Every Time I Look Into the Holy Book

I HAVE SOMETIMES been dismayed by the lack of speed that some churches and denominations have shown when it came to tackling environmental issues. On the question of divestment from fossil fuels, for instance, the Unitarians have been forthrightly in favor, and the United Church of Christ as well (and the Rockefellers!). But the Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anglicans are, by and large, dragging their feet as usual.

Sometimes I confess to imagining that God herself might be getting a bit impatient, too—how else to explain the name of the site for the next great fossil-fuel battle?

It will happen in Australia’s Galilee Valley, a remote basin many hours from the continent’s cities. At the moment it’s basically untouched, but plans call for it to become The Biggest Coal Mine on Earth. There is enough coal beneath its soil to provide 6 percent of the carbon that would take us past the two-degree rise in temperature scientists have given as the ultimate red line. That is to say, one valley in one nation (a nation with one-third of 1 percent of the planet’s population) can do 6 percent of the job of wrecking the planet. One valley!

One valley that happens to carry one of the most sacred names in Christendom. I remember my church high school youth group days, when Loretta Lynn exploded in song: “Put Your Hand in the Hand (of the Man from Galilee).” It was actually a great lyric, one that went straight to the radicalism of the gospel (“Every time I look into the Holy Book I wanna tremble / when I read about the part where the carpenter cleared the temple”). In this case, the “buyers and sellers” are all billionaires—people such as Gautam Adani, on whose corporate jet Narendra Modi flew last year in his successful campaign to run India, or Gina Rinehart, the Aussie mining heiress and fourth richest woman in the world who once lauded Africans for being willing to work for two dollars a day.

Resistance to the plans is forming. Sometime this year, as initial work begins on building the port necessary to ship all this coal abroad where it can be burned, protesters will be chaining themselves to rail lines and blocking bulldozers. But at least as important will be the fight to keep banks from financing the work. Already many have been scared off—even Goldman Sachs said it wanted no part of the project. But others will doubtless consider it, and for those of us far removed from coal mines and oil pipelines, this is a chance to make our feelings known.

Especially if we happen to belong to a religious faith that, after all, was born in a place like Galilee. Yes, it’s a coincidence—but the right kind of coincidence, the kind that might bring the timid churches off the sidelines a little and get them engaged in the most consequential battle of our time. At the moment, as the owners of energy company stocks, they’re mostly just profiting from desecration like this—and every time they look into the account books they should tremble.