True Christian living requires us to live according to Kingdom standards which bring Heaven to earth.
Christian
Vegetarian Association UK
Nature,
Creation and the Peaceable Kingdom Conference
August 14-15, 2010
DAVID GRUMETT - Christian Abstinence and Vegetarianism: An Historical Overview
Present-day Christian vegetarians continue an ancient tradition of
Christian dietary abstinence with sources in scripture, monasticism and the
work and witness of key theologians and spiritual leaders. Yet this
tradition does not conform to the modern concept of vegetarianism, as shown
by the historic persistence of feasting, fish-eating and animal sacrifice.
Moreover, views of body and soul, the character of recent spiritual and
liturgical revivals, and worries about heresy have contributed to most
Christians’ failure to take vegetarianism seriously, both historically and
today. Nonetheless, the current ecological crisis and the continuing
centrality of the Eucharist in many denominations provide grounds for
renewed engagement.
Back in June, I was in Romania in the ancient city of Constanţ a on the
Black Sea. One day we drove inland towards the Bulgarian border to visit
some new and revived convents and monasteries, which have been such a
feature of the Orthodox Church’s expanding life since the fall of Communism.
We were on ancient Christian soil, evangelised by Saint Andrew who, the
Orthodox love to remind Westerners, was the first of the apostles to
acknowledge Jesus and the apostle who brought Peter to Jesus. Turning off
the road, we headed down a long bumpy track towards a desolate lake, until
stopping at a large new house that was home to about ten sisters, one of
whom was the mother of our driver. Foodwise, things had gone well for me so
far. It was the post-Pentecost fast and so no red meat or poultry were being
eaten—a situation that would continue right through the month until the
feast of Saints Peter and Paul. This meant I hadn’t found myself in any
difficult situations. As we entered the small refectory, we were told with
profuse apologies that this was a poor house that had adopted a fully
vegetarian rule. With more notice of our visit they might have been able to
get us, as guests, some fish, but as it turned out all they could offer was
vegetables.
The soup was, of course, delicious, probably supplied from the fields and
herb beds just outside. The obligatory Ţuică (“chooka”) was too. This strong
plum brandy is always served to guests at the start of both dinner and
lunch, and enjoying this exalted status for several days, we tasted a good
few glasses. As in ancient Western monasteries, a little wine or similar for
the stomach wasn’t frowned on, whereas meat was rightly seen as more
problematic. Indeed, the abbot hosting us even had his own label wine.
This little story shows that Christianity and vegetarianism aren’t merely
two separate movements with separate histories brought into encounter by
force of circumstance. Rather, they are interwoven traditions of material
practice and spirituality that have, in some times and places, been closely
related. But neither are they completely uncritical partners. In wider
Orthodox society, for instance, vegetarianism is only required during
specific fasts, and in Western fasts, although red meat and poultry are
banned, fish is permitted. It’s certainly encouraging to see a resurgence of
a kind of Christian vegetarianism in present-day Europe, and it would be
fascinating to research what’s currently happening in Romania. But in this
introductory presentation, I’ll scan a wider, historical horizon and in so
doing address three questions in turn. First, what are the positive linkages
between Christianity and vegetarianism? Second, how has Christianity
challenged vegetarianism? Third, what opportunities have Christians missed
to take vegetarian claims seriously, and what are the future prospects for
rapprochement?
I move then to my first heading, linkages, and begin by considering
scripture. Some readers of the Bible look for doctrine, others for
statements of faith or mission, principles of political emancipation and
many other types of material. But let us look for food. This isn’t
difficult: food is everywhere in the Bible. Vegetarianism also features
widely. We could tell a story beginning with the vegetarian paradise of
Genesis 1, in which humans are given for food ‘every plant yielding seed
that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its
fruit’. The animals, birds and insects likewise are given ‘every green plant
for food’. But this idyll is destroyed by the economy of violence
surrounding meat. Abel kills the firstlings of his flock and offers their
fatty portions to the Lord, who apparently regards them more highly than
Cain’s offering from the fruits of the ground. Anger wells up in the pious
vegetarian, who avenges this rejection of his offering—or perhaps the
slaughter of an innocent living being?— by luring his brother out into the
fields and killing him. Soon after comes the Flood, in which both humans and
animals are drowned as punishment for their sinful predation.
