Sherry Chandler

The current online New York Review of Books has a disquieting article by Garry Wills, A Country Ruled by Faith, recounting the ways the Bush administration has turned our country over to certain elements in the Christian Right over the last six years. None of what Wills says is breaking news, but to see the list in aggregate makes one realize just how outrageously radical Bush has been.

But, as I’ve argued here before, the Christian Right is not as monolithic as it may seem and there are indictions that the hegemony of the single-issue evangelicals may be breaking up. As witness today, this article from the New York Times, datelined Hale Gap, Virginia:

“Doesn’t it say in Scripture, ‘Who can weigh a mountain, measure a basket of earth?’ ” Ms. [Sharman] Chapman-Crane said, recalling descriptions of God’s omnipotence in Isaiah 40:12. “Well, only God can. But now, the coal companies seem to be able to do it, too.”

Ms. Chapman-Crane, her colleagues at the Mennonite Central Committee Appalachia [based in Whitesburg, Kentucky] and other Appalachian Christians are trying to halt mountaintop removal, and at the heart of their work, they say, is their faith.

They are part of an awakening among religious people to environmental issues, said Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an interreligious alliance. Increasingly, religious people across denominations are organizing around local issues, like preventing a landfill, preserving wetlands and changing mining.

“People of faith are thinking afresh about human place and purpose in the greater web of life,” Mr. Gorman said. “They are asking, What does it mean to be present in a crisis of God’s creation made by God’s children?”

The photograph of McRoberts, Kentucky was taken by Michael Temchine for the New York Times. It’s part of the slide show associated with the article.

• Dave Cazden writes to say his poem “Vermiculture” made the Special Merit list in The Comstock Review’s annual Muriel Craft Bailey award, Thomas Lux judge. You’ll find the complete list by clicking the link.
• Meredith Sue Willis is proud to announce that she’s the featured writer in the current issue of Appalachian Heritage.
• James Burgett’s photographs will be among those exhibited at the Creative Camera Club’s show at the Kentucky Horse Park November 17 - December 31. The show is part of the annual Southern Lights Festival.
• The Mosaic Poets will read on November 8 as part of Connections, a multimedia, intercultural and interfaith art event in Lexington, October 12 - November 17. The Mosaic reading will happen on November 8 at 7 p.m. in the Great Room, Art-in-the-Cathedral, 166 Market Street (enter on Cathedral Way). Poems to be read were written in response to works of art in the exhibit.