From Below: Rising Together for Coalfield Justice began as an immersion experience.
Our aim was to educate people of faith in West Virginia about the history, culture, and issues of the southern West Virginia coalfields to activate them to make the region a missional priority.
Following the energy expressed by immersion participants, the learning continued with a book study, livestreams, and social media posts. When the water crisis in McDowell County began to stir locals toward change, what had been an educational project expanded into advocacy and became a founding partner of the West Virginia Faith Collective.
Latest News
From 100daysinappalachia.com
From 100daysinappalachia.com
In June 2022, Rev. Brad Davis spoke to the West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church on a resolution about clean water in southern
Our Areas of Focus
Educate, immerse, and activate people not native to the southern coalfields regarding coalfield issues
Empower, amplify, and collaborate with local coalfield residents and organizations through a regional faith network
Testify to God’s good news for the coalfields
From Below is engaged in coalfield advocacy, immersion experiences, book discussions, podcasts and livestreams, film screenings, faith-led community organizing, preaching and teaching a specifically coalfield-contextualized understanding of the good news of God’s kingdom we call the Holler Gospel, and resourcing and collaborating with local-led projects and organizations to build relationships across southern West Virginia.
Our Current Work
From Below is focused on a three-prong sustainability project in the southern coalfields that seeks to provide clean water, clean air, and land to the people of southern West Virginia.
In February 2023, Wyoming County residents began experiencing water quality issues in the Wolf Pen/Indian Creek area, which brought into focus the water crisis that has been occurring across the region for decades and moved people to action. From below: Rising Together for Coalfield Justice is focusing on McDowell County, specifically on the following communities: Gary (municipal water system), Anawalt (public water system), and Leckie (well water).
We believe that the lack of access to clean water coupled with food insecurity are existential threats to our community. As people of faith, we have made food justice an urgent priority and support practices that ensure access to healthy nourishment, particularly within communities such as ours that have suffered environmental degradation and lack the resources to produce or purchase their own food.
Hatfield Union Forestry Association is a small business based in the McDowell County community of Iaeger. The company seeks to “eliminate housing insecurity through affordable lumber and timber resources and also to create a sustainable import/export environment that positively affects not only the economy but livelihood of residents in McDowell County and surrounding areas.” Its mission statement is “Through conservation biology, Hatfield Union seeks to develop, empower, and build a network of timber growers, loggers, etc., to provide lumber at a price that is accessible.”
A Vision of Reurrection: The Holler Gospel
For well over a century now, the people of the southern coalfields of West Virginia have not had the benefit of living in the way God intends for us. We have been victimized by a system of socioeconomic inequality that has left us dispossessed of and displaced from the land to which we are so deeply connected—leaving us colonized and exiled, forced to live in a landscape of grief that has left our land and our people in need of redemption, restoration, and transformation. In short, we are in desperate need of healing. Our communities, culture, and entire way of life—not to mention our economy—are in need of repair. As people of faith, we believe that this repairing can only take place if we have access to land—access that has been blocked now for generations—as well as adequate infrastructure that can provide us with the necessities of life; access to fresh, nutritious food and clean water.
In this time of economic transition in the Central Appalachian coalfields, the return of local land to local people and communities would allow for such projects as are highlighted above to harness the power of this land for the creation of sustainable, thriving communities that have been healed and made whole through the power of local initiative. In short, it would lead to economic freedom and social empowerment—a reset of the socioeconomic order. For generations, we have been told that we are nothing without coal. In other words, in addition to our resources, our own narrative has been mined out from under us. Such a communal restoration based on local economic initiative—an economy by local people for local people—not only has the power to restore our people and land but our story as well. Control of our own resources leads to control of our own narrative and creates the space to shape a new story—a story of resilience where we no longer wither but flourish.
And that, above all, is God’s intention for how we are to live together in unity with the common good being our mutual priority as we move forward into the future that God has in store for the people of McDowell County and southern West Virginia as a whole. It is one filled with resurrection hope for the day when God will make all things new for us as we rebuild what has been lost on land that we once again may call our own, resurrect the people who call this place home, and restore their story—our story—as one of perseverance and pride.
That is when the people “from below” rise together into a new day for McDowell County.
Education & Immersion
Inaugural Coalfield Immersion
In June 2022, Rev. Brad Davis spoke to the West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church on a resolution about clean water in southern West Virginia. When He stated that Keystone, a community McDowell County, had been under a boil water advisory for 10 years he heard gasps in the chapel.
He also heard a call to create a pilgrimage experience to the southern coalfields that would immerse people in the unique challenges, history, and culture from below.
In October 2023, 37 people from all over the world—including students from Japan, Russia, and two African nations—gathered for a two-day journey.
From Below Leadership Team
Featured Publications
About From Below
We have to get out of here, WV leaders pass the buck
Worries Mounting in Southern WV Coalfields
Renewed Focus on Justice for WV United Methodists
Faith Group Partnering with Local Farmers
By From Below
Southern WV Coalfield Water Crisis
Ask Gov. Justice to declare a state of emergency and provide clean water to southern coalfield counties
We invite you to join the movement!
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