Right Web

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The Institute on Religion and Public Life (IRPL), publisher of the journal First Things, describes itself as an "interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public policy for the ordering of society." Both the institute and its journal function, in large part, as the institutional vehicles for the conservative religious philosophy of founder Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and neocon—or "theocon"—stalwart.

First Things, a monthly publication, generally promotes the tenets of the Christian Right, often staking out positions to the right of the George W. Bush administration. First Things editor Joseph Bottum wrote in early 2007: "Social conservatism is in little better shape now than it was when Bush was first elected. In many ways, it is in worse shape" (First Things, March 2007).

In response to Bottum, First Things editorial board member (and American Enterprise Institute fellow) Michael Novak was much more supportive of Bush. "At the very least, in the face of passionate hostility at home and abroad, George Bush has proved himself a brave and determined man who has staked his presidency on getting democratic momentum underway in the Middle East," Novak gushed. He then cited an argument typical of neoconservatives who are devoted to the U.S.-enforced spread of democracy to the Middle East: "Even if in the short run he fails—which many of us are not yet ready to concede—some Muslims in the future will be able to remember that in a difficult time an American president, at heavy cost, cared about their sufferings, their natural rights, and the better angels beckoning in their dreams. He held before them a democratic standard by which they will forever measure other political movements and other leaders" (First Things, March 2007).

Other members of the editorial board include Midge Decter, wife of early neoconservative trailblazer Norman Podhoretz, and George Weigel, a theologian at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). Neuhaus serves as the journal's longtime editor-in-chief; its pages carry his sermon schedules. First Things advisory board members include the anti-abortion law professor Hadley Arkes; theoretical particle physicist Stephen M. Barr; intellectual James Burtchaell, who resigned from Notre Dame in 1990 amid accusations of sexual misconduct (New York Times, December 3, 1991); Environmental Ethics and Christian Humanism author Thomas Derr; political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain; author and former American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar Suzanne Garment; founder of Princeton's James Madison Program, Robert George; professor of Catholic studies Russell Hittinger; Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky; economics professor Glenn Loury; Notre Dame professor George Marsden; and Christianity scholar Robert Louis Wilken. Regular contributors have included Weigel, Decter, Michael Novak, David Novak, Robert Bork, Mary Ann Glendon, Charles Colson, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), Vaclav Havel, Irving Kristol, Paul Davies, and Francis Cardinal George.

IRPL board members in 2004 included professor of Jewish studies David Novak, Neuhaus (president), Weigel, Wilken, Burtchaell, Derr, Elshtain, Hittinger, Loury, and Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon (see GuideStar.org, IRPL's 2004 Form 990).

In the early 1970s, Neuhaus was a liberal, antiwar Lutheran minister who became associated with the neoconservative camp by the end of the decade. During the 1980s, he directed the Center on Religion and Society, which was part of the Rockford Institute. The center's quarterly journal The World gained a reputation as a leading forum for conservative Catholics and mainstream Protestants. The Rockford Institute is firmly entrenched in the right's "paleoconservative" Old Guard, which from the mid-1970s through the 1980s was locked in an uneasy political alliance with the neoconservatives.

Both IRPL and First Things received funding from the Bradley Foundation through the Rockford Institute. Mark Gerson recounts in his 1997 book The Neoconservative Vision how, after the Rockford Institute published articles that some neoconservatives like Weigel criticized as anti-Semitic, Neuhaus split with the institute (pp. 309-312). With funding from Bradley and other conservative foundations, Neuhaus then established the IRPL.

The institute quickly established itself as staunchly neoconservative, recruiting Decter to serve on its board at about the same time that she was invited to join the board of the Heritage Foundation. In 1991 Neuhaus became a Roman Catholic priest.

Since the late 1970s, Neuhaus has been a leading cultural warrior in the neocon camp. He once wrote: "Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion" (National Review, May 2, 1994). Along with Michael Novak, Peter Berger, and Weigel, Neuhaus has been a key figure in spearheading the neoconservative initiative to seize ideological control of the culture wars against liberalism and secularism. Neuhaus serves on the boards of directors of three prominent neoconservative-aligned institutes: the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), the EPPC, and the Foundation for Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise. He is also a director of the right-wing World Youth Alliance, which promotes a "culture of life" at the United Nations among other activities. In a survey of national leadership, Time magazine named Neuhaus one of the "25 most influential evangelicals in America" (Time, February 7, 2005).

Neuhaus is an outspoken advocate of "democratic capitalism" in which corporations are seen as having a virtuous role in public life. Neuhaus is perhaps best known for his thesis that the secular "New Class" and big government have crowded religion out of "the public square" (see The Neoconservative Mind, p. 311). Since the late 1970s, Neuhaus has argued that Judeo-Christianity should be reasserted back into the public square. He was an early proponent of faith-based policy initiatives and government intervention to promote Judeo-Christian values. Gerson, a director at the mostly defunct Project for the New American Century who has chronicled the rise of neoconservatism, observed that Neuhaus is "a great philo-Semite, having written since his days as a radical in the 1960s of his reverence for the Jewish people and for Judaism" (see The Neoconservative Vision).

IRPL, which shares board members with the IRD and the EPPC, aims to instill a stronger appreciation of the morality of capitalism in the United States and around the world; in the "culture war" between social conservatives and the "liberal establishment," the social conservatives condemn liberals as being dangerously secular and humanist. Milton Himmelfarb, writing in First Things, took this view of the culture war in America: "The trouble is not that religion in general has too small a role in American public life or American life simply. The trouble is that a particular religion has too great a role—paganism, the de facto established religion" (First Things, March 1991). The rise of the IRPL (and the absence of similar institutes controlled by traditional conservatives) illustrates the declining fortunes and influence of the Old Guard and demonstrates the neoconservative ability to integrate a traditional rightist position—the centrality of religion and ethics in politics and society—into the neoconservative ideological agenda.

From 1996 to 2005, the IRPL received close to $9 million in grants (see MediaTransparency.org). Right-wing foundations the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, and Carthage Foundation were among the contributors. Much of the funding was directed toward support of First Things. According to its 2004 IRS Form 990, IRPL received $3.4 million in gifts and contributions and made more than $2.5 million in receipts the same year.
 

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.