I’d like there to be a more animal-friendly Christianity both for my sake and for the sake of my cause. So I decided to ask some activists, scholars and theologians how they reconciled Christianity and animal ethics.
If you were searching for an animal-friendly religion, Christianity
probably wouldn’t be your first choice. You’d likely select Jainism,
Buddhism or Hinduism. Of course, most people don’t choose a
spiritual practice based on the degree it takes nonhumans into
ethical consideration. Familiarity is an important factor.
As an animal activist, I'm somewhat lucky in this regard. My mother,
who was raised Episcopalian and then turned to the United Church of
Christ, regards Eknath Easwaran as her favorite spiritual writer.
He’s a perennialist meditation teacher and vegetarian, who was
sympathetic to animal rights.
So while there are other elements of my background that made
embracing anti-speciesism a struggle, thankfully, when it came to
religion, I had a resource that made it considerably less difficult
than it might have been. I’m the world’s most distracted and
impatient meditator, but I’m very grateful for this. Not everyone
has such a resource.
Still, I’m culturally Christian and live in the United States, which
is majority Christian. I’d like there to be a more animal-friendly
Christianity both for my sake and for the sake of my cause. So I
decided to ask some activists, scholars and theologians how they
reconciled Christianity and animal ethics.
The Old Testament has some strong passages on the subject. For
instance, the Garden of Eden, presumably God’s ideal, is depicted as
a vegan paradise, in which everyone eats plants. Similarly, in the
Book of Isaiah, God promises a future in which there is no killing,
and even carnivorous animals consume straw.
Unfortunately, the gospels canonized in the New Testament have a
more anthropocentric focus. It got me thinking. Is Christianity
fundamentally limited in what it can offer animals if one believes
Jesus was God and ate meat? In other words, does progressive
Christian animal ethics either have to concede Jesus was human or
insist he didn’t eat meat?
Thomas Jay Oord, director of the Center for Open and Relational
Theology, appeared to suggest Jesus was flawed. “I think Jesus ate
meat,” he said. “I don't think Jesus had the attributes we think God
has. God doesn't need to eat anything! Jesus was human and he
probably ate meat.”
The author of many books, Victoria Moran is also cofounder of the
Compassion Consortium, an interfaith religious center for animal
advocates. Based in New York City, the Consortium offers Sunday
programs online, as well as other events, classes and services. She
didn’t seem to consider Jesus divine.
“The orthodox, Pauline view would certainly interfere with one's
adoption of ethical dietary choices,” she said. “This is one of the
reasons why I do not espouse this view. Many would say, 'Then you're
not Christian.' Okay, fine… To me, religion is to inspire, sustain,
and uplift. I am far less interested in what Jesus the human being
ate 2,000 years ago than I am about his teachings, which are
eternal.”
Stephen Kaufman, chair of the Christian Vegetarian Association,
noted there were elements of the New Testament that could be
interpreted in an anti-speciesist way, such as Jesus’ opposition to
animal sacrifice. Still, Kaufman came across as somewhat conflicted,
acknowledging that, in his reading, the canonical gospels didn’t
portray Jesus as inordinately concerned with nonhumans.
“The only time the NT describes Jesus eating meat is in Luke’s
Gospel, when he demonstrates that he has risen in the flesh by
eating a piece of fish,” Kaufman said. “Whether or not one believes
that this account is historically accurate, it does present a
difficulty for those who claim that the canonized NT unequivocally
portrays Jesus as vegetarian.”
David Clough is a Methodist lay preacher, a professor of theological
ethics at the University of Chester, and is a co-founder of
CreatureKind. He didn’t answer my question specifically, but his
effort to situate Jesus in a historical moment suggested Clough
understood Jesus to be fallible or delivering a message specific to
his time.
