The newspaper of record has the best reporting that I have seen thus far on Harriet Miers. The story is titled “In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void.†This article gives great insight into Miers’s conversion to evangelical faith and the subsequent reconfiguring of her politics. This one is definitely worth your taking the time to read it.
For those who have been wondering how prominent Evangelicals have been able to offer such a quick endorsement of someone who is largely an unknown quantity (e.g. James Dobson), there may be some information in this piece that helps to explain. The White House had Texas Supreme Court justice Nathan Hecht testify to Miers’s evangelical bona fides in a conference call preceding the nomination.
“To persuade the right to embrace Ms. Miers’s selection despite her lack of a clear record on social issues, representatives of the White House put Justice Hecht on at least one conference call with influential social conservative organizers on Monday to talk about her faith and character.
“Some evangelical Protestants were heralding the possibility that one of their own would have a seat on the court after decades of complaining that their brand of Christianity met condescension and exclusion from the American establishment.
“In an interview Tuesday on the televangelist Pat Robertson’s ‘700 Club,’ Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said Ms. Miers would be the first evangelical Protestant on the court since the 1930’s. ‘So this is a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to see someone with our positions put on the court,’ Mr. Sekulow said.â€
2 Comments
Mark
Unfortunately, the very liberal CNN is trying to offset this influence though…
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/05/miers.poll/index.html
RF2R2
Okay, she’s a protestant – does that make her good for America? Or for protestantism in America? I submit that it does not.
What we conservative protestants called for, or ought to have called for, was not a biased protestant who would vote ‘no’ on abortion, but a faithful constitutionalist who will interpret our laws according to the constitution. If the constitution specifically gave a right to abortion, or other pet protestant issue, I would still want a contitutionalist who would rule that abortion is legal! I hate abortion but I would go to my congress, armed with public opinion, and pass an amendment banning the practice – not appoint a yes-man (or woman) to the court and subvert the American people!
As it stands, I don’t see a right to abortion or seizure of property (as it is currently defined) or the eviction of school prayer in the constitution, so what I want – what my country NEEDS – is a faithful judge who will read the constitution and rule according to reason and not opinion.
Meirs is bad for the court, not because she is protestant, but because she is an unknown judicial mind who shows no history of constitutional conviction. If she is appointed and strikes abortion for the sake of her religious convictions and not based on interpretive principles, then we have committed a great hypocracy as a party and neither the dems nor the American people will forget it.