As is well-known, vegetarianism features in the book of Daniel, in which the
handsome, well-bred intellectual is brought with his friends to the
Babylonian court. They refuse the king’s non-kosher rations, preferring
vegetables, and end up better and fatter than the other guests who had
accepted the king’s indulgence. They gain knowledge and skill, as well as in
Daniel’s case the gift of interpreting dreams and visions.
More important than this staple vegetarian tale, however, is that meat is so
often viewed in scripture as hazardous and requiring detailed regulation. In
Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the species of animal that may be eaten as meat
are carefully delimited. Slaughter methods are closely circumscribed, some
parts of animals may not be eaten, and the blood must be drained off and not
consumed. Carrion mustn’t be eaten, nor must animals killed by a predator.
Moreover, animals known to prey on other animals—especially those with
tell-tale markers like claws—are classified as unclean and therefore unfit
for human consumption. Some of these rules are restated in the Acts of the
Apostles, in which the Council of Jerusalem orders Christians to abstain
from animal blood.
Modern vegetarians might well look to other less direct biblical
inspiration, such as the desire to inhabit or inaugurate a peaceable
kingdom. But historically we shouldn’t understate the importance of close
textual reading of scripture and attention to its literal sense in shaping
Christian practice. This long predated the Reformation, which can in no way
be seen as having inaugurated a seriousness of engagement with scripture
that had previously been absent. For instance, in Celtic Irish monasticism,
the Mosaic food rules were applied in detailed if somewhat amended form,
reinforced by the system of private penance so distinctive of genuine,
rigorous Celtic spirituality. What the Reformation brought about, perhaps,
was rather the gradual privatization of scriptural reading. Lessons were
more likely to be drawn for interior piety and private, voluntary observance
rather than for practical, public wisdom in matters such as dining. The
tendency for Christians to focus on the New Testament at the expense of the
Old is an even more recent innovation, as suggested by the persistence of so
many Old Testament place names and Christian names today, especially in the
United States.
Nowhere is scripture taken more seriously than in the Rule of Benedict. The
main Western monastic rule, Benedict’s Rule was primarily an attempt to live
scripture in community by regulating every aspect of communal life in
accordance with scriptural precepts. Notably for our purposes, in chapter 39
the flesh of four-footed animals is restricted to people who are sick.
Elsewhere, it’s also permitted to the elderly and children. So here, meat is
to be eaten only by weak people and is consequently a sign of weakness.
Healthy adults didn’t need meat, despite undertaking manual labour, study
and prayer in the course of their day.
Vegetarians may also draw inspiration from more recent figures such as John
Newton, John Wesley and William Booth. Newton made vegetarianism a part of
his scheme of life while at sea, and Wesley experimented with it for at
least two extended periods. Booth recommended vegetarianism and commended it
in Salvation Army regulations. But these three Christian figures all
promoted vegetarianism on a far more personal basis than what had gone
before. Remember that in Britain, Lenten abstinence from meat and poultry
was a legal requirement punishment by fine or imprisonment until as late as
the 1660s, and wasn’t undertaken merely out of personal piety. In contrast,
Wesley seems to have been preoccupied with matters of health and diet, and
in this sense a very eighteenth century figure. Although the term
‘vegetarianism’ wasn’t itself coined until the 1840s—in this talk, I use it
rather loosely—both Newton and Wesley can be seen as anticipating its
supposition that abstention is a personal choice to be pursued when and how
one wishes, rather than by observing rules laid down by the church or state.
So far, I’ve presented a rather cosy relationship between Christianity and
vegetarianism. But this by itself would be inexcusably selective.
Christianity has posed several major challenges to vegetarianism, of which
here I’ll consider three.
The first challenge is the place of meat in traditions of feasting in
secular Christian society. In Europe, the Christian liturgical year has
developed to mirror the natural seasonal year. For example, Lent falls at
the end of winter and opening of spring, when food is naturally scarce.
