For much of her college career, Leanna Stitt was active in her school's Sierra Club chapter and active in her Christian faith.

But it wasn't until she attended a conference during her junior year at Westminister College that she started to connect the two.

The 22-year-old Ms. Stitt, of Plum, is now a regional coordinator for Restoring Eden, a group that works with college students to promote environmental causes among Christians.

Earlier this month, Ms. Stitt organized a "Shoutin' for the Mountain" trip as a "witness tour" of mountaintop mining in Southern West Virginia for about 30 college students.

"There was a lot of interest from students," she said. "Not only are you destroying creation, destroying the mountains by going after coal this way, but the process of removing the coal from the mountains puts a lot of toxins into the valley of the watershed. It's an issue that not only affects the earth and the land, but also affects the people dramatically."

Mountaintop mining is a form of surface coal mining that removes the summits of the mountains to uncover the coal inside. The debris that is removed is often used to fill the mountain valleys, burying streams and harming water quality.

The tour -- which included six students and a professor from Waynesburg University -- lasted three days and stopped to visit West Virginians such as Larry Gibson, who has maintained his family's land on Kayford Mountain while mountaintops have been removed around him, and the Rev. Larry Brown, who saw membership in his church decline when he started to preach against mountaintop mining.

Because of the jobs it creates and the indispensability of coal to the local economy, many West Virginia residents and politicians are in favor of mountaintop mining.

For Sean Dougherty, a 20-year-old environmental science major at Waynesburg, a visit to Marsh Fork Elementary School in Naoma, W.Va., which lies about 400 yards downhill from a mountaintop mine, was the most memorable part of the tour.

"They had a sludge pit right there above the school that could give way at any time," he said. "What we saw was kind of heartbreaking how the people were being treated."

The group, and the tour, are part of a growing movement of environmental activism among Christians, sometimes known as "creation care" under the theory that the environment should be viewed -- and protected -- as one of God's creations.

The movement has been controversial among evangelicals, with religious leaders such as James Dobson and Gary Bauer expressing concern that a focus on the environment necessarily draws attention away from "the great moral issues of our time," specifically opposition to abortion and the promotion of marriage and sexual abstinence.

Peter Illyn, founder of Restoring Eden and a former minister, said that's a battle he's been fighting since he first became active in environmental issues in the 1980s with the fight to save the spotted owl.

Mr. Illyn, 50, said that in the last few years, he's seeing much more interest in environmental causes among younger Christians.

"There's a shifting Christian subculture of younger folks," he said. "These kids are very pro-life but for them, being pro-life is also about mercury in the bloodstream of pregnant women near coal plants and kids dying of asthma because of pollution."

Janet Paladino, an assistant professor at Waynesburg and director of the environmental science program there, believes that concern about the environment is a natural outgrowth of Christianity.

"It puts it all together for them as being not just an academic experience but a spiritual experience," said Dr. Paladino, who went on the tour. "It provides an avenue to integrate spiritual beliefs with beliefs as scientists."

For students of this generation, who often learn best visually, an extended field trip is one of the best forms of education, she said. And though she had seen mountaintop mining before personally, hearing the stories of those affected by it was particularly powerful, she said.

"This is not something happening in books -- this is happening right next door," she said. "It's both an environmental justice and a social justice problem, and it's part of our mission to educate them at this university."