Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion Article from All-Creatures.org


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On Causing Offence: Veganism, Piers Morgan and Acts 10

From SARX: For All God's Creatures
September 2022

We discussed this issue more and I discovered that despite my friend’s strong moral conviction that veganism best reflected the love of God and His intentions for creation, he felt unable to stand up against the cruelty and exploitation of the meat industry.

two Owls
Image from Michal Matlon Unsplash

Piers Morgan has recently been hitting the deadlines again for offending vegans, this time for eating a Big Mac in front of an animal rights activist on live TV. This stunt was similar to a 2017 incident on Fox News when anchor Jesse Watters ate a steak while interviewing a vegan woman during an on-air segment about meat-eating.

With both Morgan and Watters being known for their gimmicks and sensationalism, surely Christian vegans don’t need to take their antics seriously? Yet, a couple of years ago, a Christian vegan friend of mine who viewed the video of Watters felt conflicted. He agreed that Watters’ eating of a steak in front of a vegan guest on his show was discourteous but hastened to add “I think eating an animal, especially an intensively reared one, is so sad and I would never do it, but it is fine for him to eat the steak because of Acts 10 and God’s instruction that we can eat whatever we want.”

We discussed this issue more and I discovered that despite my friend’s strong moral conviction that veganism best reflected the love of God and His intentions for creation, he felt unable to stand up against the cruelty and exploitation of the meat industry. This person understood how animals suffered within intensive animal agriculture; systems which also cause devastating environmental damage, threaten human food security and adversely affect human health, but his perception of scripture hamstrung his impulse to protest against these injustices. Yet is Peter’s vision really a divine license to kill? Let’s remind ourselves of the vision in Acts 10: 9-16.

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