During this time, it’s expedient to abstain from meat, as meat is in
naturally short supply. Far better to leave animals alive for ploughing,
milking and transport than kill and eat them and be left with nothing. This
fasting period echoes various acts of fasting in scripture, including that
of Jesus in his forty-day retreat in the wilderness. But after Lent comes
Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead and a
fifty-day celebration of which meat has often been a feature. Here we have,
then, a controlled period of meat-eating of finite duration in recognition
of God’s graceful act of salvation for the world accomplished in Christ,
himself the lamb of God offered on the cross. The Easter and Christmas
celebrations formed the most important markers of the annual calendar in an
age when food availability was far more varied, seasonal and haphazard than
today. Making use of modest quantities of easily-available meat from land
that probably couldn’t support arable farming, these celebrations were part
of the spiritual and ecological rhythm of the year.
The second challenge to vegetarianism I’ll consider is the Christian
tradition of eating fish. From Christ in the beautifully-narrated
post-Resurrection appearances through monastic fishponds, Lenten stockfish
and fish on Fridays, fish has consistently been placed in a different
category from red meat and poultry. Several apostles were fisherman, but
none a butcher. Even the purist Cathar sect, whose members abstained from
dairy as well as red meat and poultry on the grounds that all were products
of coition, happily ate fish, seeing them as born spontaneously from water.
Medieval monastic sign manuals and contemporary accounts prove that
monasteries boasted often lavish fish cuisine, with many species and dishes
served up to members and guests. Yet modern vegetarianism, at least in its
strict definition, classifies fish as meat and excludes it from the diet.
Theological work remains to be done, I suggest, to demonstrate that fish
should be placed in the same category as red meat and on this basis
prohibited.
The third Christian challenge to vegetarianism is the persistence in
Christian tradition of animal sacrifice, especially in Orthodox lands. This
continues even today in sometimes weird juxtaposition with high-tech living,
as in William Dalrymple’s description of the Syrian cosmonaut just returned
from the Mir space station trekking into the desert to offer just such a
sacrifice in thanksgiving for his safe passage. A key component of the
Christian espousal of sacrifice seems to be honesty about the act of killing
that is taking place. In sharp contrast with the predictable outcries when
animals are killed on screen on cookery programmes, as well as with the far
more common tendency to hide killing behind the closed doors of anonymous
abattoirs, the moment of death is here hallowed and shared in by the
community, who stand round and watch. Furthermore, implicit in rituals of
sacrifice is a recognition that the animal killed is not in fact the
possession of the slaughterer or the eater to do with what they will. In
sacrifice, it is recognized that the animal killed is a gift of God and that
the killing must be a significant, regulated act. The eating of the
sacrificial meat is, moreover, an act of communal fellowship with often
strict prohibitions on taking away any meat for private consumption. So
sacrifice can foster community as well as constituting an act of giving back
to God something of his bounty. It doesn’t appear to be obligatory to
consume part of such a sacrifice, so even vegetarians might feel able to
join the festivities.
I now move to my third and final section: missed opportunities. Why hasn’t
Christianity had a closer relationship with vegetarianism, given both are
about peace, self-denial and acknowledging all life as sacred because
created by God?
A figure with a lot to answer for is Augustine of Hippo. A Manichean in his
youth, Augustine had first-hand experience of rigorous food rules. The
Manichean elect were strict vegetarians, believing that eating any product
born of coition weighed down the soul. Their job, in contrast, was to
liberate the light particles they believed to be imprisoned in matter.
Vegetables were especially good to eat because it was from these that light
particles could be expelled most effectively. Augustine wasn’t a member of
the elect and so was permitted to eat meat, but would have served the elect
at table as we know from his detailed references to them and their meals.
The unelect like him were permitted to eat meat because they were regarded
as spiritually inferior.
Like so many converts, Augustine felt under pressure to prove his orthodoxy,
especially once a bishop when charged by rivals with closet Manichaeism. So
he came out strongly against food rules, adopting what some regard as the
classic Pauline maxim that anything is clean to those who consider it clean.
This apparently liberal approach to food choices is undercut, however, by a
strikingly dogmatic assertion, repeated on several occasions, that it would
be better to die of starvation that eat food sacrificed to idols. So here we
see the real motivation for Augustine’s dogmatically liberal stance on food:
his continual anxiety not to be branded a Manichean heretic.
