Institute of Religion and Public Life

Richard John Neuhaus (May 14, 1936 – January 8, 2009) was a prominent Christian cleric (first in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, then ELCA pastor and later as a Roman Catholic priest) and writer. Born in Canada, Neuhaus moved to the United States where he became a naturalized United States citizen. He was the longtime editor of the Lutheran Forum magazine newsletter and later founder and editor of the monthly journal First Things and the author of numerous books. A staunch defender of the Roman Catholic Church's teachings on abortion and other life issues, he served as an unofficial adviser to 43rd President George W. Bush on bioethical issues.

Born in Pembroke, Ontario in 1936, Neuhaus was one of eight children of a Lutheran minister and his wife. Although he had dropped out of high school at age 16 to operate a gas station in Texas, he returned to school, graduating from Concordia Lutheran College of Austin, Texas, in 1956. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he earned his BA and MDiv from Concordia Seminary in 1960.

Neuhaus was first an ordained minister in the conservative Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. In 1974, a major schism in the Missouri Synod resulted in many "modernist" churches splitting to form the more progressive Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches to which Neuhaus eventually affiliated. The AELC, merged a decade later in 1988 with the other two more liberal Lutheran denominations in the U.S., The American Lutheran Church (1960), and the Lutheran Church in America (1962) to finally form the current Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which Neuhaus was a member of the clergy.

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