A Thinking Reed

Category: Andrew Linzey

  • Groaning of Creation: Index of posts

    Thought it might be helpful to have links to all my posts on Christopher Southgate’s book on animal theodicy, The Groaning of Creation, in one place.

    1. Intro
    2. The only way?
    3. God so loved the world
    4. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
    5. Heaven can wait
    6. Priests of creation
    7. The (vegetarian) restaurant at the end of the universe
    8. The ethics of the Ark
    9. Concluding thoughts

  • The Groaning of Creation 7: The (vegetarian) restaurant at the end of the universe

    We saw in the previous post that Southgate thinks humans should play an active role in “healing” the creation by ameliorating some of the negative effects of the evolutionary process. And we’ve also seen that chief among those effects, in his view, are the problem of animal suffering and the problem of extinction.

    Turning to matters of practice, he discusses our relationship with the animals we raise for food and the question of what our response should be to the extinction of species. In this post I’ll discuss the first issue, leaving the discussion of extinction for the next one.

    With respect to food animals, Southgate considers Andrew Linzey’s proposal for what Southgate calls “eschatological vegetarianism.” In Linzey’s view, animals have God-given rights (he calls them “theos-rights”) to live lives according to their kind. Further, he argues that vegetarianism is a way of living in anticipation of God’s peaceable kingdom where there will be no more killing or exploitation between species.

    Southgate reads Linzey as saying that predation is inherently evil and due to the fall of creation, but I’m not sure this is entirely fair. Linzey does flirt with the idea of the cosmic fall, but he allows that the story of the fall may be an imaginative picture that gives us hints of what a redeemed creation will look like, but does not necessarily depict an actual historical state of affairs. (See, for example, the discussion in chapter 3 of his Animal Gospel where he talks in terms of an “unfinished” creation; Linzey seems rather close to Southgate’s own position here.)

    That said, Soutgate agrees with Linzey that the biblical vision of a redeemed creation also condemns many of our current practices toward animals, in farming, science, and industry:

    […] the great proportion of current killing of animals is not reverent but casual, the final act in a relationship with confined animals who know no freedom to be themselves, or healthy relationships either with each other or their human owners. And “owners” is the key word here, because much of this problem stems from the reduction of animal nature to a mere commodity, which in its rearing and killing alike must be processed as cheaply as possible into products. (p. 118)

    However, Southgate thinks that some forms of farming–of the pastoral, free-range variety–can create a flourishing life for animals and genuine community between animals and humans. If we were to stop breeding these animals for food, he contends, this valuable form of community would disappear. He’s therefore unwilling to categorically deny that killing of animals for food can sometimes be done reverently.

    Nevertheless, he recognizes that vegetarianism might still be a sign of kenosis, a self-limiting for the sake of the other. In particular, he says, Christians might feel called to abstain from meat that has been “sacrificed” to the idols of mechanized efficiency and profit that our factory farming system serves, and to avoid animal flesh that wasn’t humanely raised and slaughtered (which would be nearly all of it).

    Southgate’s and Linzey’s positions actually seem rather close here. Both oppose the practices of factory farming and would see free-range alternatives as vastly superior. Moreover, Linzey acknowledges that there are people living today who have to eat meat to survive. Where they may differ is in evaluating the goods of pastoral farming–the form of community it makes possible–and whether that good justifies rearing animals for slaughter when doing so isn’t required for human survival and flourishing. It’s also far from clear whether a large-scale shift to humane animal husbandry could meet current (and future) demand, especially in the context of the current environmental situation, in which case vegetarianism might be embraced by some as a special vocation, even if not a duty.

    Index of posts in this series is here.

  • C.S. Lews on democracy and authority

    I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.

