His I-Monkness scores again, using common evangelical shibboleths for target practice. Taking liberty with the whole ‘25 random things about me’ meme-from-hell, he gives us a list of ‘25 things random things I do and don’t believe’. You may not agree with Michael on everything, but it’s discussions like this that have become happily inevitable amongst evangelicals, particularly those of us who have found ourselves taking refuge in Orthodox, Roman Catholic or mainline Protestant churches. Michael’s list exemplifies for me the way that the Holy Spirit is rebooting our understanding of the Gospel and church in the midst of the emerging/missional/neoReformed/Tiber-hopping/Caterbury-walking/Eastern-incense-burning ferment that is taking place all around us. Read and enjoy.
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Out on the front porch, listening as the birds visit the feeders, I am once again aware of what I have been missing, not being present. The common looking titmice, usually lost in the sea of more elegant birds, dazzles me for the first time with their strong and clear de-doo de-doo. Why haven’t I heard that before? The white-breasted nuthatches, shuffling up and down the trunk of the sweetgum tree, are busy cracking oil-rich sunflower seeds with what sounds for all the world like an
avian version of purring. The dark eyed juncos flit about silently, like neighborhood ninjas. All around, the crows and the grackles paint a stacatto backdrop. We’ve lived in this place for a year now. Why am I only now recognizing such simple things? And what else am I missing?
While current events are not the principal focus of this blog, the engagement of culture and faith certainly is, and few individuals in America today have been more involved in that ongoing dialogue than Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. His years as publisher and editor of the influential journal First Things exemplified a long history of participation in the crucial questions of the day, going all the way back to when he, as a white Lutheran minister leading a black congregation, marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. Named by TIME magazine one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America (despite his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1990 and ordination as a priest a year later), Neuhaus partnered with Charles Colson to organize the effort that resulted in Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a landmark ecumenical text. He has been, by all accounts, a deeply important Christian voice in American life.
Word comes today that Fr. Neuhaus passed away this morning from complications resulting from the cancer that he had struggled with in recent years. The following comes from Joseph Bottum, currently editor of First Things:
“Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.”
First Things was, for me, a life-saving publication. After five years in ministry service, I had returned to college only to find that the simplistic way that I and my fellow pentecostals envisioned Christian cultural engagement fell far short of the reality of living as a thinking individual outside of the Christian ghetto. My discovery of First Things (as well as Image and, later, Books & Culture) provided me with an open doorway to a world of Christians who were not afraid to think big about political and cultural theory, and to do so in an evolving dialogue with thinkers from the broadest sweep of the cultural landscape.
I can still remember sitting in the hallway of the Humanities department at Southwestern Oklahoma State University reading the latest issue of First Things when my advisor, Dr. John Hayden, stopped to ask me what I was reading. When I explained the journal’s mission, Dr. Hayden (who was himself a Brooklyn-born Irish Catholic) shook his head and replied, “Man, you’re into things most people around here have no clue about.” He was right about that, and thank God for it, because it was in part the gift of Fr. Neuhaus and First Things that made it possible for me to grow intellectually while not only remaining a Christian but, more importantly, becoming a Christian thinker. While I became increasingly troubled by the right-wing drift of his politics through the years, and while I was not able to ‘cross the Tiber’ as he did (though not without temptation, in large part because of the attraction of Catholics like Fr. Neuhuas), I will always be grateful for his voice crying out “in the naked public square”.
Requiescat in pace, Fr. John.
Update: First Things has republished an essay by Fr. Neuhaus written in 2000 about his catastrophic bout with cancer and the lessons he learned in the experience. It serves as well as anything else for his eulogy.
I tried starting this blog last year just as my family and I were uprooting ourselves from the place that had been our home for a decade in order to return to my wife’s hometown in the Midwest. With all of the energy that it took to make that huge change, I just couldn’t keep up with the demands of keeping up the blog. Consequently, it languished in a nice post-evangelical Protestant form of limbo.
The new year, however, brings new energy and new vitality. After nine months in our new home, I think that I am beginning to see the silhouette of what God has in mind for us. A good friend suggested that I make an effort to take up blogging again in order to record and share what we learn as we begin to explore this ‘undiscovered country’ that has been opened to us. So, having been about as vague as I can be for an initial post, it’s off to the races.