Augustine’s immense prestige as one of the Church’s premier doctors lent
credence to this view of diet as at best marginal to Christian practice and
at worst downright harmful if distinctive. Similar sentiments recur at
different points in subsequent Christian history, when the strict asceticism
of ancient desert practice is moderated partly in implicit response to
concerns that doctrinal orthodoxy be upheld. A vegetarian diet was a hostage
to fortune, able to be used by opponents as evidence of closet heresy. In
various heresy trials, such as of Lollards as well as Cathars, defendants
were required to consume meat, this being one of the signs of renouncing
past deviations.
The second opportunity to engage with vegetarianism missed by Christianity
that I’d like to identify is Christian views of body and soul. In high
medieval theology a view emerged of body and soul as separable, especially
in purgatory, where the soul does time to atone for its faults on earth
before rejoining the body in heaven. This doctrine, associated with the
stocky Dominican Thomas Aquinas among others, coincided with a rise in
scholastic theology that tended to construe identity and spirituality in
terms of philosophy, abstract doctrine and metaphysics, rather than seeing
material practice as central to their formation. Now too much could be made
of this, and I’m certainly not wanting to promote a simplistic concept of
omnivorous mind-body dualism. Nevertheless, we have here at least a
coincidence of increasingly abstract concepts of the soul with a decline in
dietary discipline in the Church and religious orders, in which such
theological concepts were being formed and debated. Even in Benedictine
monasteries, where red meat was meant to be reserved only for the weak, aged
and children, logic was employed to undermine the spirit of this rule. The
legislation applied, it was argued, only to meals taken in the refectory, so
in large and wealthy monasteries other rooms could be brought into service
for dining in which the old rules were deemed not to apply.
This takes us nicely to the third missed opportunity for
Christian–vegetarian convergence, which I locate in the twentieth century
revival of various facets of classic Christian spirituality. One is the
monastic revival, seen in Britain among both Roman Catholics and Anglicans,
in which the classic rule of abstention from quadruped flesh has often been
regarded, as by Chaucer’s monk on pilgrimage to Canterbury, as ‘old and
somedeel strait’. Although fasting is often practiced, the basic vegetarian
discipline that was fundamental to the religious life from its origins in
the desert wilderness has frequently been seen, ridiculously, as
inappropriate to modern times. Indeed, when a visitor to religious houses,
the vegetarian will quite possibly need to request special catering, when
actually it’s their diet that should be normative. I see an associated
missed opportunity in the wider growing engagement with Christian
spirituality exemplified in new interest in classical writers and in
liturgy. Yet if one looks around British society, vegetarianism is seen
largely as a secular phenomenon, not one intrinsically linked to Christian
tradition. This fact is recognized by the existence of the Christian
Vegetarian Association: in other words, this title admits, most Christians
are not vegetarian.
The lack of linkage of much of this spiritual revival with vegetarianism I
trace partly to the impoverished character of the revival. Whether in
spiritual reading or liturgy, the emphasis seems to be too often on interior
spiritual dispositions, whether of individuals or communities, rather than
on a more ambitious effort to reorient oneself in a fully material Christian
cosmos. Only infrequently does new spirituality take serious account of
basic facets of embodied human existence, such as the food we eat, clothes
we wear, our bodily evolution from animals, and our use of technology
continually to transcend previously imagined boundaries. In the Fresh
Expressions of Church movement, some communities have sought to base their
identity around particular practices such as Fairtrade or social justice
advocacy, but these have often found it difficult to sustain an ecclesial
identity, gathering members and inspiring activity based largely on their
secular advocacy. In the case of vegetarianism, mainstream churches have
largely failed to articulate its Christian relevance or use it as a means of
drawing people, via practice, into identifying with some historic Christian
values and lifestyles. This has been seen particularly in the risible
response of the large majority of bishops to the Veg4Lent campaign—though as
some will know, Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, is now vegetarian.
A lot more could be said but I’ll now move to concluding comments to allow
discussion time. One helpful way of reflecting on the historical
relationship between Christianity and vegetarianism might be to consider
which theological or ethical principles vegetarians have been embracing at
different historical points, and which they’ve been resisting or rejecting.
