Lutheran minister
Born in Pembroke, Ontario, Neuhaus was one of eight children of a Lutheran minister. Although he had dropped out of high school at 16 to operate a gas station in Texas, he graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary, then in St. Louis, Missouri in 1960 he was ordained a Lutheran minister, later serving 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 the Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan and the 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 Benedictine-Lutheran Monastery, in Oxford, Michigan. He was active in liberal politics until
Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973 which changed his perspective. He became a member of the growing neoconservative movement and an outspoken advocate of "democratic capitalism". He also avocated faith-based policy initiatives based upon Judeo-Christian values by the federal government. He is the originator of "Neuhaus's Law", which states that "Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed".
Neuhaus helped to found the Institute on Religion and Democracy in 1981 and remained on its board until his death. He wrote its founding document, "Christianity and Democracy." In 1984, Neuhaus established the Center for Religion and Society as part of the Rockford Institute, which also publishes
Chronicles. He and the center were "forcibly evicted" from the Institute in 1989 under disputed circumstances. In 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 the same year he converted and was received into the Roman Catholic Church on September 8, 1990.Neuhaus had belonged to and was ordained in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the conservative wing of American Lutheranism. He subsequently had joined the American Lutheran Church, a predecessor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. A year after his conversion, he was ordained by John Cardinal O'Connor as a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. 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.Neuhaus expressed a strong hope in universal salvation, but stopped short of teaching it as a doctrine, emphasizing it as a hope, not a belief. "In sum: we do not know; only God knows; but we may hope." He wrote:
that absolutely no one is beyond the reach of God’s love in Christ. All are found, and therefore are not lost. That some may choose not to accept the gift of being found is quite another matter. We pray and hope that all will accept the gift of salvation that is most surely available to all. At least for Catholics, the teaching is definitive: God denies no one the grace necessary for salvation.
Similar to Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor Neuhaus said that it cannot be known if hell is populated by anyone.
Neuhaus made a posthumous appearance in the 2010 award-winning film, The Human Experience. In addition, his voice is featured in the narration of the film and the film's trailer.
Political significance
In later years, Fr. Neuhaus compared the pro-life struggle to the civil rights movement of the Sixties. During the 2004 Presidential campaign he was a leading advocate for denying Communion to Catholic politicians who supported abortion and voted against Church teaching on life issues. It was a mistake, he declared, to isolate abortion "from other issues of the sacredness of life"
He promoted ecumenical dialogue and social conservatism. Along with Charles Colson, he edited
Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission. 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 had unfairly demanded that both branches of Christianity stop trying to convert the other's members.
A close, yet unofficial, advisor of President George W. Bush, Neuhaus advised Bush, who called him "Father Richard", on a range of religious and ethical matters, including abortion, stem-cell research, cloning, and the defense of 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 died from complications of cancer in New York, on January 8, 2009, aged 72.
