Ronald James Sider (September 17, 1939 – July 27, 2022),^[1]^[2] was a Canadian-born American theologian and social activist. He was 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.

Sider was also a founding board member of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. He was the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary in St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

Education and career

In 1953, Sider graduated from secondary school at Niagara Christian College (Now Niagara Christian Collegiate) which is located in Fort Erie, Ontario. Sider attended the Waterloo Lutheran University, in Waterloo, Ontario, and received a BA in European history in 1962.^[3] 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 from Yale University with an M.A. (history, 1963), B.D. (divinity, 1967), and PhD (history, 1969),^[3] 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, Pennsylvania. 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.^[4]

Publications

Sider published over 30 books and wrote 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

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.^[5]^[6]

Criticism

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.^[7] 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."^[8]

Family

Sider was the child of a Canadian Brethren in Christ pastor. He attended Oxford Circle Mennonite Church, was the father of three and lived in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, with his wife Arbutus, a retired family counselor. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2011, and they had 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

^ Ron Sider, evangelical activist who wrote ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger,’ dies at 82
^ "Obituary for Ronald J. Sider at Huff & Lakjer Funeral Home, Inc".
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Directory of American Scholars, 6th ed. (Bowker, 1974), Vol. I, p. 576.
^ 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 September 1, 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 March 14, 2015.
^ Christianity Today, April 28, 1997

External links

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로널드 사이더

Ron Sider
Ron Sider
Born	September 17, 1939; Stevensville, Ontario, Canada
Died	July 27, 2022 (aged 82)
Education	University of Waterloo; Yale University;
Occupation(s)	Theologian, activist

위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전.

로널드 사이더(Ronald James Sider, 1939년 9월 17일~2022년 7월 27일)는 캐나다 태생의 미국의 복음주의 사회운동가이며 신학자가이다.

경력

로널드 사이더는 1939년 캐나다에서 개신교(그리스도의 형제단)목사의 아들로 태어났으며, 예일 대학교와 같은 대학교 신학부에서 역사(Ph. D.)와 신학을 공부했다. 1968년 인종차별과 빈곤으로 고통받는 흑인 기독교인들의 어려움을 알게 되면서 1973년부터 칼 헨리, 짐 윌리스, 사무엘 에스코바와 함께 주말집회에서 사회문제들을 주로 다루었다.팔머 신학교에서 신학자로 활동했으며, “사회 참여를 위한 복음주의 운동”(Evangelicals for Social Action, ESA)회장,미국 동부 침례교회 신학교(Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary)기독교 윤리학 교수로 일하고 있다.

저서로는 《그리스도인의 양심선언》(영어: The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience),

《가난한 시대를 사는 부유한 그리스도인》(영어: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger),

《이것이 진정한 기독교다!》(영어: Genuine Christianity)(모두 한국기독학생회 출판부IVP에서 역간)가 있다.

어록

로널드 사이더는 2005년 한국을 방문하여 머무는 동안 《복음과 상황》과의 인터뷰를 했다. 당시 《복음과 상황》 편집장이었던 양희송씨와 로널드 사이더간의 인터뷰 내용의 일부를 발췌하였다.

양희송: 최근 번역된 당신의 책 <그리스도인의 양심선언>은 미국 복음주의의 현실을 개탄하는 내용으로 시작한다. 실제로 비관적으로 보는가?
로널드 사이더: 나는 사실 낙관주의자이다. 그 책은 아마 나의 가장 비관주의적 전망을 담았을 것이다. 미국 복음주의에는 다양한 흐름이 있다. 물론 크게 봐서 이 전통은 16세기 종교개혁의 가르침과 18세기 부흥운동의 흐름, 19세기와 20세기 초반의 신학적 자유주의와의 대립 등을 공유하고 있다. 나는 전 생애에 걸쳐 대중적인 복음주의의 여러 측면을 비판했지만, 그것은 어디까지나 복음주의 내부에서 제출한 비판이었다. 나는 매우 헌신된 복음주의자이다. 어떤 행위가 성서의 가르침에 충실한가, 그렇지 않은가 하는 측면에서 나오는 비판이다. 성서는 개인만의 구원이 아니라, 하느님 나라의 복음, 공동체를 함께 말하는 복음을 가르친다는 것이 내 생각이다. 그 책에서는 복음주의자들의 이혼율이나 혼전관계 비율이 일반인들과 다르지 않다든지, 별반 차이가 없는 삶을 살고 있음을 지적했다. (종교 통계 전문가인)조지 바나(George Barna) 같은 이들의 통계자료 분석을 보면 실망스런 내용도 많지만, 자세히 들여다보면 매주 교회에 출석하는 이들의 경우는 상당히 차별성 있는 삶을 살고 있음을 볼 수 있다.^[1]

각주

↑ 복음과 상황 168호-2005년 9월^{[깨진 링크(과거 내용 찾기)]}

한국기독학생회 저자소개

외부 링크

위키미디어 공용에 로널드 사이더 관련 미디어 분류가 있습니다.
ESA 누리집

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/books/ronald-j-sider-dead.html

Ronald J. Sider, 82, Who Urged Evangelicals to Social Action, Dies

He often bucked the rightward trend among some Christians, and in a popular 1977 book he argued that faith meant more than just personal salvation.

Ronald J. Sider in 2019. He argued that Christ called the faithful to attend to social justice issues.Credit...Eastern University

By Neil Genzlinger
Published Aug. 5, 2022Updated Aug. 8, 2022

Ronald J. Sider, an evangelical Christian author and speaker who, in an era when evangelicals increasingly aligned themselves with the political right, argued that Christ called the faithful to attend to social justice issues like racism and poverty, died on July 27 at his home in Lansdale, Pa., near Philadelphia. He was 82.

His son Theodore said the cause was cardiac arrest.

In 1973 Dr. Sider was among a group of religious leaders who, at a conference in Chicago, issued what became known as the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, “confessing our failure to confront injustice, racism and discrimination against women, and pledging to do better,” as he would summarize the document later.

The declaration, of which Dr. Sider was a principal architect, was bold for the time: It stated emphatically that the evangelical emphasis on personal salvation was not enough.

“We acknowledge that God requires justice,” it said. “But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and oppressed, we have mostly remained silent.”

Opinion | Tish Harrison Warren
A Model for an Evangelical Christianity Committed to Justice
Aug. 7, 2022

Dr. Sider pressed that case further in his book “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger,” published in 1977. In it, he laid out what he saw as the biblical command to aid the poor, and he lit into evangelicals and other Christians who let themselves be seduced by advertising that hawked the benefits of affluence.

