new reading: Ron Sider

I just received Ron Sider’s new book The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World? I’m only thirty pages into it at this point so I want to refrain from getting into a full review. My own biases are arising and I’m trying to curb them, but I’ll say right out what I think this book is NOT. It doesn’t ask or offer insight into the changing nature of Evangelicalism itself. It relies on old definitions. It doesn’t specifically define “Religious Right” any more than it does “Religious Left.” Sider works at doing what he does best: diplomatic statecraft. “Evangelical” as a loose category may no longer be tenable. I just have to wonder aloud whether the cataclysmic ecclesiological changes within Evangelicalism in the last five years have not made the nature of this conversation a bit obsolete. That’s all I’ll say for now until my review.