SO WILL WE ALL:

"When I meet God," wrote Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009), "I expect to meet him as an American. Not most importantly as an American, to be sure, but as someone who tried to take seriously, and tried to get others to take seriously, the story of America within the story of the world."

This statement is from American Babylon, Neuhaus' last book, which came out the year after his death. The book's argument was

that God is not indifferent toward the American experiment, and therefore we who are called to think about God and his ways through time dare not be indifferent to the American experiment. America is not uniquely Babylon, but it is our time and our place in Babylon. We seek its peace, in which, as Jeremiah said, we find our peace, as we yearn for and anticipate by faith and sacramental grace the New Jerusalem that is our pilgrim goal. It is time to think again--to think deeply, to think religiously--about the story of America within the story of the world.

Such a take on America and Christianity is controversial for many. And yet it was a view that Neuhaus, Lutheran pastor-cum-Catholic priest, largely held over a career that ran the gamut not merely from Protestant to Catholic, but from Left to Right, antiwar protester to defender of the Iraq invasion.

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