“People persist in the fruitless effort to quench their thirst for meaning and fulfillment with an ever-rising river of possessions,” he wrote. “The personal result is agonizing distress and undefined dissatisfaction. The social result is environmental pollution and neglected poor people.”

Originally published in 1977, Dr. Sider’s “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” has been reissued frequently and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.Credit...

The book, which has been reissued frequently — with Dr. Sider updating it to account for AIDS, the fall of the Soviet Union and other world developments — has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. In 1978 its success encouraged Dr. Sider to start Evangelicals for Social Action (now Christians for Social Action), a group that has been a voice not only on poverty but also on nuclear disarmament, apartheid, the environment and other issues.

While many evangelicals were aligning with the politics of the right (the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority the next year) and focusing on abortion and issues of sexual identity, Dr. Sider spoke and wrote from the left, remaining vocal and politically involved for half a century.

That included trying to counter the support among white evangelicals for Donald J. Trump. In 2020 he edited “The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity,” a book that, he told Sight magazine, “grew out of an obvious concern that white evangelicals were not thinking in an adequately biblical way in their reflections on Donald Trump, his character and his policies.”

Dr. Sider wasn’t without his conservative side, especially concerning same-sex marriage and abortion. And he cautioned against being overly focused on causes — one of his books was called “I Am Not a Social Activist: Making Jesus the Agenda” (2008). But he had hope that a faith of personal salvation and one of advocacy on social issues could coexist.

“I long for the day when every village, town and city has congregations of Christians so in love with Jesus Christ that they lead scores of people to accept him as personal Savior and Lord every year,” he wrote in “Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel” (1999), “and so sensitive to the cry of the poor and oppressed that they work vigorously for justice, peace and freedom.”

Ronald James Sider was born on Sept. 17, 1939, in Stevensville, Ontario. His father, James, was a farmer and later a pastor, and his mother, Ida (Cline) Sider, was a homemaker.

He grew up attending the Brethren Church of Christ. His interest in social activism started there.

“It was thoroughly evangelical but had not experienced the wrenching early-20th-century divisions of the social gospel-fundamentalist battles that helped produce the huge gulf between evangelism and social action,” Dr. Sider wrote in “Good News and Good Works.” “In my early years in the faith I just assumed that devout Christians shared the gospel, as my missionary uncle had in Africa, and also cared for the poor, as my church’s relief agency was doing.”

He earned a bachelor’s degree at Waterloo Lutheran University in Ontario in 1962 and later in the decade earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history at Yale University and a bachelor of divinity degree at Yale Divinity School. He was an ordained minister in both the Mennonite and Brethren of Christ denominations, but teaching was his main career.

In 1968 he took a position at the Philadelphia campus of Messiah College, where he made a point of attending a Black church in a distressed part of the city and organizing “weekend seminars for rural and suburban church leaders so they could listen to African American leaders share the anguish of racism and poverty,” as he wrote in “Good News and Good Works.”

In 1977 Dr. Sider joined the faculty of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, now Palmer Theological Seminary, in St. Davids, Pa., where he was an emeritus professor at his death. The seminary, in a memorial posting, said he had “held the longest faculty tenure in Palmer’s history.”

“His effective ministry bore fruit in the seminary classroom, the local and global church, and further afield in the public sphere, both in the United States and abroad,” the posting said.

In addition to his son Theodore, Dr. Sider is survived by his wife, Arbutus (Lichti) Sider, whom he married in 1961; another son, Michael Jay Sider-Rose; a daughter, Sonya Marie Smith; and seven grandchildren.

Dr. Sider’s book “I Am Not a Social Activist” includes a chapter titled “What Keeps You Going, Ron?”

“I hope that I have, by God’s grace, allowed Jesus’ resurrection to shape the way I live — it certainly has shaped the way I hope,” he wrote in that chapter. “I expect to see Jesus. I believe that he will make good on his promise to complete his victory over the devastation Satan has caused in God’s wonderful world.

“Broken marriages, corrupted cultures, unjust systems, drug-scarred bodies and polluted rivers are not the last word. Jesus is coming back.”

Neil Genzlinger is a writer for the Obituaries desk. Previously he was a television, film and theater critic. More about Neil Genzlinger
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 9, 2022, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Ronald J. Sider, 82; Urged Evangelicals to Social Action. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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https://www.christianitytoday.com/2022/07/ron-sider-died-evangelicals-for-social-action/

DIED: RON SIDER, EVANGELICAL WHO PUSHED FOR SOCIAL ACTION

DANIEL SILLIMAN

Author of “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” argued poverty was a moral issue.

Ron Sider
CHRISTIANITY TODAY JULY 28, 2022

Edits by Mallory Rentsch
ENGLISH

Ronald J. Sider, organizer of the evangelical left and author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, died on Wednesday at 82. His son told followers that Sider suffered from a sudden cardiac arrest.

For nearly 50 years, Sider called evangelicals to care about the poor and see poverty as a moral issue. He argued for an expanded understanding of sin to include social structures that perpetuate inequality and injustice, and urged Christians to see how their salvation should compel them to care for their neighbors.

“Salvation is a lot more than just a new right relationship with God through forgiveness of sins. It’s a new, transformed lifestyle that you can see visible in the body of believers,” he said. “Sin is a biblical category. Given a careful reading of the world and the Bible and our giving patterns, how can we come to any other conclusion than to say that we are flatly disobeying what the God of the Bible says about the way he wants his people to care for the poor?”

Sider was a key facilitator of the born-again left that emerged in the 1970s. But he lived to see American evangelicals largely turn away from concerns about war, racism, and inequality. He continued to speak out, however, and became, as a Christianity Today writer once described it, the “burr in the ethical saddle” of the white evangelical horse.

His landmark book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, inspired generations of young Christians, selling 400,000 copies in nine languages. CT ranked it as one of the most influential evangelical titles of the 20th century, right after J. I. Packer’s Knowing God and Kenneth Taylor’s The Living Bible.

Rich Stearns, president emeritus of World Vision, called Sider “a great Christian soul and a passionate justice warrior.” Adam Russell Taylor, the president of Sojourners, said he was “was a longtime friend and ally” and “a tireless proponent of peace and justice.” Both referenced the impact of Sider’s book on their lives.

Sider was born in Fort Erie, Ontario, in September 1939. Raised on a 275-acre farm, his father was a farmer and a pastor in the Brethren in Christ Church, an Anabaptist and Wesleyan tradition that combined concern for holiness, a commitment to peace, and a literalist reading of the Sermon on the Mount.

Sider was the first in his family to pursue higher education, but he carried with him the conviction that Christian faith was not merely intellectual assent: True faith should shape your whole life.

