Miller Citation
May 12, 2009
Passionate Christian, eclectic writer, marketplace apostle, dynamic public speaker and gifted counselor, you thrive on leading people to God.
Searching for that elusive "Something Else," you left the oil exploration business in Texas and Oklahoma in the early 1960s to help launch Laity Lodge, the bucolic retreat center operated by the HEB Foundation outside Leakey in the Texas Hill Country. You and two others created retreats to help lay people grow their faith. During that time you wrote your first book - the immensely popular The Taste of New Wine - that has sold two-and-a-half million copies and been translated into eleven languages.
Since then you have written or co-authored another twenty-three books on topics ranging from Christian living, addiction/co-dependence and self-realization to spiritual formation, devotion and entrepreneurial business. Your book A Hunger for Healing brought the Twelve Step principles of Alcoholics Anonymous to Christians since sin, of itself, is addictive.
In addition to being a prodigious writer, you are a renowned public speaker. When former Archbishop George Carey came to this country - the first such visit ever from Canterbury - you and Verna Dozier were the keynote speakers at a conference for lay people in Washington, DC. Carey confided that your New Wine book was one of three currently on his night table. Three former Presiding Bishops of the Episcopal Church have asked you to speak at major church conferences.
While your writing and speaking are impressive, your ability to fully accept and love people - all people - is phenomenal. Authentically humble with bedrock honesty, you live out and model the Christian life everywhere with everyone. You truly care for and want to help all you come to know.
We welcome you back to Seminary of the Southwest and recall the carrel you used in our seminary library in the mid-1960s while studying for a master's degree at the University of Texas. Building upon your past theological studies at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and the Earlham School of Religion, we take special joy in awarding you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.
May 12, 2009 in Austin, Texas
