By The Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics

Since this is a service in an Anglican Cathedral, I hope that you will forgive me if I begin by addressing the situation in the Anglican Church. When it comes to animals, I fear the Church of England needs a good talking to, and I don’t intend to miss this opportunity.

As we all know, the Church of England is the Church established by law. Its Supreme Governor is the Queen. The archbishops, bishops, provosts, and deans, are appointed in practice by the Prime Minister — albeit with some input from the Church. Twenty-six bishops have seats in the House of Lords. Even Church worship is governed by law. The Church of England is the established Church, and in more than one sense.

The question must therefore be asked: can this same Church rooted in law, convention, and privilege, really speak for the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, those on the margins of society? And, most fundamentally, can it speak on behalf of what are the weakest and most vulnerable of all, namely God’s other sentient creatures?

I raise this question because there are agnostic friends of mine who view our aspirations as a lost cause. The Church of England, they say, can never really represent the cause of justice for animals. It is too compromised by its associations with the powerful, especially the powerful who benefit from the exploitation of animals. We are, they say — if you will forgive the animal analogy — simply barking up the wrong tree.

And if the Church cannot even represent the human poor, the human dispossessed, and the human disadvantaged, what hope can animals have? To take one case in point, what hope can animals in laboratories have when the Church (or at least most of its ethical spokespeople) currently supports destructive experimentation on embryos, arguably the weakest humans of them all?

Well, I don’t want to scandalise you, but there are few signs that the Church even really sees, let alone understands, the cause of animals. Yes, the Church understands well the needs of farmers, but does it have any appreciation of the suffering that animals undergo in intensive farming — debeaking, castration without anaesthetic, tail docking, battery cages — to take only a few examples? Does the Church really see the issue of suffering for farm animals?

Yes, the Church understands (only too well) the ever vocal so-called “countryside movement,” but does it really understand the suffering of hunted animals — hares, foxes, mink, deer chased to exhaustion? Has it really grasped that there is something intrinsically objectionable in causing suffering for pleasure?

Yes, the Church understands (only too well) the utilitarian arguments of scientific researchers, but does it really understand the suffering that animals have to undergo in laboratories throughout the world? Where, I wonder, are the Christian protests at the dramatic rise in genetic experiments on animals?

Yes, the Church understands the needs of Big Business, but does it also know the cost that animals have to pay when they are treated as economic commodities — when they are genetically manipulated, patented, reared in miserable conditions, exported abroad or long distances only to await grisly slaughter? In truth, never before have we so turned animals into meat machines.

I give only a few examples. During the last twelve months: unashamed, unabashed, and undaunted by criticism, the Church Commissioners have continued to allow hunting for sport and intensive farming on Church-owned lands. The National Trust, to its credit, has at least had the courage to address the issue of deer hunting and take appropriate action; not so the Commissioners. During the last twelve months, one senior bishop publicly said of hunting for sport that it is a “trivial” issue. During the last twelve months, the Board for Social Responsibility produced a discussion document on hunting — yet another finely tuned Anglican fudge.

During the last twelve months, one Anglican Cathedral sought to improve its finances by an auction of gifts — nothing wrong with that of course. It’s when one discovers that one of the gifts was a free day’s hunting with hounds that one begins to get disconcerted.

During the last twelve months, a former Archbishop of Canterbury — the same one that came out publicly against factory farming when in office, went on record to defend intensive pig farming. He even spoke against, and voted in the House of Lords against, allowing pigs a few more inches of space for fear of “burdening” farmers.

I want to try to be charitable, so I will just say this: I do not think these bodies and individuals begin to understand the offence, the moral incredulity, the dismay, and the anger that they provoke. If they think the judgement of animal protectionists is harsh; they need to consider that the judgement of history will be even harsher.

Years ago, when I was a student in London, a group of us used to go to lectures in the Philosophy of Religion at Senate House. Somehow, we always used to end up at Tottenham Court Road underground station. I vividly remember that it had one quaint feature: a cranky old lift to the ground level. As we entered the lift, a mechanical voice used to repeat the words: “mind the gap.”

I do not think that the Church has begun to grasp the gap. The credibility gap. The gap between the Gospel it preaches and its practical insensitivity to cruelty. The Gospel is about the unlimited, free, generous love of God for the creation she has made. A generosity glimpsed in the life, passion, self-sacrifice, and death of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is the good news for the entire created order. God cares for each and every living creature. Not one sparrow is forgotten by God.

The crucial insight, then, is that animals are fellow creatures. Not things, machines, tools, commodities, means-to-human-ends, or resources here for us. Rather they are sentient beings with their own value, dignity, and rights. That is the insight at the heart of our movement.

People sometimes say to me, “Don’t worry about the Church, Andrew, historically it has often been on the wrong side. Just think about slavery, votes for women, capital punishment, or the rights of children. The Church has always led from behind. In the end, it will give in to outside pressure and support the animals’ cause.”

Well, that doesn’t please me. I don’t want the Church to support animals simply to conform to secular pressure. I want the Church to see that its own Gospel requires opposition to cruelty. I want churches to see that their own doctrine of a loving, generous God requires us to act with costly generosity towards animals. In short: I want them to see what our pioneering Christian forebears saw: cruelty is incompatible with the Christian faith.

Sometimes people say to me, “Don’t worry, Andrew, it is inevitable that the Church should be predominantly, even overwhelmingly, concerned with human beings, and human interests, and human welfare.”

Well, that doesn’t gratify me. I think that exclusive concern with human beings is morally parochial. God is the Creator of all creatures, not just human ones; there is something deeply idolatrous in supposing that God is exclusively interested in only one species among the millions that she has made. I look in vain for church leaders and theologians to speak God’s truth: human interests are not the only interests in the world. The whole creation is not just made for human betterment. God — not human beings — is the measure of all things.

Sometimes people say to me, “Well, Andrew, you are a kind of prophet.” I’m grateful for any kind words, and mostly they are indeed well meant, but I have to say, I’m not interested in being a prophet. What I want is a prophetic Church.

Sometimes people say to me, “You need to be patient, Andrew. The Church moves slowly, it takes time, you can’t expect the hierarchy to start taking up radical positions”. Well, I’ve been very patient: I’ve been patient for more than 30 years. If there are any brownie points for patience I’ve earned them all. And still the animals go on suffering.

Years ago, they called me an angry young man. Well, at least they can’t call me that anymore. I’m now just an angry old man. And as for radicalism, I say in all truthfulness, I know of nothing more radical than the Christian Gospel. There is nothing more daring than the supposition that love will triumph over evil, that peace will overcome violence, and that even greedy, cruel, violent human beings will be redeemed.

Every year, I receive hundreds of letters from people deeply disillusioned with the Church’s stance on animals. Some have already left or are on the way out. Believe me, I know how they feel. But I just ask this one question: if all those who care for animals leave the Church, where will that leave the Church? It will leave the Church where for the most part it still is, on the wrong side of this debate.

Of course, it is easy to moan about the Church. There will always be some enlightened bishops and church leaders, such as the ones represented here at this service, and I thank God for them and pay tribute to them. But we must realise that we cannot wait until the hierarchy comes to its senses, if we do that we shall be waiting until the Second Coming. No we must begin now. We are the assembled Church. We must begin to create an animal-friendly, animal-compassionate Church. And how do we do it? I offer you my four-part strategy.