Environmental Justice Bible Study

This is an outline of a six-week course for an Adult bible study to be held at In His Presence Family Worship Center. The subject we will be examining is Environmental Racism and the Church. Environmental racism deals with the way environmental decision have been racially motivated by governments and corporate executives that negatively impact people of color. This is going on worldwide but for the proses of this study, we will look at it in an American context. Recently, the church has responded to the problem but we in the “Normative Black Church” have been historically slow in taking this issue to task. (With a few notable exceptions.) There are churches and Pastors who are doing good work in this area. We may talk about some of those initiatives but we want to focus on what is going on, and in the course of studying this issue, we will make determinations as to what our response as a local community should and will be. We will look at this issue from these perspectives:

Week One-Our Current Context

Week Two-Thoughts from Dr. Robert Bullard

Week Three-Legal Context

Week Four-Historic Context

Week Five-Womanist Perspective

Week Six-Political Context

In Week One: ¶ Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD.

President Trump named Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA, who as Attorney General of Oklahoma spent much of his time suing the very agency he was nominated to lead. Today the acting EPA head is Andrew Wheeler who was the driving force behind Senator James Inhofe’s agenda calling climate change a “hoax” according to the Bismarck Tribune.

https://bismarcktribune.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/trump-s-pick-for-epa-already-rolling-back-climate-change/article_caa0ea29-facf-546f-9243-d877f6e0672d.html

President Trump who according to a Social Identities Editorial, has supporters “disproportionately from suburban, rural undereducated, white groups” the color line has never been more pronounced. (Ahluwalia and Miller 2017) According to this editorial, environmental racism is defined as:

“the widespread practice of situating topic chemicals and their systems of disposal such that their principal neighbors are people of color. The dangers this poses are euphemized by the policy makers as LOCALLY UNWANTED LAND USES (Feng. 1997) boasting the delightful acronym, LULU.

According to this editorial, 134 Million Americans live close to the almost Three and a half thousand business the make and store hazardous chemicals. Disproportionately most of the 134 Million are Latino and African American. (Ahluwalia and Miller 2017)

Mike Pence, Our Current Vice President, while he was Governor of Indiana, in 2016 sept “precipitously - and correctly-to the aid of the good folk of Greentown, IN to visit and clean up the town when dangerous amounts of lead appeared in its water supply. The problem was sorted out in eight weeks.”

When higher levels of lead and arsenic were found in the water and soil of East Chicago, IN, Pence refused to declare it a disaster zone.

Greentown Indiana population 2,400 is 97% white

East Chicago, Indiana population over 28,00 is 43% African American and 51% Hispanic or Latino. 94% people of color. (Ahluwalia and Miller 2017)

Week Two-Jer. 2:7 I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things.

But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.

In an interview by Shireen K Lewis with Dr. Robert D. Bullard, often referred to as “the Father of Environmental Justice, several points were made that we should consider.

In theis interview Dr. Bullard posits:

Climate Change looms as the number one global environmental justice issue of the twenty-first century.

African Americans already pay a high price for energy apartheid. The average African American housed emits 20 % fewer greenhouse gases than its white counterparts. Yet, African Americans bear a disproportionate burden in hosting “dirty” energy plants.

More than 68% of African American lives within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant-the distance within which the maximum effects of the smokestack plume are expected to occur. In comparison to 56% of whites and 39% of Latinos who live near these plants.

Over 35 million American Children live within 30 miles of a power plant, of which 2 million are asthmatic.

Residents who live near these facilities not only have to contend with the potential exposure from these facilities but also face environmental health threats from truck traffic and vehicle emissions. Diesel traffic emissions also impact indoor exposure.

“And this is not just a poverty thing. For example, African American households with incomes between $50K and $60K live in neighborhoods which are more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $10K live. (Lewis 2016)

Week Three

Legal Context:Gen. 2:15 ¶ The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

Laura Pulido in the abstract to her article wrote: “In this report, I argue that environmental racism is constituent of racial capitalism.”

Here are some interesting points she made in her report:

“To date, eight (8) EJ lawsuits have been filed based on the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment to the US constitution. ALL HAVE FAILED.”

“A second register is Title VI Complaints. Under the Civil Rights Act, ruble agencies receiving federal funds are prohibited from discriminating. As of January 2014, activists had filed 298 Title VI complaints with the EPA, yet only ONE has been upheld-a success rate of 0.3%.”

