Richard John Neuhaus, RIP

Spirituality Column #119
February 17, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Richard John Neuhaus, RIP
By Bob Walters

The biggest surprise of my Christian rebirth has been the multitude of really smart Christians I’ve encountered.

A case in point is Richard John Neuhaus, founder and editor of the brilliant First Things magazine. Father Neuhaus – a Lutheran Minister who completed his own personal faith journey by becoming a Roman Catholic priest at age 54 in 1991 – died last month of cancer in New York City.

Neuhaus (1936-2009) was a pastor, theologian, philosopher, intellectual, commentator, counselor and prodigious writer. He was a white Canadian by birth who moved to America at age 15 and …

– Pastored a black church in Brooklyn in the 1960s; marched arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King as a soldier in the civil rights movement; zealously protested the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and, among other things, was arrested during the 1968 Chicago riots outside the Democratic national convention.

– Argued passionately against Roe v. Wade, saying, “It should be the heartless conservatives who want to define a fetus as a lump of tissue, it ought to be caring liberals who want to expand the community of care to embrace the unborn;” broke with his Leftist roots after Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, and went so far as to suggest America had lost its legitimacy as a nation by allowing the wanton killing of innocent unborn humans.

– Challenged leftist Protestant churches who cozied up to worldwide Marxist regimes; wrote the book “The Naked Public Square” in 1984, his seminal intellectual treatise on the danger of attempting to secularize every part of our shared life as Americans; and founded First Things in 1990.

– Formed highly public and productive relationships with Jewish leaders (Abraham Joshua Heschel) and Evangelical leaders (Chuck Colson); was the only Catholic listed in Time magazine’s 2005 feature, “America’s Top 25 Evangelicals;” was a religious advisor to U.S. presidents Carter, Reagan and both Bushes, and was a confidante and advisor to Pope John Paul II in Rome.

Not bad for a guy who never completed high school.

Neuhaus pumped greatly needed religious light and intellectual heat into the modern American faith conversation. His remarkably perceptive, deep, witty, and entertaining commentaries on religion, culture, sociology, politics and literature are preserved in his 30 books and at www.firstthings.com.

As ongoing First Things editor Joseph Bottum writes, “Our great, good friend is gone … he has been gathered by the Lord he trusted.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) never met Neuhaus, but loves his writings.