| In 2014, Virginia’s Dominion Energy announced it would build a new pipeline intended to carry fracked methane from West Virginia to a storage facility in North Carolina. The planned route brought the pipeline right through Virginia’s rural Buckingham County, with a compressor station proposed near a historic Black church and cemetery in the small community of Union Hill. Despite Dominion’s safety assurances, a group of locals grew concerned—and began to fight back. Opposition to the pipeline forged a new group called Friends of Buckingham, built on the backbone of two very different local faith communities: Union Grove Missionary Baptist church, a Black congregation with roots stretching back to Reconstruction, and the Satchidananda Ashram, an interfaith yoga community founded by the Hindu yoga teacher Swami Satchidananda Saraswati in 1986. Although they have fundamental doctrinal differences, the communities were united in their conviction that the pipeline would bring environmental harm to their county—harms that would be felt most acutely by its black residents. This piece was reported for us by Molly Born, a journalist and producer who’s reported extensively on the legacy of fossil fuels in Appalachia. LISTEN |
| This episode is part of our series Between Heaven & Earth: Each week we consider the intersection of religions and climate change in America. Between Heaven & Earth was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities. UVA Democracy Initiative: Religion Race & Democracy Lab |
 What Would Krishna Do? We invite you to listen to Molly’s previously reported piece for the show on a Hare Krishna community in West Virginia wrestling with their decision to allow fracking on their land. LISTEN HERE |
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