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Browning Visits Southwestern Virginia, Talks To Miners

Episcopal News Service. June 8, 1989 [89107]

Mary Lee Simpson, Editor of The Southwestern Episcopalian

ROANOKE, Va. (DPS, June 8) -- Gail Gentry, 41, mined coal until he was paralyzed from the waist down after being injured by a rock fall in a mine operated by The Pittston Company. Since Pittston cut off his medical benefits 16 months ago, his wife has been working two part-time jobs to support herself, her husband, and their three children.

Picketing in his wheelchair at the entrance of the "Moss 3" coal preparation plant on Trinity Sunday (May 21), Gentry was among the retired and disabled coal miners who told their stories to Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning.

Browning had come to the coal fields of southwestern Virginia in response to a plea from members of a Bible study group at St. Mark's Church in St. Paul, Wise County, Virginia [see DPS 89098]. Families and communities are being torn apart in what has become Appalachia's biggest coal strike in years, and the prayer group wanted Browning's presence as a pastor for the silent voices in this troubled area, and as a prophetic witness in Appalachia.

Browning, in the area for some 17 hours, met with the Bible study group from St. Mark's Church, heard the stories of some of the striking coal miners, preached at an early morning Eucharist at St. Mark's, and visited with some of the disabled and retired miners both on the picket line and in their homes before returning to New York -- the jumping-off point for his scheduled visit to South Africa. On his return from Africa, Browning hopes to meet with The Pittston Company's head, Paul Douglas, and with other company executives.

The Presiding Bishop was accompanied on his trip to southwestern Virginia by his chaplain, the Rev. Richard Chang; the Rev. Frank Kirkpatrick, a Trinity College professor whose field is economic justice and Christian ethics; Ntsiki Kabane Langford of Jubilee Ministries; and Bishop A. Heath Light of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia. Kirkpatrick was representing Bishop Arthur Walmsley of Connecticut, in whose diocese The Pittston Company's corporate headquarters is located.

In his sermon at St. Mark's, Browning told some 80 worshipers, including coal miners and their wives, that he was in Wise County to affirm the congregation's ministry of presence and compassion.

"The Church's role is the role of presence, not of answers," Browning said. "God came into the world in the person of Jesus to bring wholeness and well-being to brokenness and division. The Church has a responsibility to be in that brokenness."

"The role of the Church," the Presiding Bishop continued, "is to challenge that which makes life difficult and divided...."

In Dante, Virginia, Browning and Langford met with Okla Keith, a miner for 36 years who is now disabled by black lung disease and who has had no medical benefits from Pittston for 16 months. All company health care benefits to widows and pensioners were stopped when the miners' contract with the company expired 16 months ago. The group also met with families in Trammel, Virginia, a coal mining town in which virtually every household is affected by the strike.

"I've felt converted all over again by what I heard," Kirkpatrick said before the Presiding Bishop's group returned to New York. I'm convinced [the Pittston executives] have spent a lot of time insulating themselves, because if they did hear these stories, they'd be moved."

"It's heartening when local people see issues in their community and recognize the Christian relevance of what many might think of as simply a social or secular problem," said Light. "National and diocesan leaders are grateful for the privilege of being a prayerful presence and to support a call for nonviolent resolution of the present difficulties. It is clear to us that economic injustice and destructive actions are both violence in their own way."

The Days That Followed

Priests in their clerical collars and laypersons of the Episcopal Church joined the more than 2,000 coal miners arrested for civil resistance in the strike against The Pittston Company, Appalachia's biggest coal strike in years.

Clergy from the Roanoke, Virginia, area, the Rev. Robert Goldsmith, the Rev. Robert Thacker, the Rev. Fred Taylor, as well as the Rev. Jim Lewis from the Diocese of North Carolina, were arrested on May 24 on the main picket line at the entrance of the Pittston Company's "Moss 3" coal preparation plant near Carbo, Virginia. Accompanying them were three laypersons, including Andrew W. McThenia, chancellor of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, a Jubilee intern in the coal fields, and a member of the Bible study group at St. Mark's Church that initially lifted up the Christian significance of the miners' plight.

The Rev. Richard Hayes, a parish priest in the Roanoke area, and the Rev. B. Lloyd, executive director of the Appalachian Peoples' Service Organization (APSO), were also arrested on May 24 at nearby Lambert Forks Mine.

The actions of the Episcopal clergy and laity who were arrested came as the result of a lot of prayer and reflection.

Thacker said he made his decision to join the picket line for three reasons: "The miners really are the underdogs, and it was important for me to stand with them, not necessarily the union; my arrest provided in a small way a witness for non-violence; and it was a way to move other people who know me to become better informed."

Hayes, who was stretched out on his back and had to be carried to a waiting vehicle by state troopers, said "It's easy for the Church to talk about the right of the poor and the oppressed, but another thing to be out on the line."

For Taylor, a 70-year old priest serving as interim rector of St. Elizabeth's, Roanoke, it was his first experience of civil resistance. He had earlier gone to the Pittston shareholders' meeting in Greenwich, Connecticut, with the group of miners and their supporters from southwestern Virginia. "Being arrested, " Taylor said, "is the best witness I can be right now."

The atmosphere on the picket line where most were arrested was celebratory. While waiting for a signal that it was time for more arrests, people sang, danced, clapped, laughed, and mingled, listening to the miners' stories of their two-month struggle with the company. Under the direction of state troopers, coal trucks continued to rumble in and out of the preparation plant.

When it was the Episcopalians' turn to be arrested, the priests and laypersons took their places in front of an incoming coal truck. State troopers surrounded them. Before the protesters were told their violation -- "obstruction of free passage," a misdemeanor - - they said the Prayer for Peace and Justice from the Book of Common Prayer. Then, amidst shouts of "alleluia" and "amen," and to the strains of "Amazing Grace" from those assembled, the seven were loaded on a waiting police bus.