Second thoughts

A welcome 20th anniversary; the 40th might be better | Marvin Olasky

Ron Sider is a nice guy, and honest enough to admit that he has been mistaken on some things. His best-seller 20 years ago, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, treated market systems the way dogs treat hydrants. (And I have sometimes treated Ron's group, Evangelicals for Social Action, the same way.) But Ron's "20th-anniversary revision" of Rich Christians shows a partly new perspective.

His own words in the new edition tell the story best: "Communism has collapsed. Expanding market economies and new technologies have reduced poverty.... Many Asian countries have adopted market economies. The result has been a dramatic drop in poverty in the world's most populous continent. In 1970, chronic undernourishment plagued 35 percent of the people in the entire developing world. Twenty-one years later-in spite of rapid population growth-only 20 percent were chronically undernourished."

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