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 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 the 43rd President George W. Bush on bioethical issues. Early life and education Born in Pembroke, Ontario, on May 14, 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 Bachelor of Arts and Master of Divinity degrees from Concordia Seminary in 1960. Career Lutheran minister 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 US, the American Lutheran Church (1960) and the Lutheran Church in America (1962), to finally form the current Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for which Neuhaus was a member of the clergy. From 1961 to 1978, he served as pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church, a poor, predominantly black and Hispanic congregation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. From the pulpit he addressed civil rights and social justice concerns and spoke against the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s he gained national prominence when, together with Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, he founded Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. He was active in the Evangelical Catholic movement in Lutheranism and spent time at Saint Augustine's House, the Lutheran Benedictine monastery, in Oxford, Michigan. He was active in liberal politics until the 1973 ruling on abortion in Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court, which he opposed. He became