My Friend in Exile
American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile
by Richard John Neuhaus
Basic Books, 2009
(288 pages, $26.95, hardcover)
reviewed by William L. Saunders, Jr.
As I sat in church during Christmas services last December, the priest reminded us to pray for those who had died in the past year. My thoughts turned to my friend, Father Richard John Neuhaus, who had died one year before, in January 2009.
It is hard to imagine American public life without his presence. No one, in my judgment, was more influential in public debates about religion and public life (which is the name of his institute in New York) in all their forms, from inter-religious dialogue (whether Jewish/Christian or intra-Christian) to policy formulation on “hot button” issues such as stem-cell research and same-sex marriage.
His modus operandi was to organize scholarly roundtables such as the Ramsey Colloquium (named after the great ethicist Paul Ramsey and focusing on issues of public policy) and the Dulles Colloquium (concerned with theological issues and named after his friend, Cardinal Avery Dulles, who also died last year), and then to “have at it” in a wide-open, free-ranging dialogue.
A Varied & Lasting Legacy
It was a privilege and an intellectual feast to be a part of one of these gatherings. Fr. Neuhaus would bend over backwards to be fair to all sides, especially to points of view with which he disagreed. I believe that some of the public statements that resulted (for instance, the Ramsey Colloquium on Human Rights) will have a long and influential effect.
At every meeting of the Ramsey Colloquium I attended, Neuhaus reminded us that the question remained as Aristotle had phrased it: How are we to order our life together? As one who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he understood the transformational role that religion had played in American public life, in the quest for a just public order.
As a former Lutheran pastor who became a Catholic priest, he had a deep appreciation of both the Catholic and the Protestant strands of American history. Thus, along with his good friend Chuck Colson, he began to draw those strands more closely together with the initiative Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT).
ECT is, in my judgment, the most important development in American public life in the past fifty years (not that Neuhaus ever ignored or diminished the theological differences, and that is addressed at points in his book.) A close second would be his organization of the public symposium on the “judicial usurpation of politics,” which split “conservatives” and echoes still, because it dared to judge American democracy by the standard of universal justice.
His personal charity was boundless. He helped more people and mentored more people, of all ages, than can ever be mentioned. He was a tremendous speaker and an even better writer. Is there anyone who did not turn to his reflections in “The Public Square” before reading the rest of his highly influential journal First Things?
William L. Saunders is Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel at Americans United for Life.
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