That included trying to counter 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 a clear concern that white evangelicals are not receiving an adequate way thought.” biblical way in their reflections on Donald Trump, his character and his policies.”
dr. Sider was not without his conservative side, especially regarding same-sex marriage and abortion. And he warned against being too focused on causes – one of his books was called “I Am Not a social activist: making Jesus the agenda” (2008). But he had hopes that a belief of personal salvation and a belief of advocacy on social issues could coexist.
“I long for the day when every village, every city has congregations of Christians so in love with Jesus Christ that they lead dozens of people every year to accept him as a personal Savior and Lord,” 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 the oppressed that they are vigorously committed to justice, peace and freedom.”
Ronald James Sider was born on September 17, 1939 in Stevensville, Ontario. His father, James, was a farmer and later a pastor, and his mother, Ida (Cline) Sider, was a housewife.
He grew up at the Brethren Church of Christ. That’s where his interest in social activism started.
“It was evangelical through and through, but hadn’t experienced the rending divisions of the early 20th century social gospel fundamentalist struggles that helped create the huge divide between evangelism and social action,” he wrote in “Good News and Good Works”. “In my early years in the faith, I simply assumed that devout Christians shared the gospel, as my missionary uncle did in Africa, and also took care of the poor, as my church’s relief organization did.”
He received a bachelor’s degree from Waterloo Lutheran University in 1962 and later in the decade earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in divinity from Yale Divinity School. He was an ordained minister in both the Baptist and the Brethren of Christ denominations, but teaching was his most important career.