Sherry Chandler » Mountaintop Removal, the Mennonites
Mountaintop Removal, the Mennonites
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.
Possibly related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
2 Comments
1. JimT replies at 29th October 2006, 9:31 am :
What a heartbreaking photo that is, Sherry. The permanent destruction we’re allowing to these ancient mountains and valleys is an obscenity. There are options to this devastation. That’s the saddest part. It’s really unnecessary, their scarifice on the alter of greed.
2. sherry replies at 29th October 2006, 10:46 am :
…from Things
The hen flings a single pebble aside
with her yellow, reptillian foot.
Never in eternity the same sound—
a small stone falling on a red leaf.
The juncture of twig and branch,
scarred with lichen, is a gate
we might enter, singing….
— Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2005)
We have a very skewed notion of the sacred in this country, JimT.
Leave a comment