St. Maximos' Hut

The furor over the Miers nomination (see ProfBainbridge.com for a good roundup) makes me wonder about whether the debate is missing an important clue to Miers' approach to the Constitution from her religious background. As an evangelical, she presumably believes that the Bible provides a text which each reader can understand without the need for intermediary institutions to interpret it for the reader (e.g. reliance on the clergy, written glosses, etc.) If she approaches the Constitution's text in the same way and uses the types of interpretative techniques used by Protestants to read the Scriptures, is she predisposed to an originalist analysis? Given that she is NOT a member of a "mainstream"* Protestant denomination in which interpretative techniques akin to the "living Constitution" approach of former Justice William Brennan have led to some, uh, creative readings of the text, would it be fair to presume that she'll take a more originalist approach to the Constitution's text based on how she reads Scripture? I don't think I know enough about how evangelical churches generally, or Miers' church in particular, approaches Scripture to know the answer.

But if so, that seems a neglected aspect of her background.


* how come the "mainstream" ones are the ones losing members? Shouldn't we recalibrate and call the evangelicals "mainstream" and the mainstream ones something else?