Addition by subtraction: The deaths of James Lovelock and Ron Sider

British environmentalist James Lovelock died on July 26, 2022, his 103rd birthday. Dr. Lovelock, a physician by training, was also a climate scientist and futurist. He was best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that Earth itself is a living organism, with life forms interacting with inorganic surroundings to form a synergistic, self-regulating system. The hypothesis, named after the Greek goddess who personified the Earth, has been criticized by secular evolutionists, but has greatly influenced the increase in pagan nature worship that has become so popular in recent decades. I doubt that Dr. Lovelock is enjoying his present climate and environment.

On July 27, 2022, Ron Sider died at the age of 83. Dr. Sider, a native of Stevensville, Ontario, was involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship while an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo, and worked in apologetics with IVCF after earning a doctorate in history and master's in divinity from Yale University. He founded Evangelicals for Social Action in 1973, which might more accurately be called "Evangelicals for Socialism."

Dr. Sider was perhaps best known for his books Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1977) and Nuclear Holocaust and Christian Hope (1983). Christian writer Lloyd Billingsley described the former as:

A textbook of zero-sum thinking and statist solutions presented in religious vocabulary. A compendium of economic fallacies. (Billingsley, Lloyd. The Absence of Tyranny: Recovering Freedom in Our Time, 1986, p. 196).

Mr. Billingsley said of the latter:

Nuclear Holocaust and Christian Hope, co-authored with Richard Taylor, is a kind of religious version of Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth. Like Schell, Sider and Taylor rely heavily on shock tactics--describing blasts, destructions, bombs, blood, vomit, burns, screams. The front, fictionalized section of the book where this occurs is a combination snuff film and nuclear pornographic novel.

Merchandising comes later, the radical Christian version of Jesus watches and frisbees. Sider and Taylor advocate measures like displaying peace bumper stickers (surely a distinctive Christian approach), keeping photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the coffee table instead of Ansel Adams, buying stationery with a peace motif, and subscribing to the right magazines including the "rigorously biblical" Sojourners whose peace ministry co-author Taylor is a consultant.

To his great credit, Sider at least has the courage to carry his pacifism to its logical conclusion. The book may very well be the world's longest suicide note, suicide being the sure outcome of his nonmilitary defense plan, a new Anschluss on a larger scale.

The assumption is that, once conquered, we can all eventuall settle down to a peaceful, neo-Scandinavian existence. Germany was once thoroughly conquered; they did not so settle down. Sider's arguments for complete, not just nuclear, pacifism are buttressed with proof texts, but remain to me unconvincing.

It appears they are unconvincing to the authors as well. After three hundred gruelling pages filed with countless usages of "must," "should," and "ought," Sider and Taylor make this astonishing statement: "The authors of this book do not claim to have all the answers." Given this it is difficult to see their book as anything more than a public act of spiritual and political masturbation.

(Billingsley, Lloyd, The Generation that Knew Not Josef: A Critique of Marxism and the Religious Left, 1985, pp. 187-188).

I never for a minute believed that Dr. Sider was a Christian; I always figured he was a Communist masquerading as a Christian. When U.S. President Ronald Reagan delivered his "Evil Empire" speech to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983, it was Ron Sider who immediately formed a group to protest against Mr. Reagan's views. Dr. Sider boasted about his participation in the "Witness for Peace" program in Nicaragua in the early 1980s, in which the participants acted as human shields to impede the efforts of the Contras who were fighting against Nicaragua's Sandanista regime. The actions of the "Witness for Peace" participants had the effect of aiding the Sandanista regime, a regime that committed genocide against the Miskito Indians and was persecuting Christians. For information on the Sandanistas' treatment of Christians, I recommend the book Breaking Faith: The Sandanista Revolution and its Impact on Freedom and Christian Faith in Nicaragua by former Sandanista Humberto Belli, published in 1985.

For more on Ron Sider and Evangelicals for Social Action, see my posts 30 years ago: Ronald Reagan, addressing the NAE, denounces the evil empire--and other evils (March 12, 2013) and 30 years ago: Carl McIntire critiques Evangelicals for Social Action's Chicago Declaration (May 1, 2014).