Paul R. Miller

On Christmas Eve in Las Cruces, after the final carols were sung and the candles extinguished at Peace Lutheran Church, the Rev. Paul R. Miller — a 95-year-old Presbyterian minister, avid reader, and public advocate for human rights and dignity — slipped quietly into the mystery that had shaped both his preaching and his thinking.

Earlier that evening, his granddaughter Georgia Miller Wiltz sat beside him at Mesilla Valley Hospice, reading aloud. She reminded him that the family was heading to the Christmas Eve service and that “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a hymn he and his wife Peg deeply loved, would be sung. For decades he reflected on Christmas Eve not as sentiment but as threshold — the moment when light enters darkness and the ordinary world feels briefly illumined by grace. For those who knew him, the symbolism of his passing was unmistakable.

Paul was born on Sunday, July 6, 1930 — a Fourth of July weekend — in Trenton, New Jersey, the youngest of five sons of Jacob Schenck Miller and Helen May Renc Miller. His brothers were Gene, Gerry, Bruce (his twin), and Richard, who died in infancy. When Paul was seven, his father died, leaving his mother to raise four boys through the hardships of the Great Depression and the uncertainties of World War II. Sustained by an extended network of aunts and uncles, she fostered in him a lasting belief that family is covenant and community is grace.

At seventeen, influenced by the Rev. John D. Craig of Slackwood Presbyterian Church, he felt called to ministry. He graduated from The College of Wooster in 1952 with a degree in philosophy and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1955. At Wooster he met Margaret “Peg” Stout — both romantics at heart, as he liked to say. They married on August 22, 1953, beginning a partnership that spanned more than seven decades, until Peg’s death just after their 71st wedding anniversary.

From 1954 to 1994, he served Presbyterian congregations in Wilmington, Delaware; Bloomington, Indiana; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Lexington, Kentucky. Over those forty years, the congregations he served — Hanover Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, First Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, Wyoming Presbyterian Church in suburban Cincinnati, and Second Presbyterian Church in Lexington — gave more than $4 million to mission beyond their walls and inspired 17 men and women to pursue full-time church vocations. He became known as a thoughtful preacher, careful listener, and steady pastoral presence.

Over his ministry, he officiated at hundreds of weddings and nearly as many baptisms and funerals, accompanying families through both celebration and loss. He was especially proud to have officiated at all three of his children’s weddings and all five of his grandchildren who have married to date, including granddaughter Elle who wed Mike Tinnirella the weekend after Paul's beloved Chicago Cubbies won the 2016 World Series!

Reading was one of the defining disciplines of his life. He read widely and voraciously — often keeping half a dozen books open at once — returning frequently to theologians and public thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His interests ranged across subjects including war, poverty, civil rights, Latin America, the Cold War, and Vietnam. He also followed sports with enthusiasm, particularly the Cubs and the Indiana Hoosiers. Over time he developed a sustained and deeply personal interest in the history and politics of the Middle East. For him, books were not an escape from ministry but an extension of it — another way of listening to the wider human story.

These convictions were not confined to the study or the pulpit. At his first church in Wilmington in the late 1950s, he became actively involved in the Civil Rights movement, serving on the executive committee of the Wilmington branch of the NAACP and helping found a grassroots interfaith association serving the Brandywine community. He believed that faith demanded engagement with the moral crises of public life, not withdrawal from them.

Throughout the upheavals of the 1960s and beyond, his preaching addressed the great public questions of the era. He spoke in support of civil rights and in opposition to the Vietnam War — positions that sometimes drew criticism but also deep respect. In 1966, after one sermon against the war, an elder remarked, not altogether approvingly, “You are absolutely driven. You must be a Calvinist!” Following the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an African American graduate student at Indiana University told his congregation, “I love Paul. He is the only white man I know with a Black heart.”

His commitment to dialogue across difference continued in Bloomington and Cincinnati, where he participated in several interfaith councils. In Cincinnati he at one point co-hosted a cable television program, Dialogue, with a rabbi and a priest. He also advocated for the ordination of gay clergy and stood publicly for LGBTQ rights long before such support was more widely accepted. For him, scripture was never a refuge from the world’s pain but a summons to stand within it.

