c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The Rev. R.T. Conley says that in 1969 he”couldn’t get an audience”to listen to his concerns about a lead-smelting operation in his low-income West Dallas neighborhood. Numerous children _ including two of his own _ were born with cancer and other serious health conditions because of the toxic effects of the plant, he says.

Conley, who is pastor of the New Waverly Baptist Church in Dallas, said officials ignored the problem because his neighborhood was predominantly African-American.

Nearly 30 years later, as a member of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Conley is still raising concerns about how environmental degradation affects the poor.

On Thursday (Feb. 6), Conley and 24 other religious leaders with the broad-based Partnership unveiled a new three-year, $4 million campaign designed to promote programs that recognize the connection between protecting the environment and advancing social justice. “The poor are disproportionately impacted by many environmental decisions,”said the Rev. Roberta Hestenes, pastor of Solano Beach Presbyterian Church in Solano Beach, Calif., and a former board chair of World Vision, the evangelical relief agency.

According to Partnership officials, the campaign will have several components, including recruiting 40 new religious agencies to work with the Partnership; establishing a Black Church Environmental Justice Network; developing a legislative action network; distributing scholarship and preaching resources; and enlisting 2,500″covenant congregations”committed to integrating environmental and social justice concerns in their communities.

The Partnership, which began in 1992, is a coalition of several major faith groups including the U.S. Catholic Conference, the National Council of Churches (NCC), the Evangelical Environmental Network and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

This week, Jewish, Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical leaders affiliated with the Partnership met with political leaders, including Vice President Al Gore and several Republican congressional leaders, to urge that all government policies consider the impact of environmental legislation on the poor.

At the news conference, several religious leaders said they fear there has been a”bipartisan retreat”from issues relating to justice for the poor and concern for the environment.

Toxic waste dumps and other environmentally hazardous operations are more likely to be located in poor neighborhoods where people do not have enough influence to object to them, the religious leaders said.”In the previous Congress, some assumed they could dismantle past environmental legislation with impunity, that we didn’t care about clean water and air,”Hestenes said.”We’re here to say that people of faith across the country care very deeply about these issues.” According to Roman Catholic Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., chair of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s domestic policy committee, there is a moral imperative to protect both the environment and human life.”We are stewards responsible for taking care of God’s `garden’ and God’s special people _ the poor and vulnerable, the victims of injustice,”Skylstad said.

Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, highlighted the situation of inner-city children, who he said are particularly vulnerable. Schorsch insisted any new environmental legislation consider issues such as urban pollution, which causes a high incidence of asthma in inner-city children.”We are troubled that the (Environmental Protection Agency) has recommended averaging readings from over a wide area,”he said.”Do we really want to send the message that it is OK to choke up the lungs of inner-city kids, as long as you can average it out by ensuring clean air for the suburbs?” Although one goal of the new campaign is establishing a legislative network, the Partnership is not proposing or supporting any particular legislation at this time, officials said. “We have told the vice president and members of Congress that (when evaluating environmental policy) preferential attention must be given to the needs of poor and minority children,”said NCC General Secretary Joan Brown Campbell, adding that the Partnership would”rely on Congress to find the best way to implement that.”

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