Allen Johnson on Bill Moyers and Charleston Gazette
My picture of Allen Johnson at South Charleston Museum
Allen Johnson is another one of my WV heroes, like Gordon Simmons, Ken Hechler and Attorney General McGraw. On Friday, September 7th, Bill Moyers Journal repeated its story on Allen Johnson from last fall’s episode, “Is God Green?” and added some updated footage of what he has been doing since then, leading the Christians for the Mountains.
You can read Johnson’s essay at the Moyers’ blog (which uses the picture I took of he and fellow Christian for the Mountains Dr. Marshall at the world premiere of their new film by B.J. Gudmundsson, “God’s Gift of a Wild and Wonderful Land” which was at The South Charleston Museum.)
The Sunday Charleston Gazette Mail published the same essay on its front opinion page today - http://wvgazette.com/section/Opinion/Op-Ed+Commentaries/2007090817.
If I would call Gordon Simmons “the Noam Chomsky of WV,” I would have to call Allen Johnson “the Daniel Berigan” or the “Dietrich Bonhoeffer” of WV. He has a Masters in environmental theology, working the national scene before he became the director of the Pocahontas County Libraries system. He is like Simmons, reading and writing every moment he is not sleeping, using all of his mental abilities. Johnson also has traveled twice to Israel, working as a Christian Peacemaker. He has a large extended family so he is thin, looks maybe a few years older than he is because he simply has so much to do 24/7. But he smiles like the sun, and truly has the aura of an early Christian saint.
