Canadian-born Evangelical Christian author, theologian, and religious leader Dr. Ronald J. Sider, a stalwart social activist who spearheaded a controversial progressive 1970s movement based on an ethos that Christ’s faithful must answer to and fight for social justice issues like poverty and racism, died of a heart attack at age 82 in his Towamencin home late last month, according to The New York Times.
Sider was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Stevensville, Ontario, Canada to James, a farmer and pastor, and Ida (Cline), a homemaker, according to the report. He was raised in the Brethren Church of Christ faith.
Sider received a bachelor’s in 1962 from Waterloo Lutheran University in Ontario and a master’s and Ph.D. in history from Yale University. He also attained a bachelor of divinity degree at Yale Divinity School.
Sider made his way to Philadelphia to teach at Messiah Collage in 1968. There, he brought together African-American leaders with rural and suburban church leaders to share anguish of poverty and racism, per The New York Times.
In 1977, Sider moved to St. Davids in Pennsylvania to teach at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, now Palmer Theological Seminary, where the emeritus professor held the longest faculty tenure in the seminary’s history up until his death.
Sider is survived by his wife, Arbutus (Lichti) Sider, two sons, Theodore and Michael Jay Sider-Rose, a daughter, Sonya Marie Smith, and seven grandchildren.
At a time when evangelicals aligned themselves with the political right, and Rev. Jerry Falwell began his Moral Majority, per the article, Sider posed for evangelical progressivism and pledged that personal salvation was not enough. He was one of a group of religious leaders who issued the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern at a conference on Nov. 25, 1973.
Evangelicals, he said, must confess “our failure to confront injustice, racism and discrimination against women.”
Sider believed evangelicals remained silent on an unjust American society.
“People persist in the fruitless effort to quench their thirst for meaning and fulfillment with an ever-rising river of possessions,” he wrote in his 1977 book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. “The personal result is agonizing distress and undefined dissatisfaction. The social result is environmental pollution and neglected poor people.”
Sider founded the think group Evangelicals for Social Action, which used biblical solutions for social and economic issues, according to Fatalities Around Me. Sider was, however, conservative in his views on abortion and same-sex marriage, according to the article.
Colleagues and friends remembered Sider online at his legacy.com obituary posting.
“I teach missions in a seminary in Manitoba (or did until retirement). I have often turned to Ron's writing to explain what I was trying to say. I also remember arguing with him when I was a student at Messiah. We had only limited contact throughout our lives, but he was one of the most important influences in my life. Our (my wife and mine) prayers for the family, and our gratitude for God's presence in Ron's life,” wrote Daryl Climenhaga.
Former student Karol Taylor wrote, “As Joni Mitchell famously sang in a popular song during our time together at the Philadelphia Campus, ‘Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone?’ Ron's passing gave me pause to think about his strong influence on my thinking about Christianity based on our discourse in his Contemporary Theology course. I'm only now appreciating the impact he had on my views and my life.”
Jim Ball, a former colleague of Sider’s, memorialized his loss on Facebook: “Ron leaves a tremendous legacy, including launching and initially housing at ESA the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), where I worked for 20 years. Ron will be greatly missed.”
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