The first issue to be clear about is that concerns about animal welfare are
marginal in the Christian history of meat abstention. The desert fathers ate
no meat but wore fur to keep out the biting cold. Christian vegetarianism
has historically been motivated far more by concerns about simplicity of
life, bodily purity and personal spiritual discipline. It seems to me that
the notion of animal rights provides a more ambiguous basis for
vegetarianism, because the discourse of entitlement that rights discourse
promotes is bound up with the ideas that everything is by default available
for consumption, and that humans have a right to make free choices about
their diet, which a rights-approach tends to view as a private matter.
Vegetarianism is currently gaining major impetus from the ecological
movement. As more and more people discover that the global meat economy
generates more pollution than motor vehicles, is hugely wasteful of natural
resources and diverts food from needy humans, we should at the very least be
able to agree that meat-eating levels need to be reduced urgently and
drastically. So why are motorists taxed onto often non-existent public
transport while supermarkets are allowed to sell meat below cost? There are
powerful interests here that haven’t even begun to be challenged. Perhaps
Christians could help realign priorities. We see ecological concern echoed
in the classic monastic pursuit of a simple life as well as in the wider
harmony between the liturgical and natural seasons, with periods of fasting
and feasting steering dietary choices in ways appropriate to the resources
available at different times of year. Remember that, in the medieval
calendar, more than half the days of the year were days of abstinence: Lent,
Advent, Fridays, Wednesdays, Saturdays, and the eve of major saint’s days,
so the disciplined use of natural resources was built into the Christian,
social, political and cultural consciousness. Days of abstention outnumbered
days of unbridled consumption.
Situating vegetarianism within a wider theological nexus is likely to
require a pragmatic approach to campaigns and alliances with other
organizations. How about Compassion in World Farming, for instance, who aim
to eliminate factory farming worldwide? A rights-based vegetarian might,
like an aggrieved Liberal Democrat in coalition, baulk at such dirty deal,
but if a key aim of Christian vegetarianism is to improve the lot of animals
generally, then any effort to reduce meat-eating should, I suggest, receive
support. Indeed, one could argue that it would be preferable to have fewer
vegetarians and lower overall levels of meat consumption than a greater
number of vegetarians offset by a populace eating greater quantities of
meat. Not least, this would better undermine the vested interests of the
meat economy. At the same time, discrete acts of uncompromising,
identifiable witness undoubtedly have value, not least in focusing wider,
more diffuse sentiments and energies. So Jesus overturning the tables of the
moneychangers in the Temple was, as a focal image of resistance, undoubtedly
key in challenging that particular meat economy.
Lastly, a word about the Eucharist. By making an act of dining so central in
their collective life, Christian churches might be seen to be promoting diet
as a key spiritual concern. Moreover, from a vegetarian viewpoint, because
the Eucharist uses bread and wine it could be viewed as marking a clean
break with sacrificial practices, despite the persistence of sacrificial
language and doctrine in some traditions. But as has been seen, animal
sacrifice and Eucharist can’t be regarded as historical alternatives. The
Orthodox Churches have a highly developed liturgy but have also continued up
to the present day to sacrifice animals.
This points to a wider truth: that the Eucharist has made an ambiguous
impact on Christian dietary discipline, often enabling discussions about
food, dining and fellowship to be transmuted into a realm of theological
symbolism far removed from the concrete realities of everyday food choices.
Even the classic Western preference for unleavened bread has obscured the
core doctrinal intuition underlying the use of leavened bread. In the
classical world, the quasi-miraculous rising of bread was attributed to the
action of gods, being otherwise inexplicable. This understanding persists in
Orthodox liturgy, in which the bread is accorded honour even before what, in
the West, would be regarded as its consecration at the altar. In the
Christian Eucharist, interesting use is made of the inexplicable nature of
ordinary risen bread, which can be seen as analogous with the rising of the
resurrected Christ from the tomb, also inexplicable by ordinary means. So
perhaps, after all, the Christian Eucharist points in a usually
unacknowledged way to how the ears of wheat blowing in the wind intimate a
kind of life absent even from animals, a life which Christian vegetarians
can fully share and consume.
Go on to
Nature,
Creation and the Peaceable Kingdom Conference - Deborah Jones -
Beyond Rights – Animal Ethics and the Christian
Approach
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