“My view is that there are strong faith-based reasons for
twenty-first century Christians to adopt a vegan diet in contexts
where there are readily available plant-based alternatives,” Clough
said. “Jesus lived in first-century Palestine. He certainly ate fish
and almost certainly ate meat. But that doesn’t resolve the question
of what it would be ethical for modern Christians to eat.”
Matthew King, president of the Christian Animal Rights Association,
struck a similar note. “From his human perspective, I think Jesus’
diet needs to be contextualized with the historical setting, food
availability, convenience, and general state of the world,” King
said. “From his divine perspective, Jesus, as God, would not need
justification for what he ate because he created the animal in the
first place. He has absolute rights over animals, whereas we, as
humans, do not.”
John Ryder is a retired vicar and spokesperson for Christian
Vegetarians and Vegans UK. “Jesus was a good Jew,” he told me. “It
can safely be said that what Jesus didn't contradict or correct
about the Jews’ understanding of their own religion, he agreed with.
Therefore, he accepted that God created humans to be vegan; the
consumption of meat was only allowed, like divorce, to cope with
sin.”
Keith Akers wrote a book dealing with the present subject called The
Lost Religion of Jesus. Basically, the argument is early Jewish
Christianity was vegetarian, and it was Pauline, Gentile
Christianity which wasn’t. Pauline, Gentile Christianity was the
winning faction which assembled the New Testament, but as a Jew,
Jesus’ actual teachings were most likely closer to those of the
early Jewish Christians.
I don’t know nearly enough to have an informed opinion on the
matter, but I found the book fascinating and much more persuasive
than I thought it would be. When I emailed Akers, he agreed
believing Jesus was God and believing Jesus ate meat was limiting on
what traditional Christianity could offer animal ethics. Needless to
say, his conception of Christianity didn’t accept these limitations.
I wondered how important the historical Jesus was to my
interviewees’ perspective on Christianity and animal ethics. For
instance, imagine there was some kind of archaeological evidence
that proved Jesus not only wasn’t a vegetarian, but he didn’t
believe animals deserved ethical consideration. Would that change
their perspective on Christianity or animal ethics?
Oord was matter of fact. “It wouldn't change my views,” he said. “My
views about what Christians ought to do aren't determined by
archeological evidence.” Meanwhile, Moran didn’t respond to my
hypothetical. Instead, she marveled at the historical evidence for
large numbers of vegetarians among early Christians.
“Even Paul wrote about this, urging these vegetarian Christians to
stop talking about their diet all the time and focus instead on what
he was convinced were the more crucial issues,” Moran said. “This
tells me that Jesus either suggested a cruelty-free diet or the love
emanating from his life was so far-reaching that a remarkably high
percentage of those who followed him in the first few centuries
after his time on earth extended that love to other-than-human
beings.”
Kaufman wanted to be clear he was only speaking for himself and he
didn’t believe it was likely archeological evidence would prove
anything about Jesus. “But let’s say that there was very strong
evidence that Jesus didn’t believe that animals deserve ethical
consideration,” he said. “Then, I would say that it appears that
Jesus was not an inspired spiritual leader after all, and I would
probably seek a different source for spiritual inspiration.”
Clough also avoided the question to a certain degree, noting
Christian ethics draws from more than just the gospels. “If all of
this textual inheritance was univocal in suggesting that non-human
animals were of no moral account, there would be little prospect of
building a Christian animal ethics,” he said. “Fortunately, this is
by no means the case.”
King’s interest in animal rights and Christianity had always been
intertwined. “If such evidence existed that Jesus believed animals
did not deserve ethical consideration, and it was shown to be
authentic, that would cause deep conflict for me,” he said. “It
would be like someone finding evidence that Jesus thought vulnerable
humans did not deserve ethical consideration.”
For Ryder, the historical Jesus was essential. “But one would have
to show that Jesus repudiated Judaism and the Torah to show he
didn’t believe animals deserved ethical consideration, which would
mean he wasn't the Messiah, or anything like what the New Testament
shows him to be,” Ryder said.