Executive Order 12898, issued by President Clinton in 1994, “requires federal agencies to consider the EJ implications of their activities.” “A Civil Rights Commission evaluation in 2003 found that “the EPA, Housing and Urban Development, The Departments of Transportation and Interior found that all four agencies had failed to fully incorporate EJ in their activities. (Pulido 2017)

Week Four: When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous, but dismay to evildoers.

Historic Context

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented society” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the gains triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Martin Luther King Jr. “Beyond Vietnam” 1967.

Martin Luther King has been begging us to pay attention to people as a cornerstone of our values. People should be the focus of our decision making. Shireen K. Lewis postulates:

“There is nothing democratic about the way things currently are in the US, including rising inequality, mass incarceration and a political system corrupted by big money. But then again Black people know this well because they have long sat in the gap between democracy as reality and as aspiration.”(Lewis 2016)

This is part of our history regarding struggle in the US and when it comes to the African American community directing our attention toward environmental issues, we have been involved but not in the same way we have engaged discrimination in society with regard to housing, policing, mass incarceration and the like.

Week Five:Prov. 28:5 The evil do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand it completely.

Womaninst Writers

My first step away from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then bird. Then other people.

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

The writers we want to look at to glean better perspective regarding the environment and its importance to us as a community is not just women novelist but women theologians as well. In our African American Pentecostal context, we have been less than diligent to include this in our theological perspective. Melanie L. Harris says:

“Embracing a truth that everything is connected and thus signaling the importance of an earth ethic that implies humans have a responsibility to care for the planet and become earth-honoring.” (Harris 2016)

There are intersectionalities that exist for us as a Christian community and as environmental activist. In we are commanded to work and keep the garden. to be stewards of what God has placed in our charge. Well, Paul states Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.

Ms. Harris furthers her ecowomanist perspective by citing the work of Bell Hooks and how she “attends to this connection between honoring the self as a part of nature and honoring nature as a way of exploring a healthy relationship with the self. In her chapter, “Touching the Earth” in her book Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self Recovery, Hooks argues that Black self-recovery is intertwined with acknowledging the very special connection African and African American people have with nature.”(Harris 2016)

Week Six: I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work.

Political Context

“2004 report by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. examined the relations between African Americans, climate change and federal policy and unfortunately the finding if this report authored fourteen (14) years ago still ring true today.”(White-Newsome 2016)

Recent studies show that African Americans were 5.8 times more likely to live in the most environmentally hazardous zip codes. (Bliss 2017)

“A survey of African American physicians showed that the majority of their patients-about 73% of people of color, and disproportionately African Americans-are already being harmed from health effects and injuries due to severe storms, floods and wildfires, and increased severity from chronic disease due to air pollution and allergic symptoms. These problems are projected to increase in the next 10 to 20 years.” (Mona, Mark et al. 2014)

We are in this struggle and we need to be more proactive in this fight. This six-week Bible study will not just be an opportunity for us to disseminate information but we need to formulate a strategy for dealing with this issue on a micro and macro level.

Bibliography

Ahluwalia, P. and T. Miller (2017). "The great fault-line of politics." Social Identities 23(3): 253-254.

Harris, M. L. (2016). Ecowomanism: Black Women, Religion, and the Environment, Routledge. 46: 27-39.

Lewis, S. K. (2016). "Climate Justice: Blacks and Climate Change." Black Scholar 46(3): 1-3.

Lewis, S. K. (2016). An Interview with Dr. Robert D. Bullard, Routledge. 46: 4-11.

Mona, S., M. Mark, B. Brittany and W. M. Edward (2014). "A Survey of African American Physicians on the Health Effects of Climate Change." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol 11, Iss 12, Pp 12473-12485 (2014)(12): 12473.

Pulido, L. (2017). "Geographies of race and ethnicity II." Progress in Human Geography 41(4): 524-533.

White-Newsome, J. L. (2016). "A Policy Approach Toward Climate Justice." Black Scholar 46(3): 12-26.

Feng, L. (1997) Dynamics and causation of environmental equity, locally unwanted land uses, and neighborhood changes. Environmental Management, 21(5), 643-656.

Bliss, L. (2017) “In California, People Of Color are Hit hardest By Environmental Hazards,” City Lab, September 21, 2015.