An Evangelical Justice? Two Key Articles on Harriet Miers

As reported yesterday, Harriet Miers is member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, Texas. President Bush’s most recent nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court has attracted a great deal of media attention, and at least to major newspapers have published articles on her Christian faith.

“In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void,” The New York Times, October 5, 2005.

By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30’s, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.

But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions – rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night – with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.

“She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life,” Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. “One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment” to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht “prayed and talked,” he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.

“Strong Grounding in the Church Could Be a Clue to Miers’s Priorities,” The Washington Post, October 5, 2005.

Hecht and other confidants of Miers all pledge that if the Senate confirms her nomination to the Supreme Court, her judicial values will be guided by the law and the Constitution. But they say her personal values have been shaped by her abiding faith in Jesus, and by her membership in the massive red-brick Valley View Christian Church, where she was baptized as an adult, served on the missions committee and taught religious classes. At Valley View, pastors preach that abortion is murder, that the Bible is the literal word of God and that homosexuality is a sin — although they also preach that God loves everybody.