Thursday’s RNS report starts with a story by Adelle M. Banks about the Christian Right’s eagerness to unite behind a new nominee now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn as President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee: “We stand ready to support a nominee who truly is in the mold of Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas,” said Wendy Wright, executive vice president of Concerned Women for America, in a statement issued Thursday (Oct. 27), the day of Miers’ withdrawal. Wright echoed comments made by other leading religious conservatives, who had been split over the Miers nomination. Even James Dobson, one of Miers’ most prominent religious supporters, said he was disappointed by recent revelations that she gave speeches a decade ago saying “self-determination” should guide decisions about abortion.

We’re also reporting on liberal Episcopalians preparing for a split in their church. Kevin Eckstrom writes: Liberal Episcopalians, concerned that a split over homosexuality may be inevitable next year, have begun laying the groundwork for seizing control of church property and replacing bishops who leave the church. Leaders of Via Media, a looseknit alliance of liberal groups in 12 conservative-leaning dioceses, sketched out the plan in a Sept. 29 meeting in Dallas. Draft minutes from the meeting were leaked to the media. The “Day After” blueprint-combined with conservative plans for “widespread civil disobedience” and bishops who are already mulling ways to divide property-is the latest indication that all sides are preparing for a battle royal when the church meets next summer in Columbus, Ohio.

And David White writes from Tuskegee, Ala., the birthplace of Rosa Parks: People who knew civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks before her arrest on a Montgomery bus in 1955 remember her as a quiet seamstress whose faith in God gave her strength, confidence and authority. “She was always very serene, very calm and quiet. But there was a fire smoldering under all of that quietness,” said E.D. Nixon Jr., 77, an actor and singer whose stage name is Nick LaTour. Nixon and others praised Parks at memorial services Wednesday (Oct. 26) that drew a few hundred people to the town square and to the municipal complex in Tuskegee, where Parks was born in 1913. She died Monday in Detroit, where she’d lived since 1957. A public memorial service is scheduled for Sunday.