My hypothetical wouldn’t have altered Akers feelings about animal
ethics. “It would make adherence to Christianity quite inconvenient,
and in much the same way that believing that Jesus is God and ate
meat makes Christianity inconvenient for vegetarians,” he said. “You
could probably come up with some new doctrines to get around it, but
at some point the question would arise, why?”
After reading Akers’ book, I was curious whether my interviewees
thought it would be possible or even desirable to create a modern
church inspired by the Ebionites, an early vegetarian Christian
sect. Outside of a few quotes preserved in the writing of their
critics, the group’s texts were destroyed or lost.
Oord said he would like to be part of a church that prioritized
vegetarianism, but there are many other factors and ideas that are
also important to him. Moran replied that she would be fascinated by
such a church, however, she believed Compassion Consortium was doing
something like that already.
Kaufman thought a modern Ebionite church could be formed, but it
probably wouldn’t be something he would take part in. “I’m not as
interested in a small, relatively fringe movement,” he said.
“Because my United Church of Christ congregation does not have any
dogmas, I am free to question and explore Christian theology and
practice without scandalizing members of my congregation.”
For his part, Clough supposed it was possible a new religious
movement based on what’s known about the Ebionites could be
established, but he would not support any church that made
vegetarianism a condition of membership. A modern Ebionite church
didn’t appeal to Ryder because the group didn’t view Jesus as God.
King was also uninterested in a church that rejected mainstream
Christian doctrines, however, he believed creating such a group was
potentially feasible.
“Many church denominations have books added or subtracted from the
protestant Bible and consider those added texts to be holy and
inspired, like Mormonism and Swedenborgianism,” King said. “The
Ebionites rejected much of the New Testament found in the Protestant
Bible. It may be possible to create a document that reflects their
beliefs even if it doesn’t exactly match its wording.”
Akers, on the other hand, would absolutely be interested in a modern
Ebionite church. “I don’t think that texts are essential to a
community, though having something written down is surely an asset,”
he said. “The first followers of Jesus didn’t have written gospels
at all for decades after Jesus left the planet. New texts can always
be written.”
I knew that, historically, some Christians have created alternate
versions of the gospels. For instance, both Leo Tolstoy and Thomas
Jefferson did this, removing references to miracles in their
versions. I wondered if my interviewees thought there was any
benefit in creating a more animal-friendly version of the gospels.
Oord told me he’d prefer people recognize the Bible is the product
of a particular time and place and is therefore limited. Moran
didn’t think an alternate Bible was necessary either: “I personally
don't need to read a revised gospel to convince me that if the
Father notices when a sparrow falls, what goes on at slaughterhouses
is not beyond the scope of his knowledge and care.”
Kaufman said we needed more animal-friendly stories, which come from
scriptures and the saints, but he wouldn’t be interested in an
idiosyncratic Bible. Clough struck a similar note. “I’m not in favor
of approaches to interpretation that seek to excise parts of the
Bible,” he said. “Instead I recognize a responsibility to engage
with this complex tradition of texts and deliberate with fellow
Christians about how they should be interpreted.”
Ryder was also opposed to the idea. “To change the gospels in any
sense would be to create heresy,” he said, adding, however, he would
support an appropriately footnoted text. “I believe the Bible taken
as a whole and correctly understood in its historical context shows
veganism to be God's will.”
King noted something like I was asking about had been done before,
mentioning The Gospel of the Holy Twelve and The Essene Gospel of
Peace. I’d never heard of these, but they were apparently modern
creations fraudulently presented as ancient texts. This wasn’t
exactly what I’d meant, but I was curious about them.
For his part, Akers wasn’t opposed to the creation of new texts, but
he prioritized the formation of a like-minded spiritual group, among
other things. “Online gatherings are better than nothing, but
ideally these would be in-person gatherings in our local community,”
he said. “The group could then evolve organically, if its members
are truly committed and can engage with each other without
preconceived notions.”