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

Animals in Church: Non-humans and Cultures of Prayer and Worship in Twentieth-century Britain

From Joseph Hardwick, SARX.org.uk
August 2024

The growing visibility of animals in services, prayers, and special days reveals the roots of modern efforts in the Church of England and other Christian churches to reconnect worship with the natural world. This history also allows us to consider how far church histories have been shaped by what the academic literature refers to as animal ‘agency’.

The role of animals in Christian worship has undergone significant changes in the twentieth century, reflecting a broader shift toward compassion and stewardship. This article, written by Dr Joseph Hardwick, Associate Professor of British History at the University of Northumbria, examines the evolving presence of animals in British church practices.

Dr Hardwick explores how historical events and cultural shifts have influenced the inclusion of animals in church services. His research sheds light on the growing recognition of animals as integral to faith communities and the ethical implications of our relationships with all living beings.

In December 1994 an episode of the popular British comedy series, The Vicar of Dibley, titled ‘Animals’, aired on BBC television. Geraldine, the vicar of the fictional Oxfordshire village, is struck by the impact the death of pets has on her parishioners and resolves to organise a special Sunday service so that the congregation can bring their animals to church. David, the condescending chairman of the parish council, is appalled.

‘Are you seriously going to let animals into our church?’ ‘Do nits get a blessing? Are fleas to be excluded?’ ‘What if your congregation start eating each other!’. The special day is a great hit with the community and local people bring a multitude of companion and working animals to a mixed-species service that features blessings, prayers, and the familiar hymn, ‘All things bright and beautiful’. Hugo, David’s son, considers it a great idea to ‘thank God for the animals upon which the economic and social life of our village is based’.

This comedy addresses the place of animals in human communities and invites questions about the extent to which, historically, prayer and worship in the British Isles has involved and included animal issues and living animals. In early modernity churchgoers had commonly brought companion animals with them to church, and while many clergy tried to restrict this practice, dogs remained a familiar presence in many church services in modern times, particularly in country parishes. Historians have shown how animal subjects, such as cruelty, non-human souls, and scientific experimentation on living animals (‘vivisection’) became topics for preachers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[1] The special services for animals depicted in The Vicar of Dibley are a more recent development.

A national religious day for animals, the so-called ‘Animal Sunday’, was organised by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and was regularly observed by Protestant clergy from the 1890s. Children took pets to church and chapel from the mid-1930s, but only after 1947, when Leland Snell, the Church of England vicar of Holy Trinity, Hereford, and a local RSPCA representative, pioneered a popular and newsworthy ‘pets’ service’ in his church, did mixed-species services become common among Christians, particularly in urban and rural England. Strikingly, in the early twentieth century, prayers that referenced animals became acceptable to England’s national church, the Church of England, and a widening range of animals, beginning with farm and domestic animals, were incorporated in the texts, rituals, and practices of everyday Christian worship.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

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Posted on All-Creatures: August 21, 2024
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