Richard John Neuhaus has died

A few minutes ago, I was working on a conference paper related to my dissertation research (evangelical interfaith dialogues with Mormons and Catholics), and I popped online to check some biographical info for Richard John Neuhaus—and as I'm looking at the Wikipedia article on him, I suddenly find myself reading a line about his death date. I think, "I didn't know Neuhaus was dead—that must not have happened too long ago." And then it registers that according to what I'm reading, he died January 8, 2009. That's today. He died about three hours ago, and already someone has updated his Wikipedia entry.

Apart from being rather wonderstruck by how quickly information gets disseminated and recorded in the Internet age, I'm feeling this odd sense of . . . I don't know, a little bit of disorientation. My world just changed in a kind of small but permanent way. A man who embodied much of what I oppose about conservative Christian politics, a man whose influence hurt people I identify with (I'm thinking of the academic freedom controversies at BYU), a man who is going to be a peripheral character in my dissertation, is suddenly gone.

I have mixed feelings about that. It's a foretaste, I suppose, of what I will experience when Boyd K. Packer finally dies. There's an embittered part of me that's thinking vindictive, petty things I shouldn't commit to writing. And there's a kind of condescending part of me that feels like I can better afford to be more generous toward him now that he's dead. A more genuinely charitable part of me is conscious that his death is for many people a cause of grief, and a still small voice is chastening me to be sensitive to that.

Whatever I think—thought—of his politics and life's work, Richard Neuhaus has gone home to that God who gave him life, according to Alma 40. I trust, I hope, I think I can even sincerely say that I pray, that he is, as we speak, being enveloped in the arms of God's love. I'm not going to try to pretend that I love him, even in a condescending, wearing-my-love-for-my-enemies-on-my-sleeve kind of way. But his Heavenly Parents love him, and I hope that he is in a position to experience that.