Thomas’ Church a Center of Anti-Abortion Activity : Judiciary: Episcopal congregation’s leaders have organized protests. The high court nominee has not taken a public position on issue.

Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and his wife regularly attend services at a charismatic Episcopal church that has been active in the anti-abortion movement in the Washington area, according to church officials.

Although he grew up a Roman Catholic, Thomas has gone to Episcopal churches for the last decade, friends and White House officials said.

During the last year, he and his wife, Virginia, have become regular attendees at the Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va., a large congregation that has become a center of anti-abortion activity and whose members sometimes speak in tongues during services.

Abortion has been denounced as “a holocaust” from the pulpit, members said, and church officials have organized marches and protests at abortion clinics. They also encouraged the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life, a membership group that lobbies against abortion, to locate its headquarters across the street from Truro Church.

“We are scripturally supportive of the right to life,” said Gordon Klooster, the parish administrator.

Judge Thomas and his wife “are not members but they have attended regularly for the last year and we are delighted to have them,” Klooster said.

The church is also known for its lively worship services, in which members of the congregation occasionally rise to offer prayers or to speak in tongues, Klooster said. Speaking in tongues is the utterance, usually in a prayerful mode, of words said to be in a language unknown by the speaker.

“It is not on a regular basis and not everyone participates,” Klooster said of the impromptu utterances. “Sometimes you will hear a prophecy or someone speaking in tongues.”

Thomas, 43, has said that his Catholic upbringing has strongly influenced his life.

But Thomas has not taken a firm public position on the abortion issue, which is likely to figure prominently in his Senate hearings and in his work on the Supreme Court.