His family’s enduring connection to New Mexico began in 1975, when he was granted a summer sabbatical at Ghost Ranch near Abiquiú, in the landscape of northern New Mexico that had inspired Georgia O’Keeffe. Two years later, his daughter Anne enrolled at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where she met and married Armando Hernandez, a football player and El Paso native. When their youngest daughter, Isa, was born in 1997, Paul and Peg chose to settle in Las Cruces. In 2022, their daughter Susan and her children also relocated there to share their final years.

Retirement did not mean withdrawal from public life. During his first two decades in Las Cruces, he frequently preached as a guest at Peace Lutheran Church and at Desert Hills United Church of Christ in El Paso. He remained active in church and community, serving on the housing authority, directing the Learning in Retirement program at Good Samaritan Society, and contributing occasional opinion essays to the Las Cruces Sun-News. In New Mexico especially, he embraced the outdoors with renewed enthusiasm. He was a lifelong Cubs fan, an avid golfer, and an ambitious hiker, and in later years found deep contentment in daily walks through the neighborhoods near his home in the Pebble Hills neighborhood.

If ministry was his vocation, family was his sanctuary. Early in their marriage, Paul and Peg experienced a Christmas Eve that would shape the rest of their lives together. While he remained in Wilmington to lead worship services, she traveled to Trenton with their infant son David to introduce him to relatives. The separation felt profound. Afterward she told him she never again wanted to spend Christmas apart. From then on, worship and family life were carefully intertwined, Christmas together becoming a quiet covenant that sustained them through more than 70 years of marriage.

Together they raised three children — David Miller; Anne Hernandez (Armando); and Susan Miller Wiltz. Their family grew to include nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. To them he was not Reverend Miller, but Pop Pop. He read stories, played the occasional board game, and took his grandchildren hiking, where lessons about life, love, and the natural world unfolded in unhurried conversation. As they grew older, he relished recommending books and discussing sports, philosophy, politics, and the issues of the day. He believed that family life, tended faithfully, could offer a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

On the morning Peg entered hospice care, he suggested they sing Christmas carols together. They returned to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a hymn that had accompanied them through decades of shared faith and family life and that for him spoke not of nostalgia but of promise. He was preceded in death by Peg in 2024; his daughter Anne Hernandez in 2020 after her courageous 15-year battle with cancer; his son-in-law Paul Wiltz in 2017; and all of his brothers.

He is survived by his son David; his daughter Susan; his son-in-law Armando Hernandez; his nine grandchildren: Carolina Lopez (Manny), Caleb MillerMiro (Chelsea), Lindy McLain (Nick), Elle Tinnirella (Mike), Geneva Alok (Apurva), Isabela Hernandez, Lori Hernandez, Georgia Miller Wiltz, and Rynear Miller Wiltz; his 10 great-grandchildren: Jude and Luna Lopez, Benjamin McLain, Soren and Zadie MillerMiro, Gemma, Pascale, and Juno Tinnirella, Miles and Louise Alok; and numerous nieces and nephews, including Kathy Williams (Tommie), Carolyn Musholt (Alan), Sheila Miller Lenz (Richard), Deborah Miller Walsh (Michael), Pam Miller-Genovay (Lenny), Colleen Miller-Servis (David), Nancy Miller, Cathy Miller, and Jeff Miller.

A service celebrating his life will be held at 11 a.m. Mountain Time on Saturday, April 4, at Peace Lutheran Church, corner of Missouri Avenue and Locust Street in Las Cruces, followed by a luncheon. The service will be livestreamed and recorded. Instructions for accessing the livestream may be found under the YouTube channel banner at https://peacelutheranlc.com/. Interment will take place August 22 at Highland Cemetery in Hopewell, New Jersey — what would have been Paul and Peg’s 73rd wedding anniversary.

In the Chihuahuan desert he came to love, he found a daily reminder of resurrection — dawn arriving quietly, faithfully, without fail. Christmas marked his departure. Easter will mark his celebration. He spent his life preaching incarnation and resurrection: that God is with us, and that love is stronger than death. Those who wish to honor him may do so by loving scripture, loving people, and standing beside anyone whose dignity is threatened, trusting that the house of God is wide enough to welcome us all home.