Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #591563 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.23 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Evangelical theologian and activist Sider gets down to specifics in this book about American social programs, which at points reads like a policy wonk's textbook. But it is not written so much for policy insiders as for the constituency of Evangelicals for Social Action, the organization Sider founded and for which he serves as president. Unlike other social theorists, Sider freely bathes his antipoverty program in biblical language and prophetic imperatives, but unlike many of his fellow evangelicals, he sees the government's role in addressing American poverty as inescapable. Sider's prescriptions do not fit into familiar left-right categories: while he argues for a "living wage," guaranteed government-funded jobs and universal health care, he also urges a national experiment for school vouchers, commends faith-based community service organizations and speaks urgently of personal responsibility and the breakdown of the family. One of the few evangelicals to have sat at table with both the conservative Christian Coalition and the left-leaning Call to Renewal, Sider seems to have learned from, and to genuinely appreciate, the policy goals of both sides. Notably missing from the book is the hard-headed strategy that has made the Christian Coalition so potent. Sider is more prophet than politician but by basing his policy arguments on something more than political expediency, he makes the somewhat tired idea of Christian politics seem plausible, even exciting, again.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Nationally known as the president of the Philadelphia-based Evangelicals for Social Action, Sider grapples with the socioeconomic data available on the extent and impact of poverty in America from both a liberal and a conservative perspective. Believing that, faithfully interpreted and lived, the Scriptures can provide the vision and motivation needed to reduce poverty dramatically, he spells out a set of proposals for a social policy that works toward that goal. Sider offers broad policy proposals regarding welfare and crime reduction and suggests that societal problems would be best handled by partnerships between governments and philanthropic organizations. Many readers will find his discussion insightful and his proposals for change resonant. The footnotes accompanying each chapter allow for further research, and a list of organizations provides practical resources. An essential purchase whose wide-based discussion reaches many segments of readers.ALeroy Hommerding, Citrus Cty. Lib. System, Inverness, FL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Sider says we must do something--again and more--about poverty in the U.S. because the Bible tells us to. With impressive thoroughness, he demonstrates that both Old and New Testaments enjoin believers to help the poor become productive members of society and to use public as well as private resources to do so. He advocates lifting poor people's incomes above the poverty line by increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, the food stamp program, and the minimum wage; making the dependent care and child tax credits refundable to low-income families; guaranteeing jobs to the able-bodied, long-term unemployed; providing universal health-care coverage; and other remedies that reek of liberalism. But like social conservatives, he insists that government benefices won't work well enough if the soul needs underlying the bad life choices and antisocial behavior of some of the most persistently poor aren't met. As a minister who has long lived and worked in poor Philadelphia neighborhoods, Sider knowledgeably cites instances in which church-connected social services and specific church people have helped in even very desperate circumstances, and he cheers the charitable choice provisions of the 1996 welfare laws, which prevent state governments that contract with nongovernmental service providers from discriminating against religious agencies. In a book amazingly compact for the breadth of its coverage, Sider also takes up educational reform (especially school vouchers), family-support policy, ways that welfare might empower poor people, and more--all from the biblical perspective of evangelical Christianity. A clear front-runner among antipoverty policy tracts. Ray Olson