A key influence in my life half a lifetime ago was Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1978). I haven't read more of his writings since, though I assume he is still producing thoughtful works on the Christian's responsibility to live the life of faith and fight for justice on behalf of the world's oppressed. The other day I checked out the internet to see what he has been doing more recently. Particularly he's come out with an update (2005) of this earlier seminal work that has been so widely read and discussed.
A main theme of Sider's writings, particularly in a more recent book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (2008) is that there is within evangelical Christianity a great inconsistency between Christian beliefs and Christian living. Anecdotally, I wholeheartedly agree, which for me is the reason the field of Ethics is so essential. Ethics, to give it my sound-byte definition, is "living out what we believe." Francis Schaeffer once asked, but never fully answered, the question, "How Shall We Then Live?" It is an answer Sider continues to pursue.
An ongoing theme in Sider's writings and in the organization he founded, Evangelicals for Social Action, is that the Evangelical political agenda refuses to embrace the poor. In stark contrast, there is extensive evidence that Evangelicalism (worldwide as well as with its American version) is on the frontlines in ministries of compassion. Historically, Evangelicals were agitators for political change on behalf of the poor during the 19th Century - everything from abolition of slavery to child labor laws. But since what David O. Moberly has called the "Great Reversal" (1972) at the beginning of the 20th Century, white American Evangelicalism, in particular, has focused almost exclusively on the individual poor and resisted becoming involved in systemic change (thus the preponderance of the word "conservative" in Evangelical political discourse). The most glaring example of this is the Civil Rights movement of mid-century in which, unlike the abolitionist movement of 100 years earlier, Evangelicals either sat on the sidelines or, more accurately, pushed back against the cause for racial justice and equality.
I think about that. Does Christian social and political involvement extend only to the personal? The role of government plays heavily in political discourse among American Christians. The size of government -- which seems to be a key defining point in American politics -- may be an important issue to grapple with, but how does it play out biblically speaking?
Which brings up another point, just what biblical issues are there that we as Believers need to devote our lives to? How are we to be involved with God in fulfilling the prayer Jesus taught his disciples? "Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." Whatever our beliefs about the "end times", we as Evangelicals wholeheartedly assert that God does indeed have a preferred vision for this world and that we as Believers are called to execute that preferred vision, not just wait for the "by and by."
As I've studied the Good Book over the years, I keep running into foundational themes - themes like justice and righteousness (which so often go hand in hand); mercy and compassion for the most vulnerable; the value of human life at every stage and in every diverse form; God's love for His created order; and the (sometimes grotesquely abused) gifts God wills His children in the forms of prosperity, health, wholeness, and freedom for all peoples.
God's Word doesn't have a lot to say about forms of government, but it has tons to say about how any government should behave. And I don't find the kinds of distinctions we moderns make between personal and systemic justice and righteousness, only that it is God's will that every last person, every last government and social unit, and even all of creation receive and extend all the goodness God desires to bestow -- which is a whole lot.
What I also notice is that God does not distinguish between worthy and unworthy recipients of His blessings. God is said to send rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous, to be no respecter of persons, which means He treats us all alike. There is, in God's eyes, no odd distinction such as "worthy" poor. We are all unworthy -- that is why God's blessings are filed under the category of "grace."
So, I come to the conclusion, once again, that God's preferred vision lies far beyond our left-right continuum. And it is out there in the "far beyond" that we are called to as well. Stick that in your political pipe and smoke it.
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