Books & Culture Corner: Putting the Poor on the National Agenda
Ron Sider's timely proposals
By Amy L. Sherma | posted 3/01/2000 12:00AM
Ron Sider loves scripture, embraces traditional values, and puts his money where his mouth is in terms of Christian responsibility for the poor: he lives in a low-income urban community and has ministered face-to-face among needy individuals for years. He is also the most tireless statement-monger in evangelicaldom. From the "Chicago Statement" to the "Oxford Declaration" to the "Generous Christians Pledge," Sider has labored endlessly to get liberal and conservative Christians to agree on what's to be done about the poor. His latest book, Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America (Baker), is the most balanced and practical effort he has offered to date on that subject. Though not without weaknesses and some controversial proposals, the book is worth reading and could be a starting point for achieving Sider's long-sought consensus among evangelicals.
In his signature style, Sider starts with biblical analysis and develops a set of general principles around which he orders his policy prescriptions.
Just Generosity's "foundational framework" includes several assertions that Christians from across the political spectrum ought to be able to affirm: the sovereignty of God over all things; the worth of the material creation; the holistic nature of human beings (we are physical, emotional, and spiritual beings); and the reality of sin. Christians enthusiastic about the free market will cheer Sider's embrace of the importance of human creativity (and the resulting ability to create new wealth); his affirmation of economic freedom; and his emphasis on the dignity of work.
Sider's familiar explication of biblical justice is more controversial. For him, biblical justice is not only about procedural fairness, but includes a "dynamic, restorative character." Biblical justice "also includes positive rights, which are the responsibility of the community to guarantee" (positive rights include such things as the right to food and health care). Sider interprets the Jubilee of Leviticus 25 as condemning extreme inequalities in wealth and affirming limits on private property. He is more comfortable than many conservatives, as a result, with government intervention in the market economy to assure equitable distributions of resources.
Certainly there is room for debate on these questions. E. Calvin Beisner and others have long argued that biblical justice is primarily about conformity to God's standards and rendering each his due—in a word, fairness. Beisner's lengthy analysis of Leviticus 25 (in his book Prosperity and Poverty) concludes that the Jubilee is about the limits God's law set on the debt families could accumulate (and the length of time loans could be extended), not about equalizing land ownership every fifty years. Moreover, Sider draws too sharp a distinction between the "justice-as-fairness" view and his own emphasis on restorative justice; after all, correcting unfair procedures is encompassed by the notion of justice-as-fairness.
A wholesale rejection of Sider's interpretations of the relevant Old Testament passages, though, would be wrong-headed. His detailed analysis of the Old Testament's "welfare system" reminds us of crucially relevant principles for today: that welfare's goal is a liberal sufficiency for need; that both government and civil society have responsibilities in welfare provision; and that distinctive approaches should be taken for the able-bodied poor and those unable to take care of themselves. Sider's observation that God judges all societies (importantly, not just Israel but pagan nations as well) on how they treat their most vulnerable members is also valuable.
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