Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
In an era where 'public theology' is not nearly so prominent as it was a few decades ago, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus' voice still carries weight. It did, that is, until his death from complications associated with cancer on January 8th.From his activity in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, to his opposition to abortion following Roe v. Wade, to his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1990 (which he saw as the natural evolution of the commitment to reformation of his native Lutheranism), to the creation of his influential journal, First Things, Neuhaus' career showed an unrelenting desire to pursue the truth as he saw it and an unflinching willingness to debate people and positions with which he disagreed.
Neuhaus' reputation around a place like Duke Divinity School, where I spend most of my time these days, is ambiguous. My sense is that his deep love for the church and his willingness to fight hard for moral issues is admired by many here. But Neuhaus' 'neoconservatism' and his belief in the ability of the government of a liberal democratic nation-state to achieve real goods (what one might even call 'political realism' in the Niebuhrian mold) puts him at odds with many prominent theologians here. It's a complicated issue, but let's just say that Neuhaus and many Duke professors would differ on their interpretation of Romans 13.
Still, Neuhaus was nothing if not intellectually challenging, and his death will leave a void that First Things will be hard pressed to fill without him. Neuhaus' influence and the respect with which he was held in American culture is indicated by the wide variety of obituaries that have been penned for him by more than just newspaper editorial staffs. Two of the best are those from Newsweek's George Weigel and the New York Times' David Brooks. A letter announcing Neuhaus' death by Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, can be found here.
[Update: Timothy George of Christianity Today has written a good essay on Neuhaus that can be found here.]
Labels: First Things, Richard John Neuhaus
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 4:15 PM
2 Comments:
"It's a complicated issue, but let's just say that Neuhaus and many Duke professors would differ on their interpretation of Romans 13."
Could you at least provide an example? Romans 13 contains 14 verses; I assume you are talking about the first 6 verses. What I'm looking for is an example of how Neuhaus and your theologians would differ in interpreting, say, verse 2: "Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves." TIA.
Hi Pauli. Thanks for stopping by. That was a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment, which probably meant more to my Duke readers. I should have explained better.
As a journal, First Things is committed to a certain conception of public theology - the notion that the witness of the church should be directly oriented toward shaping the national political agenda and shaping the moral culture of the nation as a whole. Father Neuhaus' own career reflects as much, from his early work in the Civil Rights movement, to his well-known opposition to abortion, to his important book "The Naked Public Square."
The issue some professors at Duke Divinity have with this approach to public theology is that it can tend toward locating the real driving force in history with Caesar rather than with Christ. It is not as if anyone at Duke would object to the church exerting a positive influence on society; indeed, the hope would be that, when Christians are living lives of faithful discipleship, they will always exert such an influence. The question is rather where one orients one's social witness. And here people tend to want to see the church itself as the political animal that should be offering an alternative to the 'ways of the world,' rather than the servant of a secular political society that just hopes to get a place at the table.
This is a component of what is sometimes called "Duke theology," though I dislike that term. The most influential figure in it is Stanley Hauerwas, though to say that Dr. Hauerwas defines what everyone does here is unfair to the enormously varied and creative work that is going on in theology, ethics, biblical studies, church history, and various practical disciplines. But it is Dr. Hauerwas who often makes the statement, "The first task of the church is not to make the world more just; it is to make the world, the world," and I think that statement, as much as any, sums up what I was referring to in the blog post. The reference to Romans 13 is there only because that chapter is so often used as a way to express the church's connection to (and ultimate subservience under) the state.
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