Left: Randy Boyagoda’s new bio of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, founder of the journal "First Things"; right: Fr. Neuhaus at the National Press Club in Washington in 2004. (CNS file photo/Bob Roller)
The
death of Father Richard John Neuhaus in 2009 constituted an immediate
and irreparable loss for American political and religious life. He
brought Christianity into the public square with unique intellectual
rigor, cultural erudition, and brio; no obvious successor has emerged in
the years since his passing. Neuhaus’s rich and noteworthy life
deserves a reliable biography; it now has one in Randy Boyagoda’s
readable Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Pubic Square.
Born
in 1936 in Pembroke, Ontario, where his American-born father, Clemens
Neuhaus, was the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Neuhaus grew up
in a pious, bustling home filled with siblings. His education ran into
difficulty in high school in Texas, where he dropped out. (As Neuhaus
later acknowledged: “I knocked about.”) He subsequently found his stride
at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, where he studied from 1955 to 1960.
There he came under the influence of the formidable Arthur Piepkorn,
who taught Neuhaus that Lutheranism was essentially a reform movement
designed to foster unity. As Neuhaus wrote of Piepkorn’s influential—and
controversial—theology: “The Reformation was not against the Church
catholic but to make the Church more catholic.”
Once ordained,
Neuhaus soon began his work as a pastor of St. John the Evangelist, a
Missouri Synod Lutheran church in Brooklyn, New York, that had seen
better days. In that racially mixed urban congregation, Neuhaus
flourished. Moreover, he energetically pursued matters well beyond his
congregation, becoming a major Protestant figure in the civil-rights
movement. He was also a salient opponent of the war in Vietnam; indeed,
he was a founder and leader of Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam
and worked side by side with all the prominent clerical radicals of the
period.
Neuhaus famously moved to the political right after the
activist frenzy of the 1960s. Decisive in this movement for him was the
catastrophe of Roe v. Wade in 1973. Boyagoda captures the impact of the new abortion-on-demand arrangement on Neuhaus well:
Powerfully
motivated in his ministry, writings, politics, and activism by a sense
that the right-ordered purpose of liberalism was to defend the weak from
the powerful, by the early 1970s Neuhaus began to understand his
commitment to the rights of the poor and the racially oppressed as of a
piece with his commitment to the rights of the unborn, which would
occupy an ever greater primacy in the coming years. From the beginning,
however, this integration of rights for the poor and rights for the
unborn placed him at a critical distance from a Left in which private
rights—made possible by and indeed protecting implicit race and class
privileges—trumped responsibilities for others.
Always a prolific
writer, Neuhaus published in 1984 the book that placed him at the
national center of the question of religion in American public life, The Naked Public Square. Subsequent
discussion on the complexities involved in the interplay of religion on
public issues would be shaped by this important book for many years.
As
his intellectual stature and influence continued to increase, Neuhaus
was received into the Catholic Church in 1990 and ordained a priest
after a short period of formation. (I recall a friend commenting
accurately at the time that Neuhaus's conversion would prove to be the
most important of our time.) Neuhaus’s statement on his conversion is a
model of gracefulness and illustrative of the ecumenical outlook that
enabled him throughout his life to work so closely with those who did
not share his faith on issues of common concern:
I
cannot begin to express adequately my gratitude for all the goodness I
have known in the Lutheran Communion. There I was baptized, there I
learned my prayers, there I was introduced to Scripture and creed, there
I was nurtured by Christ on Christ, there I came to know the utterly
gratuitous love of God by which we live astonished. For my theological
formation, for friendships beyond numbering, for great battles fought,
for mutual consolations in defeat, for companionship in ministry—for all
this I give thanks and know that I will forever be in debt to the
Church called Lutheran. Most especially I am grateful for my 30 years as
a pastor. There is nothing in that ministry that I would repudiate,
except my many sins and shortcomings. My becoming a priest in the Roman
Catholic Church will be the completion and right ordering of what was
begun 30 years ago. Nothing that was good is rejected, all is fulfilled.
It was during this time that First Things
was launched. This monthly journal rapidly became the forum for the
best contemporary writing on church, state, and all related matters. Of
course, the back of the magazine was Neuhaus’s space, and each month he
would publish thousands of words on a vast range of subjects, invariably
leaving the reader in awe at his rhetorical skill and his capacity to
provide a deeper understanding of whatever was under discussion. It was
an extraordinary achievement—a true intellectual tour de force; it is difficult to think of anyone who could do anything similar today.
Naturally,
much of Neuhaus’s writing during this time addressed political concerns
that have come and gone. But his writing on the great issues retains
its resonance and cogency. Two pieces especially come to mind. First,
his pro-life address, “We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest,” first
delivered in 2008 to the annual convention of the Right to Life
Committee, is as stirring today in its eloquence and moral urgency as it
was then. (“Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by
God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us.”)
Second, Neuhaus’s brilliant essay, “The Return of Eugenics,” which was published in Commentary
in 1998, is still the best critique available on the recrudescence of
this great evil. His closing paragraph was—and is—grimly arresting: “And
so, quite suddenly it seems, we are facing questions for which we have
no ready answers. The questions are being answered, however.
Most of us, probably because we want to live with a clear conscience,
prefer not to think about the answers that are being given. Later, we
can say that we did not know.”
Neuhaus’s writing, however,
consisted of much more than his adroit arguments about and insights into
Christianity and American public life. His book, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross
(2000), is a small classic of theological reflection; one returns to it
again and again with great benefit. And truly riveting prose is found
in his short book on nearly dying of a misdiagnosed tumor, As I Lay Dying: Meditations upon Returning (2001).
These days, First Things
remains a vital journal under the editorship of R.R. Reno, and
Catholicism does not want for able apologists and
religion-and-public-life thinkers. Still, I am sure I am not alone in
often thinking about a major issue (the impact of Pope Francis, for
example) and wondering: What would Father Neuhaus have thought and
written? Boyagoda’s book soundly presents the life of this extraordinary
Christian man.
Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square
By Randy Boyagoda
New York: Image, 2015
Hardcover, 459 pages
