I usually avoid religion in my posts, but I can no longer ignore how I’ve hearing some folks apply it to coal and coal mining.
“If God didn’t want us to use coal, he wouldn’t have put it here!”
I’ve heard it a dozen times from friends and family back home.1 It’s even been preached in sermons to coal miners and their families and proclaimed at pro-coal rallies. My question is….have we mined and used coal in ways that would make God happy with us? Let us look at the history of coal.
Coal mining began in Appalachia in the late 19th century. The owners of the coal mines paid as little salary as possible with many using a form of money known as “scrip.” Scrip was only usable to pay for goods and services provided by the company who controlled the prices of food and rent for the entire town. Through this system, the coal companies kept miners and their families extremely poor and constantly in debt within their coal camps and towns. Living conditions in all but a very few were deplorable. Company owners did this not because they were unable to pay the miners more, but because they wanted to keep more money for themselves—also known as greed.
Mining was also extremely dangerous. Over 90,000 miners lost their lives in the nation’s coal mines from 1900 to 1945 (the total today is 104,000 miners). This doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands who were seriously or permanently injured and suffered from black lung. Miner’s requests for better safety, and to be paid in more than company scrip, were never considered by the coal company owners. When their requests were denied, and without US currency to move away with, miners tried to organize to force the companies to give them a fair wage, pay in actual US dollars, and safer working conditions. Company owners instead hired “security” agencies such as the Baldwin-Felts Agency to come in, harass, and even kill those who were attempted to organize.
The coal that was removed from the mountains by the blood, sweat, and tears of Appalachian families was shipped off where it would be put to use making steel in massive mills or to generate electricity. In the early years, these mills and power stations turned the skies black with coal smoke and soot which caused countless respiratory illnesses and death for those living near by. The steel mill owners, like the coal company owners, placed production and profit over the well being of their employees and local communities. When Andrew Carnegie sought to bust the unions, he hired the Pinkerton Agency to do all of the dirty work that led to riots and deaths. Carnegie would eventually become the richest man in the world and it wouldn’t be until the 1930s that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal gave workers a legal chance to re-organize and obtain fair wages and treatment. Even then, they still did the most difficult and dangerous work for a pittance of what the company owners made.
Present day coal mining has improved in safety because of technological advances, but it is still some of the most dangerous work in the United States. Debilitating, long term health impacts have remained prevalent for those who worked for the industries. Black lung has claimed more than 75,000 lives and despite a decrease in cases during the 70s and 80s, has become prevalent again. Companies continue to deny that it is a problem and continue to block miner’s efforts to seek benefits once they can no longer work. They also find ways to avoid paying retirement healthcare plans and pensions. They do these things all to save money and increase profit. Greed.
Trillions of dollars have been made building bridges, railroads, cars, massive skyscrapers, and even machines of war using coal, but the communities that contained the resources remain some of the poorest in the nation.
“Cheap energy” is the gospel that breaks the backs of thousands of coal miners and chokes their lungs with coal dust. A “healthy economy” blinds people to the high cancer rates where coal is extracted, processed, and used.
And so, it must be asked, would a loving God, a God who created this amazing world full of life and beauty, full of so many wonders—who sent his only begotten Son to teach us lessons of love and humility and to stand up against the evils of greed—would such a God have placed something here capable of creating so much harm? Would Jesus have told us it was okay to turn beautiful mountain streams to acidic mine drainage , to turn once beautiful forests to fields of foreign grasses, and lay waste to the world His Father created and so perfectly designed for us, all so we could have more money (and some to become fantastically rich)?
God provided us with everything we need on this Earth. For many generations Appalachian families lived in our mountains in a simple balance with what God created. Did we ever truly need coal? Or was it something someone else wanted?
What if coal wasn’t a gift from God? What if it was a test placed here to be a great temptation?
Matthew 6:24
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
1 Timothy 6:10
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
Hebrews 13:5
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”[a]
Matthew 19:21
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
- June 5, 2025: In 2021, my wife and I went to a local church (first time in a while) and was approached by the mother of a former co-worker at the mines. She knew where I stood on coal, and said exactly what I’d heard before, “God put it here for us to use.” Her husband, who was a career coal miner was standing beside her. She walked off and before he stepped away as well, and he told us, “God may have put it here, but it’s been the devil who made us dig it out of the ground.” ↩︎