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From the Archives
FROM THE ARCHIVES
IN MEMORIAM
Ron Sider
1939-2022
“If God’s Word is true, then all of us who dwell in affluent nations are trapped in sin. . . . We are guilty of an outrageous offense against God and neighbor.”
With these words, Ronald J. Sider set the evangelical Christian world on fire. The year was 1977, and Sider—then a faculty member at Messiah University—published this prophetic critique in his book “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.” The book, overflowing with biblical quotations, condemned American Christian greed, materialism and conspicuous consumption, calling followers of Jesus to repent and to “begin living a radically new lifestyle of identification with the poor and oppressed.”
Sider’s book would go on to sell 350,000 copies across four reprintings by 1997, earning a place on Christianity Today’s list of the “Top 50 Books that Have Shaped Evangelicals.”
“Rich Christians,” as well as Sider’s later publications, catapulted the mild-mannered, soft-spoken academic to an influential role as one of the leading figures of the progressive evangelical movement. Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1939, he grew up in the Brethren in Christ Church, Messiah’s founding denomination. In the 1960s, he enrolled in a doctoral program at Yale University and made his home in an impoverished and segregated neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut. Here, for the first time, he encountered poverty, racism and economic injustice— and it transformed his faith.
In 1968, Sider accepted an invitation from Messiah to serve as director of its new satellite campus in urban Philadelphia. There, amid racial unrest and generational poverty, he launched a career as an evangelical social activist.
In 1973, he convened the Thanksgiving Workshop of Evangelical Social Concern, a gathering in Chicago of likeminded evangelicals from many denominations. The group produced the Chicago Declaration, a manifesto that denounced racism, sexism, economic injustice and militarism.
Five years later, Sider founded Evangelicals for Social Action, which advocated on issues ranging from racism to poverty and nuclear disarmament to environmental justice. He also brought this focus to the classroom, introducing a generation of Messiah students to the social and political claims of the gospel, urging them to be as concerned about people’s bodies as they were about people’s souls.
Sider eventually left Messiah to join the faculty of Palmer Theological Seminary, but he stayed connected to the university. In 2009, he served as Commencement speaker and was given an honorary doctorate. President Kim Phipps commended Sider for his emphasis on “our corporate responsibility of personal piety and the social responsibility to which Christ calls us,” adding that his “work, teaching, scholarship, and writings have left an indelible mark on the Messiah College community and on the church and the academy.”
Sider passed away on July 27, 2022, at age 82. Messiah University mourns his passing, even as we celebrate his significant impact on our community and on the wider Christian world. — Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas '09, assistant professor of American religious history and director of the Archives
—Ron Sider
Sept. 18, 2022 | 4 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Ballet 5:8 Sept. 24, 2022 | 7:30 p.m. | Miller Theater
Michael Dobbs, American Democracy Lecture
Nov. 10, 2022 | 7 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Sohoko Sato Timpone, Soprano
Messiah University Christmas Concert
Dec. 4, 2022 | 3 and 7:30 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Tim Warfield’s “Jazzy Christmas”
Dec. 9, 2022 | 7:30 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Dec. 16, 2022 | 7:30 p.m. | Parmer Hall
VOCES8
Feb. 11, 2023 | 7:30 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Mendelssohn Piano Trio, Guest Artists and Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet
Feb. 19, 2023 | 4 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Thomas Alexander Aleinikoff Messiah University Humanities Symposium
Feb. 23, 2023 | 7 p.m. | Parmer Hall
“Little Women the Broadway Musical”
March 23-25, 31 and April 1 | 8 p.m. March 26 and April 2 | 3 p.m. Miller Theater
An Evening with Jane Pauley
April 11, 2023 | 7:30 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Handel’s “Messiah”
April 30, 2023 | 4 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Susquehanna Chorale Spring Concert
May 14, 2023 | 4 p.m. | Parmer Hall
Ticket information available at messiah.edu/highcenterseason.
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