Growing up in Appalachia, it’s hard to say when I first became aware for the need for environmental justice. It could have been when I was 12 and took a trip with my mother and father through the West Virginia coalfields to McDowell County and saw mountaintop removal for the first time. Or it could have been even earlier, when chemical pollution from the nearby Ashland Oil Refinery began making cars rust prematurely in my grandmother’s town of Kenova, WV.
Three years ago I moved to the Washington, DC, and in many ways it’s easier here. I don’t have to think about the mountains being blown up in southern West Virginia and the people whose water has been poisoned by toxic coal sludge leaking into the water table.
Instead of driving an hour to recycle glass, I have recycling at my fingertips. I can literally touch the bin at work without moving my chair. When I’m feeling the need to support sustainable food options, I can go to the Yes! Organic Market and feel good about making a responsible choice. In the words of Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the massage," and in countless ways, the massage of the city feels good.
But what about the forgotten places of the world like my home, where environmental destruction, a lack of job and educational opportunities, rapid depopulation and high disease rates breed a palpable hopelessness that manifests itself in everything from rampant drug use to the thieving and illegal recycling of copper telephone wire.
As Christians, we are called out by God to refuse to accept the status quo. It is not enough to pray, pay and obey in the pews, just as it is not enough to insulate oneself financially and become a self-congratulatory liberal or conservative. It is not enough to feel sorry for the poor, or even to walk with the poor. We have to recognize that since 1978, when real wages in America began declining, we are poor and getting poorer.
Lasting change rarely comes from changing systems. The forty hour work week, pension funds and health benefits, which were all 20th century victories for the labor movement have largely been reduced and repealed as American corporations filed for bankruptcy, took manufacturing overseas and turned the U.S. economy into an unsustainable service-based system. Some would claim the pinnacle of the Civil Rights movement came when Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African American president. Obama, however, has been curiously silent on issues linking race, poverty and oppression such as high incarceration rates among young African American males.
As the early Church fathers tell us, lasting change comes not from changing systems but from a conversion of the heart. The challenge is to take up the mantle of righteousness while not becoming discouraged by hopelessness when working for social change.
We must remember the words of John 15:19-20, “If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, 'No slave is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”
We follow a God who spent his last hours before death being cursed, beaten, tortured, spat upon, mocked and publicly humiliated by religious and state authorities. As the earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable and worldwide economic depression looms, is it really so hard to understand that Jesus is for losers?
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