Ron Sider’s first edition of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger created a minor sensation in conservative Protestant circles. First published in 1978, it was the cutting edge of a radical shift of political and economic opinion in the neo-evangelical world, especially on college and seminary campuses—a shift to the far left. The book received no response until 1981, when the first edition of Productive Christians blew away Sider’s claims that he was simply applying the Bible to economics. Sider never recovered intellectually, as Chilton’s third edition demonstrated.
Sider’s desperate attempts to “cover his flanks” in the second edition of Rich Christians were exposed by this book as a last ditch effort. Sider waffled, Sider squirmed, Sider dropped whole sections of the original book, Sider changed a few words and quietly shifted controversial sections (exposed in Chilton’s earlier editions) to other chapters, but still nothing worked. There was no place left for Sider to hide. Chilton made it clear: Sider understood neither the Bible nor economics when it came to his conclusions about profits, taxes, foreign aid, and Western guilt for the Third World poverty.
To put it bluntly, this book definitely destroyed what little was left of Sider’s position. The Sider phenomenon, intellectually speaking, was finished and this book was its gravestone.
Interestingly enough, Sider's book has gone through repeated reprints—in 2005, and more recently in 2015. If his case wasn't solid in the 1980s, is it any better now, or is he still peddling the same mistaken conclusions?
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