He studied history under Christian apologist John Warwick Montgomery at Waterloo Lutheran University in Ontario and then went to Yale University to study the Reformation with historian Jaroslav Pelikan. Sider wrote his dissertation on Andreas Karlstadt, a contemporary of Martin Luther who renounced academic titles, wore peasants’ clothes, and preached simplicity in the church.

Sider was learning to embrace a similar radicalism in his own life. Instead of living with the other graduate students at Yale, he found a home for his young family on the edge of a Black neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut. Then he moved to the center of the African American community, where he mourned with his neighbors when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and became involved with the local struggle for civil rights. When he wasn’t reading Latin and German for his dissertation, Sider helped Black activists register voters and recruited Yale’s InterVarsity students to join him.

After graduating, Sider took a position teaching at Messiah College’s Philadelphia campus and then at Eastern University’s Palmer Theological Seminary. He moved to the African American neighborhood in Germantown and focused his classes on racism, war, and poverty.

Sider also became more politically active. He campaigned for George McGovern, founding Evangelicals for McGovern to rally support for the anti-war senator from South Dakota who was maligned by his many opponents as the candidate for acid, amnesty, and abortion.

According to historian David Swartz, Evangelicals for McGovern was the first evangelical group after 1945 to support a presidential candidate. Religious Right groups such as the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition had not yet organized, and though many prominent leaders such as Billy Graham supported President Richard Nixon, evangelical politics at that moment seemed “up for grabs.” Sider, along with people like Tom Skinner, Jim Wallis, and Richard Mouw, wanted to grab it. They believed Christians who loved Jesus and hated sin should exert their political will to oppose the war in Vietnam, law-and-order politics, and economic policies that aggravated poverty.

After McGovern’s landslide loss, Sider organized a group of about 50 to meet in a YMCA basement in Chicago before Thanksgiving 1973. They wrote a declaration of “evangelical social concern.”

“We acknowledge our Christian responsibilities of citizenship,” it said. “Therefore, we must challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might—a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence with victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty.”

Ron Sider’s Unsettling Crusade

TIM STAFFORD

In 1977, Sider published Rich Christians, arguing that poverty is a moral and not just economic issue. Christians who take the Bible seriously should oppose wealth inequality, he said, and see the injustice of the social structures that benefit powerful people at the expense of the poor.

“Hunger and starvation stalk the land,” he wrote. “The problem, we know, is that the world’s resources are not evenly distributed. North Americans live on an affluent island amid a sea of starving humanity.”

Evangelical Christians had long preached against some of the sins that lead to poverty, such as alcohol abuse. But they had ignored others, when condemnation would mean corporate responsibility.

“If God’s word is true, then all of us who dwell in affluent nations are trapped in sin. We have profited from systemic injustice,” Sider wrote. “We are guilty of an outrageous offense against God and neighbor.”

The book was sharply criticized by Christian Reconstructionist Gary North, who accused Sider of being a “guilt manipulator,” and Christian worldview philosopher Francis Schaeffer, who said Sider had succumbed to secular humanism and focused too much on society’s material problems.

The book nevertheless found an eager audience of evangelicals. It was especially popular among InterVarsity students and at campus ministries across the US and abroad. Rich Christians was translated into German, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean, and continued to circulate among left-leaning Christians for decades.

“Sider became a spark plug,” according to a 1992 CT profile, “among a small group of evangelicals who were interested in social and political issues, most of whom were young, well educated, highly idealistic, and shared a concern for social and racial justice and simple living.”

The Rich Christian

KEVIN D. MILLER

Sider founded Evangelicals for Social Action (now Christians for Social Action) in 1978. Hopes, however, for a strong progressive evangelical movement were soon swamped by the popularity of Ronald Reagan and the successes of the Religious Right. Republican leaders actively courted white evangelicals, finding common causes on issues from the Supreme Court to the local school board. Meanwhile, leading Democrats—many of whom found Jimmy Carter’s moralism judgmental and offensive—avoided or dismissed religious concerns and religious voters.

Nonetheless, Sider continued speaking and writing about evangelical moral concerns, including popular books on simple living and historic studies of the early church’s holistic pro-life teaching. Evangelicals for Social Action lobbied for sanctions on apartheid South Africa, launched the Evangelical Environmental Network, and campaigned for higher fuel-efficiency standards on automobiles.

Sider also protested American support for Latin American dictators in the 1980s and opposed the Gulf War in 1991 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“Sider refused to isolate abortion from issues of violence & injustice, urging conservative evangelicals to be ‘completely pro-life,’” wrote historian Brantley Gasaway. “Sider’s career seems bittersweet. … a bitter reminder of what modern evangelical politics might have but did not become.”

Sider continued to cry out to evangelicals from the wilderness into the 2020 election, when he edited a collection of Christian political essays called The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump.

He said he published the book “with deep sadness and persistent hope,” calling American Christians across the political spectrum to demonstrate their “commitment to truth, respect for opponents, and willingness to negotiate reasonable bipartisan compromise.” Writers in the collection included former CT editor in chief Mark Galli, evangelical philosopher Michael Austin, theologian Samuel Escobar, and former Republican Congressman Reid Ribble.

“We believe that Christians can make a huge contribution to preserving a good future for our children and grandchildren,” Sider wrote, “by praying for God’s guidance, submitting unconditionally to biblical principles about truth, justice, and moral integrity, and faithfully applying these biblical principles in all our political decisions.”

In March 2021, he announced he had an aggressive form of bladder cancer and that he would be starting radiology and chemotherapy treatments. Sider said he was praying for 10 more years to live, but also kept singing a hymn from his childhood:

Peace, peace, wonderful peace,
Coming down from the Father above!
Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray,
In fathomless billows of love!

“We at Christians for Social Action feel the loss of this humble, kind, and prophetic man,” said Nikki Toyama-Szeto, the organization’s executive director. “As the initial surprise passes, we hold deep gratitude for the big and small ways that Ron bore witness to God’s heart, and how he always showed us a fuller picture of what it means to follow Jesus.”

Toyama-Szeto said in a statement that as Sider worked on his autobiography, “he was unafraid of death, confident that an even better story awaited him.”

On July 28, Sider’s son Ted shared on Facebook and Substack that his father had died suddenly of a cardiac arrest and asked followers to “please join our family in grieving for him.”

He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Arbutus Lichti Sider, and three children.

History Shows Us Why Being Evangelical Matters

RON SIDER
More from Ron Sider

===
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2016/11/history-shows-us-why-being-evangelical-matters/

HISTORY SHOWS US WHY BEING EVANGELICAL MATTERS

RON SIDER

Evangelicalism yesterday helps us embrace the label today.

