Ron Sider’s deep faith
The Evangelicals for Social Action founder is remembered for living the gospel he professed.
An advocate for faith expressed in action. A White, male evangelical who embraced the voices of the marginalized and made abundant room in leadership for new generations and for people of color. A champion for peacemaking both when wars were popular and when they were unpopular. A scholar who didn’t flee to the suburbs but raised his family in one of Philadelphia’s less privileged zip codes.
The consensus of many friends and former colleagues is that Ron Sider, who died July 27 at age 82, lived what he professed. The founder of Evangelicals for Social Action (now Christians for Social Action) and professor of theology and public policy at Eastern University was one of the most prominent public faces of a progressive evangelical movement that saw no daylight between evangelism and justice.
“Ron was one of those unique people whose words, actions, and character were all consistent,” said Heidi Unruh, who worked with Sider both at Evangelicals for Social Action—an organization, now called Christians for Social Action, which Sider founded in 1978—and as a co-author and speaker.
