The People Comment Passionately On
Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

July 24, 2003

Comments by Denise Giardina, Author and Lay Minister

I have no illusions about the nature of this hearing. It is not a hearing, for no one is listening. At least, no one who has any power. This gathering is like a show trial in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Judgment against the mountains has already been pronounced and we are just going through the motions.

The Bush administration has every intention of allowing the continued destruction of the Appalachian Mountains. Let me hasten to point out that when I say the Bush administration, I also mean the Clinton administration before it, and the first Bush administration, and the Reagan administration.

I have come to speak despite this skepticism because I am called, as a Christian, to speak a word of truth to power. The coal industry has absolute power, or so it believes. But God says neither principalities nor powers can separate us from His love. God also tells us in Romans that the whole creation will be redeemed.

As a Christian I am told I should not judge, and yet God does call me to say that judgment has indeed been pronounced. Repentance is still possible. But living at the expense of others, worshipping money and worrying where it comes from, destroying God's creation, crushing others with power - these are the ways to eternal death. I say this not as a judgment but as a warning. The way to eternal life lies elsewhere.

These mountains were the first God created, and if they therefore have a special place in his heart, I would not be surprised. I say this to give comfort to those of you who also love these mountains, because we often despair. The coal industry is right about one thing, and one thing only. These mountains have not been destroyed. These mountains still exist in the mind of God.

And God will restore them, as only God can. To claim otherwise, to claim that a coal company can put back God's handiwork or the government can regulate it, is blasphemy. It is to worship before an idol made of coal.

One day everyone in this room, man woman and child, will lie under the ground or be scattered over the earth. Then my faith tells me Jesus Christ will return to this earth to judge the living and dead. There shall be a new heaven and a new earth.

Those who have lived lives of compassion, who have cared for God's world and its creatures, who have put their trust in God rather than money, will be raised to new and eternal life.

Those who have lived lives based on greed and power and destruction, those who have put these things ahead of a love of God and their fellow human beings and who have destroyed God's creation, will die eternally. They will have only one solace. On top of their graves will be reborn in all their glory, the most beautiful mountains that God ever created.

I close with the words of the prophet Amos. "For lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name." (Amos 4:13) And you (coal people) cannot stand against him.