Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger

It's taken me a while to finish this book, as with any book these days.  Reading in a house with two small kids, running to the church, coaching football, running back to the church, and back to football has been pretty challenging this Fall.  But finally football is over, the kids took long naps and I finished reading Ron Sider's "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger."

I picked up the book after our senior pastor had read it and shared some of the thoughts in some sermons this past summer.  My initial thoughts at seeing the title and know just a little bit about Sider were that this would be a typical social justice, feed the poor, heavy on guilt and stats, light on Scripture type book.  Unfortunately I've read those before and while I have agreed with the need for caring for the poor and outcast in our world, I wanted something with meat.

This is that book for me.  Sider does share statistics.  Lots and lots of statistics in the early chapters.  At first it seems as though all the book would be about is statistics.  You have to wade through that.  But then Sider gets to the biblical section which dissects the passages about Jubilee, caring for the widows and orphans, the early church sharing things in common and other relevant scripture.  He then goes on to discuss current economics and how they often marginalize the poor and offers practical and radical suggestions.  Sider is not about suggesting fantastical solutions for a perfect world, but rather solutions that could be implemented in a broken, fragile world.

One of the interesting things about this book is that it was originally written back in the 1970's.  Communism was still a serious contender with free-market economies.  While Sider supports those Christians who have decided to share property in common, Sider defends free markets but wants to help all people have opportunities to work and to make a fair living.  He argues that communism put economics and politics in the same hands and that didn't work.  He does point out ways in which our current free-market economy is broken and favors those who already have wealth.

I would absolutely add this book to my list of must reads.  There are parts that I had to stumble through and one section on economics that I found fascinating, but didn't really understand.  Sider himself confesses that he is more of a theologian than an economist.  But Sider confronts the materialism, commercialism and militarism of the western and northern (as Sider puts it) world.  If the church genuinely cares about reaching the lost, the poor and the disenfranchised perhaps we should take seriously some of the suggestions offered by Sider.