CHRISTIANITY TODAYNOVEMBER 21, 2016

Shutterstock

Is it time to abandon the label evangelical?

It’s a question we have been asking for years. But especially after this election, many Christians who have long identified as evangelicals—as well as millennials who grew up in our congregations—consider the label evangelical irreparably toxic. Both inside and outside the church, it has come to caricature a Religious Right sensibility, and worse, a group who are homophobic, anti-science, anti-immigrant, racist, and unconcerned about the poor.

In spite of my many decades as an evangelical, I have recently thought that it may be time to use a different word. But then I remember the long history of the term, the fact that the word essentially means a commitment to Jesus’ gospel, and that we need some label to distinguish ourselves from theologically liberal Protestants.

For a proper definition, we need to look at the significant times in history when large numbers of Christians gladly embraced the evangelical label: the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the Wesleyan/evangelical movements in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the evangelical movement in the 20th century.

The Evangelicals Who Came Before Us

Sola gratia and sola scriptura were the two key watchwords of the Protestant Reformation. Luther insisted that faith in Jesus Christ, not our good works, is the means of salvation (sola gratia). Luther also taught that Scripture alone (sola scriptura) is the final authority for faith and life. While we respect church history, church tradition is not an independent or equal source of authority alongside Scripture. To this day, the Lutheran Church in Germany is called “die evangelische kirche,” or the evangelical church. To say one is an evangelical is to embrace the Reformation teaching on sola gratia and sola scriptura.

The revival movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, including John Wesley’s Methodist movement, also identified as evangelical. Wesley asserted a passion for evangelism and a living, personal faith against a dead orthodoxy. He also emphasized “social holiness,” opposed slavery, and promoted justice in society. Wesley’s movement led to the conversion of William Wilberforce who launched the decades-long movement in Great Britain that finally ended the slave trade and slavery itself in the British Empire. The same movement led to a wide range of social justice campaigns in Britain.

The evangelical movement in the United States in the 19th century continued Wesley’s evangelical movement with sweeping revival, passion for evangelism, and strong commitment to social justice. In the mid-19th century, thoroughly evangelical Oberlin College—where the famous evangelist Charles Finney taught as a professor—served as a center for Christian opposition to slavery, the emergence of an evangelical women’s movement, and ongoing evangelistic efforts. Oberlin’s students led missions among Native Americans and stood with them to try to force the US government to keep the treaties it constantly broke. (See Donald Dayton’s Discovering An Evangelical Heritage.) The modern missionary movement of the 18th and 19th centuries flowed in a direct powerful way out of this evangelical movement. In this period when vast numbers of Christians called themselves evangelicals, the word connoted both a passion for evangelism and a commitment to work vigorously for justice in society. Those notions remain central to my conception of evangelical as I use the label today.

In the third period (the 20th century), large numbers of Christians called themselves evangelicals as theological liberalism found powerful expression in many “mainline” Protestant churches in the early 20th century and subsequent decades. Prominent liberal theologians rejected the possibility of miracles, denied the virgin birth, and even challenged the deity and bodily resurrection of Jesus. They neglected evangelism and focused on a “social gospel” concerned primarily or exclusively with justice in society. Christians committed to the historic doctrines of Christian orthodoxy rejected this theological position. At first, these folk called themselves “fundamentalists,” a term that referred to their commitment to central historic Christian doctrines. By the 1940s and 1950s, they shifted to the label “evangelical.”

Tragically, in the earlier years of the social gospel–fundamentalism debate, the theological conservatives overreacted to the social gospel’s one-sided focus on justice by embracing a one-sided emphasis on evangelism and foreign missions. But slowly in the 1950s, and then more vigorously in the next several decades, younger evangelicals insisted that biblical faith demands a strong commitment to both evangelism and social action, thus returning to the balanced position of much of 19th century evangelicalism.

Evangelicals in the later decades of the 20th century rejected the widespread embrace of universalism, a one-sided focus on social justice, and neglect of evangelism in the World Council of Churches and many mainline denominations. Instead they reaffirmed the centrality of evangelism but at the same time insisted that social justice is also a central part of our biblical responsibility. Holistic programs embracing both evangelism and social action—dual missions reflected in the Lausanne Covenant and the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Concern—increased exponentially around the world. When I call myself an evangelical, I also remember this recent period when being an evangelical came to mean embracing justice while holding to central doctrines of the faith.

How We Redeem the Label

What it meant to be an evangelical throughout church history is still relevant today. These distinctives remain important to our faith: salvation by grace, not works; the authority of the Bible; personal faith; passion for both evangelism and social justice; and commitment to historic central doctrines. We need a label to refer to this cluster of beliefs and practices. Perhaps biblical Christian would work, or small-o orthodox.

But the word evangelical is solidly biblical. It is simply the adjective derived from the Greek word evangelion, meaning gospel. Evangelicals are committed to the full biblical gospel.

Why allow people to distort the meaning and connotation of a great name? The harsh, narrow voices of the Religious Right used the label as they neglected justice for the poor and for people of color. Racists and homophobes and anti-immigrant demagogues called themselves evangelical despite their failure to respect and love their neighbors. The term also came up among those rejecting the science of global warming and the importance of creation care. Popular media learned from these examples that evangelical has often meant unjust and unbiblical.

This is a problem, but it’s one we can overcome. Throughout my life, I have repeatedly discovered that the media are intrigued by evangelicals who are passionate about economic and racial justice and protection of the environment. Leading with these concerns helps non-Christians listen to our conversation about Christ. Over time, we can help the larger society come to a better understanding of what an evangelical is.

Our central focus, of course, must be on faithfulness to Jesus and the Scriptures, not some label. Actually practicing holistic ministry that combines evangelism and social action; implementing a completely pro-life agenda that embraces both the sanctity of human life and family on the one hand and racial and economic justice, peacemaking and creation care on the other; and modeling astonishing love even for those we disagree with most strongly; –all that is far more important than “fighting” however winsomely for the label evangelical. In fact, it is the best way to redeem that label.

I see younger Christians already doing many of the things necessary to correct a distorted view of evangelicalism. They embrace racial and economic justice and creation care; they affirm the full dignity and equality of women; they take for granted that faithful Christians must embrace evangelism and social action; and they hold to a biblical sexual ethic while vigorously opposing mistreatment of LGBT people and defending their appropriate civil rights.

Millennials and all Christians who want to be faithful followers of Jesus must do that as well as affirm the beliefs and practices embraced by those who have historically called themselves evangelicals. To do that we need some label that distinguishes us from Protestants who abandon biblical authority, neglect evangelism and fail to affirm historic Christian doctrines.

