Pulling a Lieberman

Slactivist ^ | 11/29/09 | Fred Clark

[Alex Murphy]

Ron Sider's 1977 book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" had all the faults you describ, Alex; but he was admitting he was wrong about statism, Marxism, population control even when I knew him (over 20 years ago) and since then has written frequently in favor of the right to life, against abortion and even against homosexuality, which he calls immoral.

Sider was a signee on the petition to the NEA to carry out Richard Cizik's "vision of a broad Christian moral agenda" (remember Richard Cizik?), and a signee on the globalist Evangelical response to "Caritas In Veritate". It's almost impossible to find Ron's signature without Jim Wallis' name appearing alongside it. All of them are part of the Evangelicals for Obama club.

[Mrs. Don-o]

There's no doubt that Ron Sider is a leftwing Mennonite. At the same time, he has admitted that his statist solutions (ca 1977) showed a lack of Biblical prudence and an ignorance of economics, he's anti-abortion, and he has gone out of his way to criticize the Gay Agenda.

For instance, Sider signed the full-page ad in the NY Times (Dec. 5, 2008), together with a number of conservative Christian signers, that objected to gay campaign of violence and intimidation against churches and believers in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8.

Although he authored revoltingly on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other treatments of Obama in the runup to the election, to my knowledge he never endorsed him, and in fact saw fit to criticize him on abortion and other issues.

Thus he differs from Jim Wallis in significant ways. It is not just to simply meld them as if they were siamese twins. They are different, and in ways that reflect well on Sider, on issues that are not trivial.

[Alex Murphy]

There's no doubt that Ron Sider is a leftwing Mennonite. At the same time, he has admitted that his statist solutions (ca 1977) showed a lack of Biblical prudence and an ignorance of economics...

Sider offers reworked versions of his old "institutionalized evil" and jubilee year chapters, but his heart just isn’t in it. Reading the 1997 edition of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger is like going to your college class’s 20th reunion and running into the campus radical, who is there mainly to sing the old songs. He cannot remember half of the words, but he can still hum most of the tunes. A good time will be had by all....

....This book is not half-bad. It is also not very good. But at least it seems harmless. Compared to the 1977 edition, it is a decent effort by someone who does not understand either economic theory or economic history, and who does not believe that biblical law is binding. For a man who rejects economic reasoning and biblical blueprints, what he proposes is not all that bad – uninspiring, but not that bad. But if he had published this version of the book in 1977, nobody would remember him today."

-- Gary North, RON SIDER HAS MOVED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

See also Productive Christians In An Age Of Guilt Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider

[Mrs. Don-o]

So Gary North says that due to Sider's corrections and revisions (ca 1997) his economic justice ideas are "harmless, not half bad"? Okey-doke. QED.

Plus, Sider is outspoken against abortion and against the gay agenda. And do you think that the pro-life and pro-natural-marriage issues per se are insignificant? Inconsequential? Peripheral?

Again, I object to the tendency to conflate Jim Wallis and Ron Sider. They hang out in, and try to influence, the same crowd. Sometimes in opposite directions. Like Alex Murphy and Mrs. Don-o at Free Republic. This does not constitute evidence that Alex Murphy = Mrs. Don-o.

Yikes! =:op

From Christians I expect careful distinctions and just judgment.