OUR HISTORY

Christians For The Mountains is the result of several streams that have converged over the past several years.  Most recently, in October, 2003, several persons met at Lost Cove/Harper Creek Wilderness Study Area to prayerfully draft a statement on that area.  This was co-sponsored by the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation and Appalachian Voices.  At that time some talk was made of starting a regional project.

In October, 2004, Matt Wasson, Fred Krueger, and Allen Johnson met near Boone, North Carolina, to deliberate on the concept of a regional network and strategies to energize and motivate Christians and their churches and leadership to actively care for and advocate for God’s creation.  A special focus was on the mining method known as Mountaintop Removal as an egregious assault upon the mountains and the communities in their shadow.

A few months later Bob Marshall and Allen Johnson, both West Virginia residents, worked up a planning conference in Charleston, West Virginia, held May 13-14, 2005, to organize a strategy to protect and restore God’s creation in the Appalachian region. Deriving their stance from an array of scriptures including Psalm 24’s “The Earth is the Lord’s, and all that it contains” the group pledged their efforts to mobilize Christians and their churches to combat grievous ravages against God’s Earth such as Mountaintop Removal coal extraction. 

This initial meeting was first of all to see if there was interest in such an organization, and if so, to begin steps to set it up.  A number of persons known to be Christians and active in creation care issues were invited, although this still represented only a fraction of active Christian conservationists in our region. A Letter of Declaration was written to disseminate among the Christian communities of our region.

The public was invited to a conference the weekend of November 11-12 to build organizational vision, set goals, and develop the network to implement these goals. 40 people participated in the conference, coming from Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Virginia, Missouri, and Washington, DC. The conference included a keynote address by Denise Giardina, a viewing of a draft of the slide show being developed, a talk by coalfield resident Ed Wiley, an open session of sharing by all participants, a presentation on the biblical and theological mandate for earthkeeping by Howard Snyder and Greg Leffel, a goal setting session facilitated by Janet Keating, and a keynote address by Jack Spadaro. Kate Long led singing. Southwings provided flyovers for 12 participants, while other folks visited Kayford Mountain for a tour of a mountaintop removal site by Larry Gibson. For more details, go to this report.

The history of Christians For The Mountains will continue.

At some point someone in the network might like to take on a project of collecting the stories and history of Christians in the Appalachian region who have been active in earthkeeping over the years.  This will be both inspiring and instructive for our present and future tasks.