I continue to believe that the word evangelical is the best label to do that.

Ron Sider is founder and president emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action and a distinguished professor at Palmer Seminary at Eastern University.

More from Ron Sider

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Global Analysis

The Legacy of Ronald J. Sider

Five elements shaping transformational mission today

Al Tizon Aug 2023

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The history of the worldwide journey of evangelicals toward a holistic understanding and practice of mission cannot be told without taking into account the legacy of a North American theologian-activist by the name of Ronald J. Sider. His death on 27 July 2022 at age 82 gives us occasion to celebrate a life meaningfully lived and to reflect upon the lasting impact of his work on the mission of the church.

Though he was a distinguished professor of theology, holistic ministry, and public policy at Palmer Theological Seminary near Philadelphia for almost 45 years and founder of Christians (formerly Evangelicals) for Social Action, Sider never served as a cross-cultural missionary. His research and ministry focused predominantly on his own context of North America, as he called for a full-orbed Christianity that addressed both soul and society. However, North America could not contain his message—Sider’s influence crossed continental borders and made an impact on the church’s global mission.

This was not purely incidental. He was present, for example, at all three international Lausanne congresses. I personally went with him to the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town in 2010. In between the first and second congresses, Sider organized two consultations in 1980 on simple lifestyle and community development as part of his work with the Unit on Ethics and Society of the World Evangelical Fellowship (now the World Evangelical Alliance). So, although he appropriately focused on his own cultural context, the global scene was certainly within his purview.

By far, his most indelible mark on global mission was the part he played in catalyzing the transformational movement, which has manifested in such enduring entities as the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation (INFEMIT), the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, the journal Transformation (of which he served as first editor), and Regnum Books International.

The transformational movement, or ‘mission as transformation’, can be defined as a loose global network of reflective-practitioners of integral, contextual, and relational mission, wrapped in theological scholarship. Driven by a vision of God’s kingdom of peace, justice, and salvation, transformationalists ‘refuse to understand evangelization without liberation, a change of heart without a change of structures, vertical reconciliation (between God and people) without horizontal reconciliation (between people and people), and church planting without community building.’[1]

When one digs around the roots and fruits of this movement, one will unavoidably and regularly run into the person of Ronald J. Sider. Of course, he was not alone; other friends and ‘co-conspirators’ of ‘mission as transformation’ would include Rene Padilla, Samuel Escobar, Vinay Samuel, Melba Maggay, Kwame Bediako, and Peter Kuzmic.

With a transformational understanding of the whole gospel as both foundation and backdrop, let us consider five key ways in which Sider uniquely shaped the movement.

Transformation and Discipleship: I Am Not a Social Activist

The first element is that a holistic understanding of the gospel is a discipleship issue. When people associate Sider with social justice, they are not wrong. But Sider’s response was clear: ‘I am not a social activist.’[2] This response was as puzzling as it was declarative. For if Sider did not consider himself a social activist, then what was he? In his own words, ‘I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord of the universe.’[3] His motivation for social transformation came not from humanist altruism, but ultimately from authentic, Christian discipleship—a deep desire to follow Jesus faithfully and radically in the world.

Wealth and Poverty: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger

Now in its sixth edition, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger is on Christianity Today’s Top 50 Books that have shaped the evangelical world. In light of its impact alone, few would argue that Sider did more than any other to make economic life central to evangelical mission. Wealth and its pursuit are a sacred cow in capitalist societies—to challenge it would be to do so at one’s own peril! Nonetheless, Sider called it for what it is, a powerful idol that hinders the work of the gospel. ‘The increasingly affluent standard of living is the god of twenty-first century North America, and the adman is its prophet.’[4]

Sider’s critique honed in on God’s people who unquestioningly pursue wealth according to the rules of capitalism and not the rules of biblical faith. He writes, ‘In an age of affluence and poverty, most Christians [. . .] are tempted to succumb to the heresy of following society’s materialistic values rather than biblical truth.’[5] In the spirit of the biblical prophets, Sider called the church to repent and to begin living out the economics of the kingdom—in short, to return to Jesus.

Sider’s calling of rich Christians to account has had enormous impact on the church’s worldwide mission. First of all, it translated into a call for many Christians (myself included) to sell everything they had and to give the proceeds to the poor in order to follow Jesus who resides among the poor, oppressed, marginalized, and traumatized (cf. Mark 10:17–27; Matt 25:31–40). Implied here is that our wealth is more a hindrance than it is an asset for mission. While Jonathan Bonk’s classic Missions and Money[6] made the definitive case for the consequences of affluence to missionary work, Sider’s Rich Christians has served as the inspiration for economically conscious mission, not just for those called to work directly among the poor, but for the missionary community as a whole to think more critically about its attitude and management of material resources. Are the abundant resources entrusted to us gospel-serving or self-serving?[7]

Simple Lifestyle: Living Like We Care

Sider’s warning regarding the unquestioned pursuit of wealth and his practical commitment to the poor converged in his call to a simple lifestyle as essential to missional faithfulness. How we live our lives testifies to how we truly love (or don’t love) our poor neighbors around the world. Sider did his significant part to reinforce this conviction in the worldwide evangelical community.

He took to heart The Lausanne Covenant, which says, ‘All of us are shocked by the poverty of millions and disturbed by the injustices which cause it. Those of us who live in affluent circumstances accept our duty to develop a simple lifestyle in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism’ (Covenant pt-9). Convicted and inspired by this, Sider organized two consultations on simple lifestyle—one in 1979 in New Jersey (US) and the other in 1980 in London. The guiding question for these gatherings was, ‘Will we dare to measure our lifestyles by the needs of the poor and unevangelized rather than by the living standards of our affluent neighbors?’[8]

Simplicity refers to living more with less, and being happier for it. For Sider, simplicity lends credibility to the church’s mission, as it demonstrates solidarity with the needy in the world. Indeed, it bends our hearts toward the poor and needy. It also better poises us to more fully engage in mission with freed-up time and resources. And it cultivates an orientation of people over product.

Peace and Nonviolence: If Jesus Is Lord

Sider’s commitment to nonviolence provides yet another contour of mission for which he is significantly responsible. Famous for his unwavering pacifism, Sider defined nonviolent action as ‘an activist confrontation with evil that respects the personhood even of the “enemy” and therefore seeks both to end the oppression and to reconcile the oppressor through nonviolent methods’.[9] His book Nonviolent Action features examples in history of the effectiveness of nonviolence to bring about social change, such as the People Power Revolution that toppled a cruel authoritarian government in the Philippines in the mid-1980s.[10] But ultimately Sider based his belief on the lordship of Christ.

