Richard John Neuhaus
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Reverend Father Richard John Neuhaus (born May 21, 1936) is a prominent Canadian Catholic priest and writer in the United States. He is the founder and editor of First Things and the author of several books, including The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1984), The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World (1987), As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning (2002), and Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth (2006).
[edit] Biography
Born in Pembroke, Ontario, Neuhaus was one of eight children, and his father was a Lutheran minister. Like his father, he was ordained a minister around 1960, later serving as pastor of a poor congregation in a minority area of Brooklyn in New York City.[citation needed] He was active in liberal politics until Roe v. Wade was handed down. He is the originator of "Neuhaus's Law",[1] which states that "Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed".
Neuhaus was a scholar at the Rockford Institute before being fired amid a financial dispute and charges of insubordination. [2] He then founded First Things, a journal published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, as an ecumenical journal that promotes neoconservative political ideas.
Neuhaus supported the mainline (ELCA) wing of American Lutheranism before converting to Catholicism on September 8, 1990.[1] A year later, he was ordained a priest by John Cardinal O'Connor. He was a commentator for the Catholic television network EWTN during the funeral of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI.
He promotes ecumenical dialogue and social conservatism. Along with Charles Colson, he edited Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission (ISBN 0-8499-3860-0). This ecumenical manifesto sparked much debate; some Catholics and evangelicals claimed that Neuhaus and Colson had compromised major doctrines to promote a neoconservative agenda and unfairly demanded that both branches of Christianity stop trying to convert the other's members.
A close, yet unofficial, collaborator of President George W. Bush, Neuhaus advises Bush, who simply calls him "Father Richard", on a range of religious and ethical matters, including abortion, stem-cell research, cloning, and the defense of marriage amendment.[2]
In 2005, Neuhaus was named one of the "25 Most Influential Evangelists in America" by Time Magazine.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ First Things. How I Became the Catholic I Was April 2002
- ^ Time Magazine. The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America - Richard John Neuhaus 2005
- ^ Ibid
- The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker, Doubleday, 2006. Critical discussion by is a former editor at First Things.
[edit] External links
- First Things
- Neuhaus' conversion story "How I Became the Catholic I Was"
- Neuhaus online archive
- Neuhaus discusses his conversion to Catholicism in a June 1991 interview for 2000AD
- Profile of Richard John Neuhaus at Right Web.
- A Strange New Regime: The Naked Public Square and the Passing of the American Constitutional Order, by Richard John Neuhaus, Heritage Foundation.
- The Lies of David Frum, a 2003 Rockford Institute paper that discusses the Neuhaus firing.
- "The Public Square" - includes Neuhaus' account of his firing from by the Rockford Institute.
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since April 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | American theologians | Roman Catholic writers | Former Protestants | Converts to Roman Catholicism | Living people | Christian writers | Editors of Christian publications | Roman Catholic priests
