“From the early 1970s forward, Neuhaus was a key architect of two alliances with profound consequences for American politics, both of which overcame histories of mutual antagonism: one between conservative Catholics and Protestant Evangelicals, and the other between free market neo-conservatives and ‘faith and values’, social conservatives,” John L. Allen Jr., a senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, wrote.
Neuhaus died on January 8, aged 72, of complications due to cancer. He was perhaps best known as the editor of the journal First Things, published by the New York-based Institute on Religion & Public Life.
A funeral Mass for Neuhaus is scheduled January 13 in New York. A Canadian who later became a U.S. citizen, Neuhaus was ordained a Lutheran minister in 1960. He became an activist cleric in the predominately African American neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York’s borough of Brooklyn.
During a period of tumult in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Neuhaus was allied with activist figures such as Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit and Catholic priest, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who, like Neuhaus, strongly opposed the Vietnam War. However, Neuhaus later broke with the religious and secular left on a number of issues, including abortion, and converted in 1990 to Catholicism, becoming a priest a year later.
“I was 30 years a Lutheran pastor, and 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,” Neuhaus said in a statement about his conversion and his planned ordination as a priest.
Neuhaus became a critic of the U.S, National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches and served on the board of the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy, an advocacy group critical of the two groups over their “liberal activism.”
He was an informal advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on several issues, including stem cell research. “Father Neuhaus was an inspirational leader, admired theologian, and accomplished author who devoted his life to the service of the Almighty and to the betterment of our world,” Bush said in a January 8 statement. “He was also a dear friend, and I have treasured his wise counsel and guidance.”