His absolute commitment to nonviolence notwithstanding, however, he went beyond the tired pacifism-versus-just-war debate and called the whole church to peacemaking. A true just-war perspective places the use of violence at the very end of its tactical list; meaning that all nonviolent possibilities should be tried before reluctantly resorting to violence. The call to nonviolent action, therefore, beckons pacifists, just-war theorists, and everyone in between to link arms and ‘wage peace’ upon the earth.

The Politics of Jesus: Sociopolitical Involvement[11]

Finally, Sider urged fellow Christians to enter the public square with the politics of Jesus. Though he primarily spoke to believers in the North American contexts regarding sociopolitical involvement, the message is clear for the global church: participate in the political process of their respective contexts to advocate for the needy, speak truth to power, and help build the kind of society that reflects God’s peace, justice, and righteousness.[12]

This challenged the common misconception among evangelicals that they should not get involved in politics. It also challenged some of his fellow Anabaptists whose ‘social ethic’ was reduced to providing an alternate society by simply being the church. Sider, who served on a team of policymakers under the Carter administration, was adamant that being the church also meant proactively engaging mainstream politics in the name of Jesus.

That said, Sider discouraged partisan politics.[13] The sociopolitical involvement of Christians must transcend political membership, for our kingdom citizenship already carries with it a politic that does not respect party lines. He often said to me, ‘Al, if you get people on both sides of the political line angry, then you know you’re on the right track!’ Refusing to become ideologically captive or to tow the party line, he strove to be faithful to ‘the politics of Jesus’. In his words, this kind of politics is ‘pro-life, pro-poor, pro-family, pro-racial justice, pro-peace, and pro-creation care since God cares about all those things’.[14]

Building on a Strong Foundation

In summary, I have highlighted five elements in the work of Ronald J. Sider that have helped shape evangelical global mission today. As one of the pioneers of the transformational movement that championed a truly holistic, contextual, relational, and theological approach to mission, Sider contributed significantly, (1) as he located integral mission in the realm of discipleship; (2) as he centralized the issues of wealth and poverty on the missionary agenda; (3) as he did more than any other in developing the Lausanne Covenant’s statement on simple lifestyle; (4) as he advocated for nonviolent peacemaking as part of the justice work of the church in the world; and (5) as he urged Christians to get involved in the political process of their respective contexts for the sake of the vulnerable, as well as for the sake of social change.

I had the privilege to speak at Ron Sider’s memorial service. I spoke and cried for all who have been impacted by him when I thanked him for leaving us with plenty of resources to live radically and uncompromisingly for Jesus in the service of the whole gospel.

Endnotes

Al Tizon, Transformation after Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective (Oxford et al: Regnum, 2008), 6.

See Ronald J. Sider, I Am Not a Social Activist: Making Jesus the Agenda (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2008).

Sider, I Am Not a Social Activist, 21.

Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity. Sixth edition (W Publishing, 2015), 28.

Sider, Rich Christians, 25.

Jonathan Bonk, Missions and Money. Revised and Expanded (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2006).

Editor’s Note: See article entitled ‘A Holistic Approach to Poverty Alleviation in Asia’ by Kumar Aryal inLausanne Global Analysis, July 2022, https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2022-07/a-holistic-approach-to-poverty-alleviation-in-asia.

Ronald J. Sider, ‘Introduction,’ in Living More Simply: Biblical Principles and Practical Models, ed. Ronald J. Sider (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1980), 16.

Ronald J. Sider, Nonviolent Action: What Christian Ethics Demands but Most Christians Have Never Really Tried (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2015), xv.

Sider, Nonviolent Action, 63-77.

This section is adapted from ‘Leading Evangelicals for Social Action,’ in Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook, ed. Sharon Henderson Callahan (Los Angeles et al.: Sage reference, 2013), 459-460. Used by permission.

Editor’s Note: See article entitled ‘Working for Freedom in a World of Exploitation and Trafficking’ by Marion L. S. Carson in Lausanne Global Analysis, July 2022, https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2022-07/working-for-freedom-in-a-world-of-exploitation-and-trafficking.

However, he was quite clear about his opposition to the elections and presidency of Donald J. Trump in the United States. But even in that rare occasion, he did not oppose the then-current president on the grounds of party affiliation. See The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity, ed. Ronald J. Sider (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2020).

Sider, I Am Not a Social Activist, 203.

Author's Bio

Al Tizon

Al Tizon is affiliate professor of missional and global leadership at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois (US), and lead pastor of Grace Fellowship Community Church in San Francisco, California, where he and his wife reside. Al worked with Ron Sider for nine years at Palmer Theological Seminary and Christians for Social Action.

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로널드 J. 사이더의 유산:

오늘날의 변혁적 선교를 형성하는 다섯 가지 요소

https://lausanne.org/ko/global-analysis/the-legacy-of-ronald-j-sider-five-elements-shaping-transformational-mission-today

Al Tizon 8월 2023

선교에 대한 총체적인 이해와 실천에 대한 전 세계 복음주의자들의 여정의 역사는 북미 신학자이자 활동가인 로널드 J. 사이더(Ronald J. Sider)를 빼놓고 논할 수 없다. 그는 2022년 7월 27일 82세의 나이로 세상을 떠났고, 그의 죽음은 의미 있는 삶을 살았던 그를 기념하고 그의 업적이 교회 선교에 끼친 지속적인 영향을 되돌아볼 수 있는 시간을 가지게 해준다.

그는 거의 45년 동안 필라델피아 인근의 파머(Palmer) 신학교에서 신학, 통전적 사역, 공공 정책 분야의 저명한 교수이자 사회 행동을 위한 기독교인(Christians (formerly Evangelicals) for Social Action)의 창립자이기도 했지만, 다문화 선교사로 섬긴 적이 없었다. 영혼과 사회를 모두 다루는 온전한 기독교에 주목하던 그의 연구와 사역은 주로 북미라는 자신의 상황에 초점이 맞춰져 있었다. 하지만, 북미 대륙은 그의 메시지를 담아낼 수 없었고, 사이더의 영향력은 대륙의 경계를 넘어 교회의 세계 선교에 영향을 미치게 되었다.

이는 순전한 우연이 아니었다. 예를 들어, 그는 국제 로잔대회에 세 차례 모두 참석했다. 나는 개인적으로 2010년 케이프타운에서 열린 제3차 로잔대회에 그와 함께했다. 제1차 대회와 제2차 대회 사이 1980년도에 사이더는 세계복음주의연맹(World Evangelical Fellowship, 현재는 World Evangelical Alliance)의 윤리 및 사회부서(Unit on Ethics and Society)에서 일하며 단순한 생활방식과 공동체 개발에 관한 두 차례의 협의를 조직했다. 따라서, 그는 자신의 문화적 맥락에 적절하게 초점을 맞추고 있었지만, 그의 시야 안에는 전 세계가 담겨 있었다.

