An icon of the evangelical left, Ron Sider, went home to the Lord recently at the age of 82. Sider is most famous for his book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study published in 1977. Sider admitted in the opening address to the 2019 annual meeting of the American Society of Missiology that his book advertised his ignorance:
“The book ranges over a wide field, as you know: biblical studies, economics, politics, social ethics—I didn’t know much at all about any of those areas. Apart from a few courses on biblical studies at Yale Divinity School, I had virtually no training in any of these areas. I never had a course on politics and only one on economics (Economics 101) in my whole life.”
But ignorance of his topic didn’t stop him! Published by InterVarsity Press, the book became popular among students who knew less about economics, history and the Bible than Sider. Christianity Today magazine called Sider’s book one of the 100 most influential books in religion in the 20th century, but then CT had long promoted Marxism.
