with Phil Olson and Heidi Rolland Unruh provides concrete help to local congregations seeking to combine evangelism and social ministry. Recent publications include: Fixing the Moral Deficit: A Balanced Way to Balance the Budget (2012); Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement (2012); The Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment (2012); The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity (2020).
Ecumenical relations[edit source]
In August 2009, he signed a public statement encouraging all Christians to read, wrestle with, and respond to Caritas in Veritate, the social encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI. Later that year, he also gave his approval to the Manhattan Declaration, calling on evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox not to comply with rules and laws permitting abortion, same-sex marriage and other matters that go against their religious consciences.[2][3]
Criticism[edit source]
Sider's opponents typically criticize his ideas as consisting of bad theology and bad economics. The most thorough critiques come from the American Christian right, specifically from Christian Reconstructionists. David Chilton's book, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators (1986), with a foreword by Gary North, argues that Sider's book takes a position contrary to the biblical teachings on economics, poverty, and giving, and that the economic model it provides is untenable.[4] Sider significantly revised the book for the twentieth anniversary edition, and, in an interview with Christianity Today magazine said, "I admit, though, that I didn't know a great deal of economics when I wrote the first edition of Rich Christians. In the meantime, I've learned considerably more, and I've changed some things as a result of that. For example, in the new, twentieth-anniversary edition, I say more explicitly that when the choice is democratic capitalism or communism, I favor the democratic political order and market economies."[5]
Family[edit source]
Sider is the child of a Canadian Brethren in Christ pastor. He attends Oxford Circle Mennonite Church, is the father of three and lives in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, with his wife Arbutus, a retired family counselor. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2011, and they have six granddaughters. Sider's son Theodore (Ted) is a tenured professor of philosophy at Rutgers who has published over 50 scholarly articles and three books with Oxford University Press.
References[edit source]
- ^ NoMobVeto.org Archived 8 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Manhattan Declaration signers: A Call of Christian Conscience, Demoss News, archived from the original on 1 September 2013.
- ^ Evangelical scholars call for broad discussion of Pope's social encyclical, Catholic Culture.
- ^ "Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider". Institute for Christian Economics. Archived from the original on 14 March 2015.
- ^ Christianity Today, April 28, 1997
External links[edit source]
![]() | Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ron Sider |
알라딘: 예수가 주님이시라면 If Jesus Is Lord by Ronald J. Sider
This book by noted theologian and bestselling author Ronald J. Sider provides a career capstone statement on biblical peacemaking. Sider makes a strong case for the view that Jesus calls his disciples to love, and never kill, their enemies. He explains that there are never only two options: to kill or to do nothing in the face of tyranny and brutality. There is always a third possibility: vigorous, nonviolent resistance. If we believe that Jesus is Lord, then we disobey him when we set aside what he taught about killing and ignore his command to love our enemies.
This thorough, comprehensive treatment of a topic of perennial concern vigorously engages with the just war tradition and issues a challenge to all Christians, especially evangelicals, to engage in biblical peacemaking. The book includes a foreword by Stanley Hauerwas.
[별의별평] 토를 달 수 없게 만드는 기독교 비폭력 평화주의 변증서 < 별의별평 < 탐구생활 < 기사본문 - 뉴스앤조이
[별의별평] 토를 달 수 없게 만드는 기독교 비폭력 평화주의 변증서
로널드 사이더 <예수가 주님이시라면>(요단출판사)
기자명 최경환‧송지훈
승인 2021.07.26
<뉴스앤조이> 독서 캠페인 '탐구생활'(탐독하고 구도하는 그리스도인의 독서 생활)에서 독자들에게 추천하는 책입니다. 아래 내용은 평자가 책을 읽고 주관을 담아 작성했습니다.
![](https://cdn.newsnjoy.or.kr/news/photo/202107/303109_95892_2559.jpg)
평화를 사랑했던 기독교 평화주의는 역설적으로 다른 교파로부터 엄청난 핍박과 비난을 받으면서 자신의 자리를 지켜야만 했다. 왜 그랬을까? 아마도 인간의 기본적인 정서와 신념에 거스르는 행동을 요구했기 때문이 아닐까? "어떻게 예수님처럼 살 수 있어? 현실적으로 적절한 대안을 만들어야지." 기존 신학은 이런 고민에서부터 출발했다고 해도 과언이 아니다. 현실에 적합한 신학, 현실과 대화하는 신학은 결국 예수의 날것 그대로의 말과 행동을 적절하게 희석하는 기술로 변모했다.
한 줄 평: 신학적으로 다른 입장을 가지고 있더라도, 일단 예수의 사랑과 비폭력에 대해서는 토를 달지 말자!
송지훈 성서한국 사무국장
이 책은 오랫동안 기독교의 사회적 책임을 위해 수고해 온 로널드 사이드가 비폭력 평화주의를 탄탄하게 변증하고 옹호하는 책이다. 복음주의의 거장답게 그는 무려 책의 절반을 할애해 성경을 토대로 비폭력 평화주의의 논증을 빌드업하는 데 공을 들인다. 그동안 다수의 기독교 세력은 성전(holy war), 정의로운 전쟁이라는 명목으로 전쟁의 불가피함을 역설 왔다. 하지만 지금껏 어느 전쟁도 정의로운 전쟁의 타이틀을 거머쥔 역사는 없었다. 물론 평화주의는 '순진한 이상주의' 혹은 '분리주의'라는 비판도 받아 왔고, 일정 부분은 마냥 무시할 수도 없다고 생각한다. 그러나 폭력으로 전복을 꾀하는 정치적 메시아의 길을 단호히 거부하고 십자가형을 감내한 예수, 그리고 당신에게 그 '예수가 주님이시라면' 비폭력 평화주의를 외면할 수 없는 노릇이다. 로널드 사이더의 모든 주장에 다 동의하기 어려울 수 있다. 개인적으로는 아슬아슬하게 느껴지는 부분도 있었고 의문도 여전히 남아 있다. 하지만 모든 갈등과 반목의 장에서 가장 우선돼야 할 것은 바로 '평화'다. 여기에는 한 점의 의심도 없다.
한 줄 평: 여전한 폭력의 시대에 꼭 필요한 기독교 비폭력 평화주의 변증서.
구매 링크 바로 가기: https://bit.ly/3BHN5de