그는 변혁의 운동을 촉진하는 데 핵심적인 역할을 함으로써 세계 선교에 지워지지 않는 흔적을 남겼는데, 이는 인페미트(INFEMIT, the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation), 옥스퍼드 선교 연구 센터(the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies), 그가 초대 편집장을 역임한 저널 트렌스포메이션(Transformation), 국제 레그넘 북스(Regnum Books)와 같은 지속적인 단체에서 잘 드러난다.

변혁 운동 혹은 ‘변혁으로서의 선교’는 신학적인 학문에 뿌리를 둔 통합적, 상황적, 관계적 선교를 실천하는 성찰하는 실천가들의 느슨한 글로벌 네트워크라고 정의될 수 있다. 변혁주의자들은 평화, 정의, 구원의 하나님 나라에 대한 비전을 바탕으로 ‘해방 없는 복음화, 구조의 변화가 없는 마음의 변화, (하나님과 사람 사이의) 수직적 화해가 없는 (사람과 사람 사이의) 수평적 화해, 공동체의 구축이 없는 교회 개척을 받아들이기를 거부한다’[1]고 주장한다.

이 운동의 뿌리와 열매를 파헤치다 보면 우리는 필연적으로 그리고 정기적으로 로널드 J. 사이더라는 인물을 만나게 된다. 물론 그는 혼자가 아니었다. 르네 파딜라(Rene Padilla), 사무엘 에스코바(Samuel Escobar), 비나이 사무엘(Vinay Samuel), 멜바 마가이(Melba Maggay), 콰메 베디아코(Kwame Bediako), 피터 쿠즈믹(Peter Kuzmic) 등의 인물들도 친구 혹은 ‘협력자’들로써 함께 ‘변혁으로서의 선교’에 동참했다.

온전한 복음에 대한 변혁적 이해를 기초이자 배경으로 삼아, 사이더가 이 운동을 형성할 때 기반으로 한 다섯 가지 주요 방법을 살펴보자.

변혁과 제자도: 나는 사회운동가가 아니다

첫 번째 요소는 복음에 대한 총체적인 이해가 제자도의 문제라는 것이다. 사람들이 사이더를 사회 정의와 연관시킬 때, 그들이 잘못된 것은 아니다. 하지만 사이더의 대답은 분명했다: ‘나는 사회 운동가가 아닙니다.’[2] 이 답변은 선언적이면서 당혹스럽기도 했다. 사이더가 스스로를 사회 운동가라고 생각하지 않았다면 그는 도대체 어떤 사람이었을까? 그는 이렇게 말했다. ‘나는 우주의 구세주이자 주님이신 예수 그리스도의 제자입니다.’[3] 사회 변혁에 대한 그의 동기는 인본주의적 이타주의가 아니라, 궁극적으로 진정한 기독교적 제자도, 즉 세상에서 예수님을 신실하고 근본적으로 따르고자 하는 깊은 열망에서 비롯된 것이었다.

부와 빈곤: 기아 시대의 부유한 기독교인

이제 여섯 번째 판을 출간한 ‘기근 시대의 부유한 그리스도인’은 크리스채너티 투데이(Christianity Today)’의 복음주의 세계를 만든 50대 도서에 선정되었다. 그 영향력만 놓고 볼 때, 사이더가 복음주의 선교의 중심이 되는 경제적인 삶을 위해 그 누구보다 많은 일을 했다는 데 이의를 제기할 사람은 거의 없을 것이다. 자본주의 사회에서 부와 부의 추구는 신성한 소와도 같기 때문에 이에 도전하는 것은 자신의 위험을 감수하는 것과 같다! 그럼에도 불구하고 사이더는 부를 복음의 사역을 방해하는 강력한 우상이라고 불렀다. ‘점점 더 풍요로워지는 생활 수준은 21세기 북미의 신이며, 광고인들은 그들의 메신저이다.[4]

사이더의 비판은 성경적 신앙의 규칙이 아닌 자본주의의 규칙에 따라 의심 없이 부를 추구하는 하나님의 백성을 집중적으로 조명했다. 그는 ‘풍요와 빈곤의 시대에 대부분의 기독교인은 [. . .] 성경적 진리보다는 사회의 물질주의적 가치를 따르는 이단에 굴복하고자 하는 유혹을 받는다’[5]고 적었다. 성경 속 선지자들의 정신에 따라 사이더는 교회가 회개하고 하나님 나라의 경제를 실천하는 삶을 살기 시작해야 한다고, 즉 예수님께로 돌아가야 한다고 촉구했다.

부유한 기독교인에게 책임을 묻는 사이더의 추궁은 교회의 전 세계 선교에 막대한 영향을 미쳤다. 우선적으로, 이는 나를 포함한 많은 그리스도인에게 가난하고 억압받고 소외되고 상처받은 사람들 가운데 거하시는 예수님을 따르기 위해 자신이 가진 모든 것을 팔아 그 수익금을 가난한 사람들에게 나눠주라는 요청으로 해석되었다(참조. 막 10:17-27; 마 25:31-40). 여기에 함축된 의미는 우리의 부가 선교의 자산이라기보다는 걸림돌이 된다는 것이다. 조나단 봉크(Jonathan Bonk)의 저서 ‘선교와 돈’[6]은 부유함이 선교 사역에 미치는 영향에 대한 결정적인 사례를 제시한 반면, 사이더의 ‘부유한 기독교인’은 가난한 사람들 사이에서 직접 사역하도록 부름을 받은 사람들뿐만 아니라 선교 공동체 전체가 물질적 자원에 대한 태도와 관리에 대해 더 비판적으로 생각하도록, 경제적으로 의식적인 선교에 영감을 주었다. 우리에게 맡겨진 풍부한 자원은 복음을 위한 것인가, 아니면 자기 자신을 위한 것인가?[7]

단순한 생활방식: 우리가 소중히 여기는 대로 살기

의심할 여지 없는 부의 추구에 대한 경고와 가난한 이들에 대한 그의 실천적인 헌신은 선교적 신실함에 필수적인 단순한 생활방식에 대한 그의 부르심과 맞닿아 있었다. 우리가 삶을 살아가는 방식은 우리가 세계 속 가난한 이웃을 진정으로 사랑하는지, 그렇지 않은지를 보여준다. 사이더는 전 세계 복음주의 공동체에서 이러한 신념을 강화하는 데 중요한 역할을 했다.

