Richard Neuhaus's Death and the Catholic–Evangelical Tension in Politics
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
The foot soldiers in the American Christian right have always been evangelical, but the movement's intellectual armature is undeniably Roman Catholic, a dynamic personified by the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, the Catholic theologian and polemicist who died yesterday at 72.
In a 2004 session with faith-based media, George W. Bush cited Neuhaus more than any other living authority: "Father Richard helps me articulate these [religious] things."
For Neuhaus, forging that kind of close bond between previously antagonistic evangelical and Catholic constituencies was a decades-long project. The New York Times reports in today's obit:
With Charles Colson, the former Watergate felon who became a born-again leader of American evangelicals, Father Neuhaus convened a group that in 1994 produced "Evangelicals and Catholics Together." It was a widely distributed manifesto that initially came under fire by critics, who accused the two men of diluting theological differences for political expediency. But the document was ultimately credited with helping to cement the alliance, which has reshaped American politics.
That's true. But Neuhaus's death also reminds us that Catholics remain the brains of a conservative movement built on evangelical brawn. This played out during the Bush years in Supreme Court nominations. John Roberts, Bush's first Supreme Court appointment, was embraced by conservative evangelicals, largely because his Catholicism assured them that he was a pro-lifer at heart, despite his thin judicial record.
Bush's second nomination, Harriet Miers, was initially backed by evangelicals because of her evangelical Christian faith, but nearly every other constituency on the right, including many conservative Catholics, rejected her as an intellectual lightweight. Many conservative Catholics were appalled at the way conservative evangelical leaders like Focus on the Family's James Dobson appeared to rely on her faith background as the sole basis for their support. The moment threw a light on the split between the social conservative movement's Catholic head and evangelical heart.
After Miers withdrew, Bush faced the dual task of appealing to mainstream conservatives who were distressed over the Miers pick and satisfying evangelicals who'd lost face over initially supporting her. Bush checked both boxes by selecting another Catholic, Samuel Alito.
Yes, the Catholic-evangelical alliance that Neuhaus helped broker has created a mighty political force. It has been one of the seminal political developments of the past 30 years. Let's just not forget that that marriage has some tensions that are also worth watching. After all, the split between evangelicals, who voted for John McCain by 3 to 1, and Catholics, who broke for Barack Obama after supporting Bush in 2004, is one reason Obama is the president-elect.
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As a person with degrees in Philosophy and Religion from St Vincent, Latrobe, Pa. I was usually humbled by the intellectual content of the 'current'issue of First Things. With Lutherans in my dad's side of the family, including a Ltuerna pstor cousin, I shared Neuhaus' regard and optimism toward Lutheranism, and 'old' Anglicanism--on its way to self-distruction.
I say 'humbled' while excluding the apprearance and re-appearance of Mary Eberstand and her sophomoric ramblings.
Having said that, I can only hope that FT will continue the intellectual argument for the presence of religion in American life--the quality which, along with optimism, most distinguishes us from Europe.
Bringing Evangelical, Catholic, American Unity
Only two political topics even unite Evangelicals with each other, the sanctity of life, and recognition of our nation’s heritage and traditional values in our schools and public life. We resent the Democratic media’s continual ridicule of us, exemplified by those who ignored Huckabee’s decade successfully governing a Democratic and African American state, assuming that his previous occupation as pastor disqualified him for any rational voter.
White evangelicals showed this election that they are not irrational bigots, they will come out in force to support a Mormon, a woman, or a Catholic of Asian descent, if they believe they have a chance to be elected and defend the two values above. Most Americans believe in those values, Evangelicals are those most willing to fight for them. Committed Evangelical donors give most of their donations to evangelical missions, Christian Education, and care for the most needy around the world. They simply won’t waste their money or time on a candidate like McCain or Dole that offer no commitment to the values above, and many will support Obama if they prefer his position on the war, environment, taxes, health care, etc.
Many evangelicals feel that the Republican Right has wasted billions of their dollars and hours but failed to reduce abortion, or slow the onslaught on traditional values. In Obama’s African American heritage, churches freely support those values and Democratic politicians from the pulpit, in ways white evangelicals don’t dare. If Obama and Kaine can do the following two things, Evangelicals like me will help reelect him in a landslide.
1.) Include funding to cover medical and counseling expenses for mothers that give their child up for adoption, reducing abortion, providing healthy children for couples unable to conceive, and reducing the personal and national expense of international adoptions. Affirm support for reasonable state parental and partner consent requirements, the only victory pro-lifers can claim.
2.) Publically affirm the role that faithful mothers and fathers, teaching their children faith and morality, have had in American history. Recognize that these habits, along with charitable giving, homeownership, and entrepreneurship, while imperfect still have a greater chance of making Americans happy and America great than other ways of life. This is why our legal/tax policy must continue to encourage these habits. Others should have the right to pursue happiness other ways, but should not use public schools and civil rights organizations to indoctrinate our children against those values and remove them from our society.
This will go far to take away the fear Evangelicals have of the Democratic Party, and finally realign its priorities with the Catholics and African Americans that have kept it alive, without emotional religious wedge issues between the major parties maybe most Americans can again unite behind the best qualified of either party.
Fr Richard Neuhaus
Richard Neuhaus, a Canadian by birth, was a New Yorker by preferance and Catholic by choice (and grace).
As one who also grew up in the Ottawa Valley, though on the opposite side and in the Anglican tradition, I like to think that I share much in common with perhaps the most talented expositor of what he would call "the Great Tradition" to live on this side of the Atlantic since the passing of the former Lutheran Prof. J Pelikan (first to Orthodoxy and latterly to God).
Neuhaus like Pelikan, longed, as I do, for the healing of a six century breach in the Christian body.
Growing up with French, Irish and other assorted Catholics helped to make us both "high" church Christians: he a Lutheran, me an Anglican. For different and similar reasons we long for and hope for the coming together of all truly Catholic Christians be they Anglo-Catholic, Lutheran or other.
If Fr Neuhaus did nothing else, I am sure that in his continuing prayers he is hoping to advance that single cause which would do more for the unity of humanity than anything else - the healing of the breach in the Body of Christ.
Requiescat in pacem
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