Evangelicalism lost a giant this summer. Ronald Sider, an evangelical theologian and social activist, died of a heart attack on July 27.
Since the Religious Right’s emergence as a political force in the late 1970s, white evangelicalism has been associated with right-wing politics, a disposition that culminated in overwhelming evangelical support for Donald Trump. The Religious Right has emerged in the past four-plus decades as the Republican Party’s most reliable constituency, much the way that labor unions once provided crucial support for the Democratic Party.
This alliance between evangelicalism and the Republican Party has received so much attention that most Americans could be forgiven for thinking that evangelicalism has always tilted hard to the right or that evangelicals are invariably conservative on social and political matters.
The life of Ronald Sider demonstrates otherwise.
Born into a Brethren in Christ household in Ontario, Sider attended Waterloo Lutheran University and then received both a divinity degree and a Ph.D. from Yale. He taught for many years at the Philadelphia campus of Messiah College (now University) before becoming a distinguished professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary.
Sider’s grounding in the Anabaptist tradition, with its history of concern for those on the margins, together with his exposure to poverty in inner-city Philadelphia led him to advocate for the poor and to address social injustice. His 1977 book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger decried the persistence of poverty and hunger in an affluent society. The book sold over 400,000 copies and was designated by Christianity Today as one of the hundred most influential books in religion in the twentieth century.
Sider’s progressive evangelicalism aligned him with earlier generations of evangelicals, many long forgotten. Evangelicalism in the nineteenth century was notable for its concern for those Jesus called “the least of these” — people of color, prisoners, those less fortunate, women — all in obedience to the teachings of the New Testament. Evangelicals didn’t always get it right. They were overweening and paternalistic at times; some evangelical theologians in the South offered theological defenses of slavery, for instance, and other evangelicals decried the presence of immigrants.
But evangelicals generally directed their social efforts toward those on the margins. Several influential voices, including Charles Grandison Finney, the most important evangelical of the nineteenth century, excoriated free-market capitalism. A Christian businessman, Finney said, was an oxymoron because business elevated avarice over altruism and therefore was contrary to the teachings of Jesus.
Sider, along with other progressive evangelicals, sought to reclaim both the New Testament as well as the noble legacy of nineteenth-century evangelical activism.
Apart from Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, Sider’s most significant achievement was convening a group of evangelical leaders at Chicago’s Wabash YMCA in November 1973. These evangelicals produced a remarkable document, the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, arguably the high point in the brief resurgence evangelical progressivism during the 1970s.
In light of the rise and the eventual dominance of the Religious Right later that same decade, the sentiments expressed in the Chicago Declaration seem quaint now.
“We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism,” the declaration read, adding that evangelicals must “challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might.”
At the instigation of Nancy A. Hardesty, then an English professor at Trinity College (Illinois), the Chicago Declaration included a passage that, harking back to the rich tradition of evangelical feminism in the nineteenth century, rebuked evangelicals for having “encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity” and called “both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship.”
I make no claims that the sentiments of the Chicago Declaration represented the views of a majority of white evangelicals. Not at all. But the declaration was eloquent, an attempt to reclaim the progressive agenda that characterized evangelicalism in an earlier era. And it won the endorsement of an array of evangelical leaders, including Jim Wallis, John M. Perkins, James Dunn and Ruth L. Bentley, among others. Eventually, other evangelicals, including Mark O. Hatfield, U.S. senator from Oregon, signed on.
It bears repeating that Sider convened the meeting that produced the Chicago Declaration, which was followed three years later by the election of another evangelical progressive, Jimmy Carter, to the presidency.
Sider didn’t always get it right. I was asked to review his 2008 book The Scandal of Evangelical Politics, which was truly awful — mealy mouthed, pointless and full of pulled punches. It had the feel of an author desperate to fulfill a multi-book contract. Sider couldn’t decide if the First Amendment was a good idea (it’s America’s best idea!), and he dithered over the George W. Bush administration’s execrable record on human rights.
“In a very real sense, albeit in a backhanded way, The Scandal of Evangelical Politics attests to the frightful potency of the Religious Right,” I concluded. “The fact that one of our clearest, most prophetic voices has been reduced to equivocation may not rise to the level of scandal. But it is a tragedy.”
Sider’s overall record, nevertheless, is commendable. Amid the evangelical stampede to the right, his was one of those voices in the wilderness calling the faithful back to the teachings of Jesus and the progressive heritage of nineteenth-century evangelicalism.
Randall Balmer teaches at Dartmouth College. His most recent book,