Allen Johnson is founder and leader of Christians for the Mountains. This group is devoted to fighting mountain top removal mining in West Virginia and adjacent areas. Christians for the Mountains helps the people and environment that suffer from this destructive but politically powerful abuse. 

I’ve known and worked with Allen for several years and greatly admire his work. That is why I’m nominating him for The National Religious Coalition on Creation Care’s “Steward of God’s Creation Award.” Here is the context and my justification of why he merits this prestigious recognition of his good work.

The National Religious Coalition on Creation Care was among the first organizations to recognize the role of religion in promoting environmental stewardship. Failure to widely achieve this stewardship has economic as well as spiritual and ethical causes. Clearly, none of them can be neglected if we are to achieve the goal. 

Five years ago with generous foundation support, FREE initiated a seminar series focused on the conjunction of ethics, ecology, and economics. Our goal was to foster environmental stewardship among religious leaders. Participants included seminary professors, distinguished ministers, and leaders of voluntary organizations. Allen Johnson was a participant with an extraordinary story, the fight to arrest mountain top removal mining (MTR), a horrible ecological and socially destructive practice in the Appalachian Mountains. 

MTR has substantial, indeed huge long-term costs, externalities in economic terms. (For numerous climatic, topographical, geological, and political reasons, MTR is orders of magnitude more damaging than mining the thick coal seams of Wyoming and Montana. For one of many accounts of the difference see Clean Coal/Dirty Air, or How the Clean Air Act Became a Multibillion-Dollar Bail-Out for High-Sulfur Coal, Ackerman & Hassler, Yale Univ. Press, 1981.) Allen Johnson’s CFTM is devoted to ameliorating the social and environmental consequences of this pollution of America’s political process. He well understands what happens when politicians and their organized constituencies allocate wealth and preferred opportunities. 

People unfamiliar with the practice of MTR may not fully appreciate the value of Allen’s work to stop it. Here is a brief description of the practice. MTR of course has a tradition of political protection from responsibility for harm done to mankind and nature.

First the forests are clear cut of trees and the topsoil scrapped off. Then dynamite blasting is employed to breakup the overburden of rock covering the coal seam. Blasting often damages home foundations and wells while “fly rock” rains down. Next huge excavators and crawlers push the overburden off the mountain into valley bottoms. This naturally harms or destroys streams and wildlife habitat. At times some 800 feet of mountaintop is removed. Finally, other machines mine and load the exposed coal. Although reclamation is legally mandated, it is rarely successful.

Christians for the Mountains recognizes these ecological and social costs do not arise by accident; they produce concentrated benefits for some, specifically mine owners, suppliers, some well-paid miners, and politicians. That’s why MTR persists. Christians for the Mountains works to make these costs explicit and organizes to stop the practice and minister to those harmed. Allen Johnson leads this fight. That’s why he deserves the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care award.

Below are some comments from the CFTM website.

In 2006 “...Bill Moyers featured CFTM in a PBS special, “Is God Green?" The program was revised and shown as a stand-alone program a year later, generating a huge outpouring of letters expressing support for our work and outrage against MTR.

“The West Virginia Wilderness Coalition invited CFTM to participate in its wilderness campaign, which eventually led to a color booklet, God's Gift of a Wild and Wonderful Landand a DVD of the same name, produced by BJ Gudmundsson. The Wilderness project became a pilot project that appears to have promise for other areas. Importantly, CFTM encourages Christians and their churches to appreciate, protect, and softly use wild places.

“In February 2012, Allen Johnson, a co-founder and volunteer Coordinator of CFTM, ... is now working full-time to build CFTM into the fullness of its mission.”

When measured in terms of environmental quality, social justice, and long-term economic sustainability, Allen Johnson is clearly a leader who deserves national recognition. After his initial attendance as a participant in FREE’s seminar series for religious leaders, he has twice addressed these groups. That’s why I know his work well and believe he merits the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care’s “Steward of God’s Creation Award.”