그는 ‘수많은 사람이 겪는 빈곤에 우리 모두가 충격을 받으며, 이 빈곤의 원인인 불의에 대하여 분개한다. 우리 중에 풍요한 환경 속에 살고 있는 이들은 검소한 생활양식을 개발해서 구제와 전도에 보다 많이 공헌하는 것이 우리의 의무임을 확신한다’(언약 9항)는 로잔 언약(Lausanne Covenant)의 내용을 마음에 새겼다. 이에 대해 확신을 가지고 영감을 받은 사이더는 1979년 미국 뉴저지와 1980년 런던에서 두 차례에 걸쳐 단순한 생활방식에 관한 협의(consultations)를 조직했다. 이 모임을 이끌었던 주된 질문은, ‘부유한 이웃의 생활 수준이 아닌 가난하고 복음을 접하지 못한 사람들의 필요를 기준으로 우리의 생활방식을 측정할 수 있는가?’였다.[8]

단순함(Simplicity)은 더 적은 것으로 더 많은 것을 누리며 더 행복하게 사는 것을 의미한다. 사이더에게 있어 단순함은 가난한 이들과의 연대를 보여주고, 이는 교회의 사명에 신뢰성을 준다. 실제로 단순함은 우리의 마음을 가난하고 궁핍한 사람들에게 향하게 한다. 또한 여유로운 시간과 자원으로 선교에 더욱 전념할 수 있는 여건을 조성한다. 그리고 제품보다 사람을 중시하는 마음을 키운다.

평화와 비폭력: 예수님께서 주님이시라면

비폭력에 대한 사이더의 신념은 그에게 책임이 있는 또 다른 선교의 윤곽을 제시한다. 확고한 평화주의로 유명했던 사이더는 비폭력 행동을 ‘“적”의 인격까지 존중하며 악에 맞서는 활동가로서, 비폭력적인 방법을 통해 억압을 종식시키고 억압하는 자와 화해를 도모하는 것’[9]이라고 정의했다. 그의 저서 ‘비폭력 행동(Nonviolent Action)’에는 1980년대 중반 필리핀의 잔혹한 권위주의 정부를 무너뜨린 피플 파워 혁명(People Power Revolution) 등 비폭력이 사회 변화를 가져온 역사 속 사례들이 소개되어 있다.[10] 하지만 궁극적으로 사이더는 그리스도의 주되심에 대한 믿음을 기반으로 한다.

사이더가 비폭력에 대한 강한 신념을 가지고 있었지만, 그는 자신을 따분한 평화주의 대 정의 전쟁의 논쟁에만 국한시키지 않고, 교회 전체가 평화를 만드는 데 동참할 것을 촉구했다. 진정한 정의 전쟁의 관점에서는 폭력의 사용을 전술 목록의 제일 마지막에 두며, 이는 어쩔 수 없이 폭력에 의존하기 전에 모든 비폭력적 가능성을 시도해야 함을 의미한다. 그런 의미에서 비폭력 행동에 대한 요청은 평화주의자, 정의 전쟁 이론가, 그리고 그 사이에 있는 모든 사람이 함께 머리를 맞대고 이 땅에서 ‘평화를 쟁취’하라고 손짓한다.

예수님의 정치: 사회정치적 참여[11]

마지막으로 사이더는 동료 그리스도인들에게 예수님의 정치에 부합하는 자세로 공공의 문제에 참여할 것을 촉구했다. 그는 주로 북미 지역의 신자들에게 사회정치적 참여에 대해 이야기했지만, 각자의 상황에서 정치 과정에 참여하여 가난한 사람들을 옹호하고 권력에 진실한 목소리를 내며 하나님의 평화, 정의, 공의를 반영하는 사회를 건설하는 데 도움을 주라는 그의 메시지는 세계 교회에도 뚜렷하게 전달된다.[12]

이는 복음주의자들이 정치에 관여해서는 안 된다는 일반적인 오해에 도전한 것이다. 또한 단순히 교회됨을 통해 대안 사회를 건설하는 것으로 사회 윤리적 책임을 줄이는 일부 아나뱁티스트(Anabaptist)와도 대립하였다. 카터(Carter) 행정부의 정책입안팀에서 일했던 사이더는, 교회가 된다는 것은 예수님의 이름으로 정치의 주된 흐름에 적극적으로 참여하는 것을 의미한다고 굳게 믿었다.

그렇긴 하지만, 사이더는 당파적 정치를 반대했다.[13] 기독교인의 사회정치적 참여는 정당을 초월해야 하는데, 이는 하나님 나라에서 우리의 시민권은 당파를 허용하지 않기 때문이다. 그는 이따금 나에게 ‘알, 정치 노선의 양쪽에 있는 사람들을 모두 화나게 하면 자네는 올바른 길을 가고 있는거야!’라고 말했다. 이념적으로 어딘가에 사로잡히거나 당의 노선을 따르기를 거부한 그는 ‘예수님의 정치’에 충실하기 위해 노력했다. 그의 말에 따르면, 이런 정치는 ‘친생명, 친빈곤, 친가족, 친인종정의, 친평화, 친창조세계돌봄적인데, 이는 하나님께서 이 모든 것들을 귀하게 여기시기 때문이다.’[14]

강력한 기반 위에 구축

요약하자면, 나는 오늘날 복음주의 세계 선교를 형성하는 데 도움이 된 로널드 J. 사이더의 업적에서 다섯 가지 요소를 강조했다. 선교에 대해 진정한 총체적, 상황적, 관계적, 신학적 접근을 지지한 변혁 운동의 선구자 중 한 명인 사이더가 크게 기여한 바는 다음과 같다. (1) 통합적 선교를 제자도의 영역에 위치시킨 것; (2) 부와 빈곤의 문제를 선교 의제로 집중시킨 것; (3) 단순한 생활방식에 관한 로잔 언약의 선언을 개발하는 데 다른 누구보다 많은 노력을 기울인 것; (4) 세상에서 교회의 정의 사역의 일환으로 비폭력 평화 만들기를 외쳤다는 것; (5) 기독교인들이 사회 변화와 취약 계층을 위해 각자의 상황 속 정치의 과정에 참여하도록 촉구했다는 것이다.

나에게 로널드 사이더의 추도식에서 연설할 수 있는 영광이 주어졌다. 나는 그에게 영향을 받은 모든 사람을 마음에 두고 눈물을 흘리며, 우리가 타협하지 않고 예수님과 복음에 온전히 헌신하는 삶을 살 수 있도록 풍성한 자원을 제공해 준 그에게 감사를 표했다.

미주