Richard John Neuhaus

Early life and education

Born in Pembroke, Ontario in 1936, Neuhaus was one of eight children of a Lutheran minister and his wife. Although he had dropped out of high school at 16 to operate a gas station in Texas, he returned to school, graduating from Concordia Lutheran College of Texas, Austin, in 1956. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he earned his BA and MDiv from Concordia Seminary in 1960.

Lutheran minister

Neuhaus was an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. After being excluded from the Missouri Synod, Neuhaus was affiliated to the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, the American Lutheran Church, and finally the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

From 1961 to 1978 he served as pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church, a poor, predominantly black and Hispanic congregation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. From the pulpit he addressed civil rights and social justice concerns and spoke against the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s he gained national prominence when, together with Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, he founded Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam.

He was active in the Lutheran "Evangelical Catholic" movement and spent time at Saint Augustine's House, the Lutheran Benedictine monastery, in Oxford, Michigan. He was active in liberal politics until the 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court, which he opposed and his perspective changed. He became a member of the growing neoconservative movement and an outspoken advocate of "democratic capitalism". He also advocated faith-based policy initiatives by the federal government based upon Judeo-Christian values. He originated the "Neuhaus's Law", which states, "Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed."

In 1981 Neuhaus helped to found the Institute on Religion and Democracy and remained on its board until his death. He wrote its founding document, "Christianity and Democracy". In 1984, he established the Center for Religion and Society as part of the conservative think-tank Rockford Institute, which publishes Chronicles. In 1989, he and the center were "forcibly evicted" from the Institute's eastern offices in New York City under disputed circumstances.

In March 1990, Neuhaus founded the Institute on Religion and Public Life and its journal, First Things, an ecumenical journal "whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society."

Roman Catholic priest

In September 1990, Neuhaus was received into the Roman Catholic Church. A year after becoming a Roman Catholic, he was ordained by John Cardinal O'Connor as a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. He served as a commentator for the Catholic television network Eternal Word Television (EWTN) during the funeral of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

Neuhaus continued to edit First Things as a Catholic priest. He was a sought-after public speaker and wrote several books, both scholarly and popular genres. He appeared in the 2010 film, The Human Experience, released after his death, where his voice features in the narration and in the film's trailer.

Personal life and death

Neuhaus died from complications of cancer in New York City, on January 8, 2009, aged 72.

Political significance

In later years, Neuhaus compared the pro-life struggle to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. During the 2004 Presidential campaign, he was a leading advocate for denying communion to Catholic politicians who supported abortion and voted against the church's teaching on life issues. It was a mistake, he declared, to isolate abortion "from other issues of the sacredness of life."

Neuhaus promoted ecumenical dialogue and social conservatism. Along with Charles Colson, he edited Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission (1995). This ecumenical manifesto sparked much debate.

A close, yet unofficial, adviser of President George W. Bush, he advised Bush on a range of religious and ethical matters, including abortion, stem-cell research, cloning, and the Federal Marriage Amendment. In 2005, under the heading of "Bushism Made Catholic," Neuhaus was named one of the "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" by Time Magazine:

"Bushism Made Catholic:" When Bush met with journalists from religious publications last year, the living authority he cited most often was not a fellow Evangelical but a man he calls Father Richard, who, he explained, "helps me articulate these [religious] things." A senior Administration official confirms that Neuhaus "does have a fair amount of under-the-radar influence" on such policies as abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and the defense-of-marriage amendment. -- Time Magazine, Feb. 5, 2005

Neuhaus was criticized for his political engagement as "theoconservatism." In contrast, theologian David Bentley Hart describes Neuhaus as

"a reflective, intelligent, self-possessed, generous, and principled man," "is opinionated (definitely), but not at all spiteful or resentful towards those who disagree with him; words like “absolutist” are vacuous abstractions when applied to him. His magazine publishes articles that argue (sometimes quite forcibly) views contrary to his own, and he seems quite pleased that it should do so."

Books

Journalism