Ronald J. Sider Quotes

Does not a one-sided focus on the issues that happen to be favored by either the Left or the Right suggest that one's political agenda is shaped more by secular ideology than careful biblical, theological reflection?

Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?

God thundered again and again through the prophets that worship in the context of mistreatment of the poor and disadvantaged is an outrage.

In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be roughly 50 percent above the national average.

This helpful book on the role of the arts fills a significant gap in the growing literature on holistic faith-based programs.

Christians must be ready to lose politically rather than engage in dishonesty or corruption.

We need to make some dramatic, concrete moves to escape the materialism that seeps into our minds via diabolically clever and incessant advertising. We have been brainwashed to believe that bigger houses, more prosperous businesses, and more sophisticated gadgets are the way to joy and fulfillment. As a result, we are caught in an absurd, materialistic spiral. The more we make, the more we think we need in order to live decently and respectably. Somehow we have to break this cycle because it makes us sin against our needy brothers and sisters and, therefore, against our Lord. And it also destroys us. Sharing with others is the way to real joy.

Great economic inequality inevitably produces injustice in a fallen world; therefore Christians must oppose it.

God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all - no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.

It is not because food, clothes and property are inherently evil that Christians today must lower their standard of living. It is because others are starving. Creation is good. But the one who gave us this gorgeous token of his affection has asked us to share it with our sisters and brothers.

Christians have too easily, and too often, fallen into the trap of supposing that the nonhuman creation has worth only as it serves human purposes. This, however, is not a biblical perspective.

Christians must be extremely vigilant against the ongoing temptations of idolatrous nationalism. Christians in the United States are especially prone to embrace this evil, but the temptation lurks in every nation.

It is a sinful abomination for one part of the world's Christians to grow richer year by year while our brothers and sisters ache and suffer for lack of minimal health care, minimal education, and even - in some cases - enough food to escape starvation.

Evidence is mounting that faith-based service programs are often more successful than other programs in correcting social problems. [It is wrong] for government to demand that religious nonprofits gut precisely that part of their program [funded through tax dollars] that makes them so effective.

Christians today should never claim that democracy is the Christian form of government, but we can and should claim that biblical principles fit better with democratic government than with existing alternatives. In addition, Christian virtues--honesty, tolerance, love for neighbor--strengthen democratic life. Therefore Christians should actively nurture democracy in their own countries and around the world.