    That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen, Filmer would be right, and partiarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that “all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused. (C.S. Lewis, “Membership,” from The Weight of Glory, pp. 168-7)

    I agree with Lewis that democracy (by which I think he would have agreed that he meant limited, constitutional democracy) is grounded in the sinfulness of human beings. Because we are not only frail, ignorant, and limited, but because we are sinful, our power over each other has to be circumscribed. However, I disagree that the kinds of authority he mentions are part of God’s original plan for things, at least as we would likely be tempted to understand it. If anything, I’m inclined to say that men’s “authority” over women is the consequence of sin, not God’s intention. Even a “benign,” paternalistic rule, while perhaps preferable to outright tyranny, falls short of the ideal as a description of a relationship between equals.

    Children and animals are different cases for obvious reasons. Though even here there are qualifications. The “rule” of parent over child is generally agreed to be for the sake of the child’s good. The same, I would argue, is the case for animals. What I think a genuinely Christian notion of “lordship” requires is a subversion of any “vulgar Aristotelian” notion that the “lower” exists for the sake of the “higher” (I don’t think Aristotle himself would have given unqualified endorsement to it, but it’s a sentiment that has sometimes creeped into Christian theology under the authority of Aristotle). Andrew Linzey comes closer to the mark when he describes human beings as the “servant species,” with a lordship patterned after the one who came to serve, not to be served. I think this calls into question the idea that animals can simply be used for our good (however “humanely” we do so). If anything, an unfallen world would be more like an anarchy than a monarchy, at least as far as relations among creatures go. It would be characterized by mutual love and service without the need for coercive restraint.

  • All theology is animal theology

    Christopher:

    Considering animals in relationship to God is not something extra or foreign to Christianity. In my opinion, a serious doctrine of Creation cannot ignore the rest of the living world and the Creation as a whole and finally be Christian. Even rocks glorify God. And frankly, neither can a complete doctrine of Redemption or Sanctification. Indeed, to set up one’s “serious” theology in such a way that one can ignore, dismiss, or deride creatures great and small, organic and inorganic, is a sign of the Fall and the effects of sin, alienation and division. The rest of Creation pays dearly and regularly for our lack of relational recognition and failures in thankfulness.

    Maybe this is just special pleading on my part, but I think he’s absolutely right. In fact, I’m not sure Christian theology, much less Christian practice, has even begun to move from a thoroughly anthropocentric perspective to one that is more properly theocentric. Even churches that pay lip service (or more than lip service) to “the environment” remain steadfastly human-centered in their concerns. To some extent this is inevitable, but I wonder if we end up pushing a very thin gospel that essentially addresses only human concerns, and that often in a very therapuetic individualist way. And, if so, isn’t this a denial of the Lordship of Christ over all creation?

    What would theology and practice look like if they genuinely incorporated the cosmic aspect of the biblical story that we so frequently downplay? My sense is that we in the mainline ignore this cosmic dimension out of embarassment. After all, a faith that is confined to fostering psychological well-being or political action is much more respectable than one that talks about the redemption of all creation. We have very little idea, I think, of what that would even look like.

    If mainliners want to criticize fundamentalists for believing that we’re about to be whisked away in the Rapture, leaving the earth a smoldering cinder, maybe the proper response is to have a counter-story about the destiny of creation. Not to mention a counter-story to the post-Enlightenment industrial view of nature as a vast repository of resources for our exploitation. After all, isn’t there ample biblical and theological warrant for saying that creation – including our animal cousins – has a destiny in God’s kingdom? And doesn’t that imply that it matters now what happens to creation, since those aspects of the present age that serve God’s purposes will be preserved and transfigured (in ways we can scarcely being to imagine) in the age to come?

    I actually am not sure how far we can push the de-anthropocentricizing (is that a word?) of Christian theology; this strikes me as still relatively unexplored territory. Some eco-theologians have tried it in ways that seem to me to sacrifice too much of traditional Christian belief. On the other hand, someone like Andrew Linzey is doing it in a way that builds on traditional orthdox trinitarian theology. I think this is the more promising route for a variety of reasons, maybe most importantly because traditional doctrines of creation and incarnation provides what I think is the strongest foundation for taking the created world to have permanent value for God.

