Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: a title that immediately gets under the skin. Me, rich? That’s a joke. But there are those inconvenient passages in the Gospels–quite a lot of them, actually.
So far so good. Ron Sider wants to prick our consciences, maybe even embarrass us. But if we stop there, merely feeling guilty–or, even worse, feeling virtuous because we have just written an article calling for vast “systemic” economic change–Sider will not be satisfied. As his most recent book, Genuine Christianity (Zondervan, 183 pp.; $9.99, paper), makes clear, Sider is a man who genuinely believes that “if we embrace the fullness of biblical truth about God, sin, and salvation, we will be a mighty people that God will use to change our world.”
Sider’s views about what form such change might take have evolved in the 20 years since the original publication of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. In June, Word Publishing is reissuing Sider’s landmark book in a Twentieth Anniversary Edition (280 pp.; $14.99), extensively revised.
In the preface to this new edition, Sider sketches developments in his thinking and in the world at large that have altered his outlook. The collapse of communism and the success of market economies in creating wealth and reducing poverty–Sider notes in particular a “dramatic drop in poverty” in Asia–have changed the world picture. (That doesn’t mean, Sider adds, that we should be complacent about the glaring flaws of market-driven economies.)
If Sider’s perspective has altered in part in response to world events, it has also been modified by continuing study of Scripture. He is less concerned than he used to be with disparities in wealth. A biblical approach to these issues, he now believes, will focus more on fairness than on equality of outcome:
I feel absolutely confident . . . that the biblical understanding of “economic equality” or equity demands at least this: God wants every person or family to have equality of economic opportunity at least to the point where they have access to the necessary resources (land, money, education) to be able to earn a decent living and be dignified participating members of their community.
One of the most encouraging changes Sider notes is a greater understanding of how such basic equity can be achieved by empowering the poor. “One of the greatest success stories of the last twenty years,” he writes, “is the explosion of micro-loans. Millions of desperately poor people have received loans of $75, $200, or $500 so they could start tiny businesses and thus provide a better living for their families. We now know that micro-loans produce stunning transformation in poor communities.” Often, Sider observes, we are overwhelmed by the sheer scale of human misery. We’re tempted to apathy and fatalism. The success of these loans shows that small, well-directed initiatives can change the everyday lives of poor people. Such compelling evidence makes it difficult to justify inaction.
The point is not that micro-loans, effective as they have been, will solve all the problems of global poverty. What’s most important is the principle at work here: By following God’s clear commands, we can make a difference in the world. “Tragically,” Sider writes, “so many rich Christians are missing Jesus’ path to joy and self-fulfillment. We are neglecting the fact that genuine joy and enduring happiness flow from practicing Jesus’ paradoxical teaching that it is better to give than to receive.”
If you are a subscriber to B&C, you should have received within the last month or so a letter from Mark Noll and Philip Yancey, the cochairs of our editorial board, describing a new program to provide scholarship subscriptions to B&C for students. We’re excited about this opportunity. In case you have the letter buried on your desk, I want to give you the gist of it here.
A grad student, Jonathan Boyd, recently wrote this:
When your first issue arrived in my mailbox, it renewed my flagging grad-school spirits by revealing the breadth, reality, and quality of Christian intellectual discourse in America. As an ABDPh.D. candidate in American intellectual history at Johns Hopkins University, I have found Books & Culture to be a truly unique resource in the ongoing struggle to be a Christian intellectual. I do not exaggerate in saying that I read your journal cover-to-cover (and that is rare indeed!). Don’t get me started making a list of specific articles which have been significant for me . . . so many articles from your pages have been useful–to pass along to an interested student, to stimulate a discussion, or just to provide a rich bibliography. I shudder to think what we would do without you.
Responses like that from students who have received the magazine have encouraged us to reach a much larger number of students. But to do so we need your help. CTi will match every subscription a donor provides with a second one. For every $25 donation, we will put two scholarship subscriptions in the hands of selected students who have shown strong interest. If you send $100, eight full-year scholarship subscriptions will be placed.
By contributing to this subscription scholarship fund (write us at our editorial address) you’ll achieve two things. First, you will help complete the launch of B&C–you’ll create an additional flow of subscriptions that will help to ensure the magazine’s long-term viability. Second, you will reach out to students with a publication that could be extremely important to their development in many areas for many years.
John Wilson, Managing Editor
Copyright(c) 1997 by Christianity Today, Inc/Books and Culture magazine. May/June, Vol. 3, No. 3, Page 5
7B3lm7B30057430
