Religious conversion redefined nominee’s worldview

Late Sunday night, the Rev. Ron Key and his wife, Kaycia, got a mysterious phone call from longtime friend Harriet Miers.

“She talked with my wife and asked us to pray for her,” the 57-year-old Dallas pastor said. “She said, ‘You know, I cannot tell you why, but please pray for me.’

“Harriet is like that. She is very careful about doing the right thing. Of course, I did pray for her, and the next morning woke up to find out with the rest of the nation that she had been nominated for the Supreme Court.”

While the rest of the country debates the merits of Miss Miers’ judicial qualifications, her Christian friends and confidants says she is a solid believer who, like President Bush, had a religious conversion in her 30s.

This was in June 1979. Within a few days of her decision, she was baptized at Valley View Christian Church, a conservative Protestant congregation in north Dallas with 1,200 members. The church is not affiliated with the similarly named Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a liberal mainline denomination.

“The whole basis for becoming a Christian is that you’ve made mistakes,” said Mr. Key, who was pastor of the church at the time. “Obviously, at that time in her life, she became aware of the fact that she needed Jesus, and she committed her life to Him.”

Like George W. Bush, who at 39 made a similar life-changing decision in the summer of 1985 during an encounter with the Rev. Billy Graham, Miss Miers was looking for a spiritual change. She was 33.

Nathan Hecht, then a fellow lawyer at the Dallas law firm of Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neely and now an associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court, played the piano at Valley View. They began to go out together, and one day he invited her to church.

“She had made partner, had a great practice, lots of clients, making a good living, the works,” Justice Hecht said. “She got to thinking about her life: ‘Is this all there is?’ She decided she wanted a stronger faith.”

The two “argued about it some,” he recalls, and one day, she “came down the hallway to say she had made a decision. She had made a personal commitment [to Christ].”

Not only did this affect her financially — “If you see her tax returns, you’ll see she gives 15 percent to the church,” Justice Hecht said — but it also transformed her views on issues such as abortion.

“After her conversion, she thought more about things in a serious way. She realized life begins at conception. Taking a life after conception was serious business, and therefore you could not do it without a good reason,” the judge said.

He, too, received an urgent call for prayer from Miss Miers on Sunday evening, “for what will happen tomorrow morning.”

“You’d have to be an idiot not to know what it was,” Justice Hecht said.

Miss Miers’ prominence as a high-profile lawyer contrasted markedly with her humbler roles at her church.

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