A Faithful Voice

 

Born in May of 1936 in Pembroke, Ontario, part of the Ottawa River Valley, he was one of eight children. His father was the Lutheran pastor in the town, an American missionary to the region. Never very religious as a child, he did remember that his best friends were the Spooner brothers; Catholic boys who intrigued Neuhaus and who ultimately may have been responsible for his eventual conversion. “It seemed that, of all the good things we had, they had more. Catholicism was more. They came from a Church that had more.” He admits that as a boy these were passing thoughts and it would be decades before that perception translated into action.

For a man who was to go on to become a towering intellectual figure in the United States, academic matters didn’t interest him much as a teen. Without graduating from high school, in fact leaving because of drinking, he left Ontario for Nebraska and ultimately moved to Texas, where at the young age of 15 he started a small business in Abilene. A clergyman there convinced him to go back to school, and at 17 he sold the business and enrolled in the Lutheran Concordia College in Austin, Texas. By age 24 he was ordained and preaching at St. John The Evangelist Lutheran Church in New York City, a largely Black and Spanish congregation.

 

 

The social and political turmoil of the 1960s didn’t pass Richard Neuhaus by. He was active in anti-war protests, civil rights activities, and worked with Catholic and Jewish religious leaders in ecumenical efforts for social justice. In 1968 he attended the violence wracked Democratic Convention in Chicago and was one of thousands arrested and tried for disorderly conduct.

His left leaning political and social convictions would undergo a sea change beginning in the 1970s. What seemed to spark the beginnings of a fundamental shift was the disconnect between Church social activism and religious and spiritual consistency. A key issue was the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe Vs Wade that legalized abortion. From that point on he was to be a fierce pro-life campaigner.

His break went further than just the abortion issue. He began to work with more conservative religious leaders in attacks on and criticisms of such organizations as The US National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches for their politics and economics. But he wasn’t so much simply attacking them politically; he was in the beginning stages of an argument that saw its fullest expression in the mid 1980s.

His 1984 work, The Naked Public Square, was arguably the instigator of a fierce public debate that continues today in the United States over the validity of a religious perspective in a functioning democracy. Father Neuhaus made the argument that any true democracy not only tolerated religious points of view in political and social debate, but also required the same. And by religious views, he meant more than politics. He always wanted matters of public policy and politics to align with theological principles on the nature of humanity and the presence of God in the world.

At this stage he was firmly on the road to being a Catholic. “After 30 years of asking myself why I was not a Roman Catholic I finally ran out of answers that were convincing either to me or to others.” He became a Catholic in 1990 when he took instruction from and was confirmed by Cardinal John O’Connor of New York. A year later, Richard John Neuhaus, went the final step and was ordained a priest.

 

 

Around the same time, Father Neuhaus put in place the last major piece of his ascent to intellectual and political prominence in the United States. He founded the monthly magazine, First Things. The mission statement, while short and concise, summed up a philosophy that had been building for a lifetime. First Things is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society. It was all there: religion, public policy, ecumenicalism and an assertive bluntness.

One of the defining features of the magazine from the very beginning was Richard John Neuhaus’ monthly Public Square feature, which might actually be the pre-cursor to the millions of blogs that have populated Cyberspace over the last decade. Ruminations on news, books, lectures, papers and conversations, the column was a potpourri of acute, insightful and often polemical observations on trends both good and bad in the intellectual life of the world.

 

 

Richard John Neuhaus, the high school dropout, wrote and edited 30 books as well as hundreds of essays in addition to forging alliances with leading Evangelical figures and taking part in conferences, demonstrations, lectures and simply acting as a leader at the nexus of religion and politics in the United States. It was not a stance without its critics.

A former editor at First Things, Damon Linker, in the 2007 book, The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, charged that Neuhaus and other Conservative religious thinkers in the US were endangering democracy by their efforts to inject religious values into public debate. It was a charge that Richard Neuhaus both rejected and in some sense relished. Max Stackhouse of Princeton Theological Seminary told the New York Times “He was not poverty-stricken when it came to confidence, and he did a lot of his homework and made judgements and felt very secure in them. He did enjoy controversy.”

And while he dismissed the idea that he was part of a cabal seeking to impose some form of theocracy on America, he frequently advised George W. Bush the 43rd President of the United States on matters of morality. Dan Gilgoff of the Washington Post reported “In a 2004 session with faith-based media, George W. Bush cited Neuhaus more than any other living authority: “Father Richard helps me articulate these [religious] things.” In 2005 Time Magazine named Richard John Neuhaus one of the 25 most powerful religious figures in the United States.

In the days immediately following the news of his demise from cancer in January, tributes flowed in from all corners of America. Right, Center and Left mourned the passing of a truly fertile thinker who impressed all with the sincerity of his vision and his faith. “I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.” Father James Martin, SJ, the editor of America, a Jesuit publication that sparred with Neuhaus frequently.

Both critics and admirers of Richard John Neuhaus assert that he often liked to have the last word. It is true even now. His last book is published this month, American Babylon, a polemic that argues that the United States has become epitomized by consumerism and decadence, and that Christians must learn to live as if in exile. Classic Richard John Neuhaus to the very end.