Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square

Richard John Neuhaus (1936–2009) was a lightning rod of controversy and was frequently the center of media attention in his day. As a Lutheran pastor for a predominantly African American and Latino congregation in Brooklyn in the 1960s, Neuhaus marched beside Martin Luther King Jr. and was arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in the infamous clash with Chicago police. In later life, he grew conservative—but no less vocal—and converted to Roman Catholicism, becoming a priest in that faith, and wrote caustic commentary on American society for First Things, the journal he founded. Novelist Boyadoga (American studies, Ryerson Univ.; Beggar's Feast) has written a workmanlike account of this prominent and still-baffling presence; there is rather little sense of Neuhaus's driving impulses, only a series of impressions of his unfailing courage to speak out.