Just Politics, Moral Deficit, Killing and Following Jesus: Amos Yong reviews four Ron Sider books
Fixing the Moral Deficit can be read as a complementary sequel to Just Politics. The “moral deficit” refers to the combination of the “deficit crisis” (related to the federal budget), the “poverty crisis” (including the tremendous and growing gap between the rich and the poor in the USA), and the “justice crisis” (how the ever-deepening federal debt unjustly saddles future generations of Americans with the consequences of their ancestors’ spending). Three chapters of critical analysis and assessment – of the economic data, of scriptural principles related to the defined crises, and of recent economic proposals, both President Obama’s and GOP Congressman Pat Ryan’s for the 2011-2012 fiscal year – are a prelude to Sider’s “a better way” (the title of chapter 5), which major planks include the assisting and empowering of poor Americans through focused support of viable and successful programs, carefully considered proposals for taxation adjustments, strategic plans for saving social security and managing health care costs, and suggestions for the defense budget. In all cases, scriptural principles are brought to bear on the arguments and the various issues.
In the Sourcebook, Sider returns to his primary discipline as a Christian historian and historical theologian. Having earned his PhD from Yale University in the early 1970s (writing a thesis on the Reformation theologian Andreas von Karlstadt), here he takes up the question of violence by drawing together resources from the early Christian centuries. The focus on war, abortion, and capital punishment in the early church fills in the gaps between his many discussions of Christian pacifism, violence and nonviolence, and nuclear armament, among other related matters. While Sider’s Mennonite commitments are clear, this does not undermine the goal of producing a “comprehensive” collection of ancient Christian writings on these topics so readers will find selections about Christians also serving in the military especially in the third and fourth centuries and later. Yet by and large, Sider utilizes the data collected in these pages to at least interrogate, if not overturn, the arguments of others particularly about the Just War tradition extending back into the post-apostolic period. Beyond this, Sider documents the various reasons why early Christians were opposed to killing and military service.
Evangelical Christians seeking to understand the issues will come away well informed at every turn. Those who agree will have something to work for given the concrete suggestions presented urging civic and political responsibility. Sider argues normatively along each of these fronts – the political, the economic, and the question of violence – from the scriptural horizon rather than from any partisan platform, so his critics will at the very least have to proffer a reasoned and integrated biblical world- and life-view that is more convincing for evangelical Christian understanding and practice.
Category: Living the Faith, Summer 2014
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