wfn.org | Addresses Environmental Injustice

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3422 notes).

Note 3422 by UMNS on Feb. 7, 1997 at 15:41 Eastern (5338 characters).

SEARCH:   Environment, justice, children, poor, Meadors, Fassett,
               United Methodist, interfaith, partnership
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

Contact:  Joretta Purdue                    68(10-21-65-71B){3422}
          Washington, D.C.  (202) 546-8722            Feb. 7, 1997

Religious figures link justice, environment
in conversations with government leaders

     WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- Two United Methodists joined other
religious leaders to voice concern to government officials here
Feb. 5-6 about the country's commitment to environmental justice
issues.
     Bishop Marshall T. "Jack" Meadors of Jackson, Miss., and the
Rev. Thom White Wolf Fassett, general secretary of the United
Methodist Board of Church and Society, joined 23 others from a
wide spectrum of religious organizations, asking for justice in
environmental policy during the next four years.
     The entire group met with Vice President Albert Gore, then
broke into teams to call on congressional leaders.
     The campaign by the National Religious Partnership for the
Environment includes four member groups: the National Council of
Churches (NCC), Coalition on Environment and Jewish Life, United
States Catholic Conference, and Evangelical Environmental Network.
     Meadors, who heads the United Methodist Council of Bishops'
Initiative on Children and Poverty and serves on the Board of
Church and Society, expressed hope that legislators would listen
to children and the impoverished as they develop legislation.
     He met with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and the staff of
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Team members raised
questions about children's health, citing a 50 percent increase in
children's asthma during the last 15 years.
     "The question is, what plan is in place to discover what's
causing it?" Meadors said. "I know there are serious problems
among children and the poor related to environmental conditions."
     Fassett, in a different delegation team, said he felt Sen.
John Chafee (R.-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, resonated with their purposes.
     Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who met with the group briefly,
and his staff, Fassett said, "are very, very conscious and
sensitive to what they characterize as the religious right and the
religious left. We wanted to assure them that we are neither --
that we were there as this partnership to find common ground."
     The team raised justice issues focused largely on poor
people, the elderly, children and racial ethnic minorities in the
Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other legislation aimed at
cleaning up environmental hazards, Fassett noted.  
     "While none of the faith groups had necessarily agreed upon
all of the issues related to the environmental concerns, ... what
we were struggling for in this partnership was common ground,"
Fassett said. "There are some very basic fundamentals, and we're
all pretty much in agreement about that. We may disagree at the
point of deciding on legislative initiatives."
     Meadors agreed, noting that the only ideology they
represented was each person's understanding of the biblical
concept of God's creation and redemption.
     The church needs to be ministered to by Christ, through the
poor, Meadors said. He noted that for John Wesley, Methodism's
founder, "ministering to the poor is as much a means of grace as
taking the Holy Sacrament."
     Fassett said he was seeing an emerging need among secular
decision makers "to talk about the disproportionate cost of
preserving quality of life for certain numbers of people." This is
resulting in an attitude of "environmental triage," a sacrifice of
some human beings, based on cost-benefit analysis, he explained.
     He said the partnership delegations provided "a moral,
ethical imperative" in contrast to an environmental triage
mentality.
     The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, NCC general secretary, said
that communities have "a right to know" about the environmental
hazards in their area and "a right to be heard" in determining the
future with regard to pollution and toxicity.
     The partnership ran an ad in New York Times, that declared,
"Study after study concludes that vulnerable and  low-income
communities are disproportionately polluted ... pitted against
well-financed special interests ... denied the right to know the
causes of their afflictions and to have a voice in their remedy."
     Other parts of the partnership program include distribution
of more than 100,000 congregational kits; 25 training events;
publication of theological background on environmental issues; and
production of videos and sermon anthologies for ministers, rabbis
and priests.
     Among the 35 model environmental justice projects lifted up
was one related to the United Methodist Church. Environmental
Ministries, located in Reseda, Calif., and United Methodists in
southern California are working to prevent Native American sacred
land in the Ward Valley from becoming a nuclear dump site that
could adversely affect the Colorado River, a source of drinking
water for millions of people.
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