  • The Fall and natural evil revisited, pt. 2

    In the last post I expressed my unease with the notion of a cosmic fall, largely on the grounds that, for it to be radical enough to exculpate God from creating an order shot through with suffering, death, parasitism and predation it would risk creating a gulf between God and his creation. If fallen angels or other spiritual beings are responsible for much of the shape of the created order as we find it, then I worry that we come eerily close to attributing the shape of creation to a kind of malevolent demiurge with God floating distantly in the background.

    Not that I don’t think there’s a real problem here. How do we reconcile the existence of the world as we find it with the existence of a benevolent creator? In his post David refers to Andrew Linzey’s concern that if we take predation to be “natural” then we are less likely to be concerned about animal suffering. (David offers an illuminating comparison with Thomas Aquinas’ attitude toward animals.) And you know I’m a sucker for this stuff.

    And in fact Linzey himself does address this issue and emphasizes the importance of the fall as a reminder that creation isn’t as it should be and is groaning in bondage waiting for its redemption, just as we are. In his book Animal Gospel, Linzey says this:

    What is at stake in the question of the Fall is nothing less than our imagination, that faculty which can help us…to hold “in mind the completeness of a complex truth,” and at the same time our fidelity or–more often than not–infidelity to the moral insights to which it gives rise. In theological terms the complex truth to which this debate corresponds is the dual recognition that God as the Creator of all things must have created a world which is morally good–or at least be justified in the end as a morally justifiable process–and also the insight that parasitism and predation are unlovely, cruel, evil aspects of the world ultimately incapable of being reconciled with a God of love. (Animal Gospel, pp. 27-8)

    Linzey is right about this in my view. He points out that the denial of this complex truth can have morally abhorrent consequences such as the denial that there is evil in the natural world, that there is possible redemption for nature, that human beings have an obligation to cooperate with God in the redemption of nature, and even that there is a morally just God. If what is, is good, then we have sacrificed any moral standard existing over and above the empirical world to guide our actions.

    But Linzey also provides a hint here of a possible “third way” between merely accepting what is as good and positing a state of perfection “once upon a time.” It’s no secret that many of the ancients valued the notions of eternity and permanence and that more recent thought has emphasized becoming and process. The traditional creation account was often interpreted as God creating a perfect state of affairs whence there was nowhere to go but down. Adam and Eve were sometimes thought of as having virtually superhuman abilities, complete control of their physical faculties, and to enjoy blessedness in the presence of God. Likewise, nonhuman nature was understood to be endowed with fixed (and pacific) natures rather than being part of an ever-changing process.

    But if there’s one respect in which science has influenced a lot of contemporary theology it’s in taking the categories of change and process much more seriously. And this goes beyond process theology which, unwisely in my view, makes change an elemental aspect of God’s being, and thus seems to trap him in the flux of events. But you don’t have to accept the process view of God to recognize that it’s now much more common than it was in the ancient world, or even the world of the Enlightenment, to see nature as fundamentally a historical process.

    If nature is a process, then the idea of an initial state of perfection becomes much less intellgible. If modern cosmologists are right, the initial moments of creation consisted of a super dense infinitesimal speck. To realize the existence of the manifold variety of creatures that exist today required almost unimaginable stretches of time. And life on earth, we think, went through its own process of long development, with earlier lifeforms dying out to make space for later ones. There is no single slice of time that we could identify as the ideal state of unfallen creation. In other words, the universe has a history.

    It might be, then, that the inherently temporal nature of created reality means that its consummation could only occur by means of a temporal process that would necessarily contain states of lesser good. This is what I take Linzey to be getting at when he says that God “must have created a world which is morally good–or at least be justified in the end as a morally justifiable process….” As the title of the chapter from which the quote above comes from has it, creation is “unfinished and unredeemed.” Linzey is, I think, agnostic about whether there was a historical Fall, but he definitely sees Eden as a symbol of what creation is destined to be. Creation is inherently on its way toward something else.

    Of course, even if that’s right the obvious question is “was this trip really necessary?” Or why the long slog of blood, sweat, and tears to get to the New Jerusalem? And will all that suffering be seen to have been worth it – morally justifiable as Linzey says? Could God not have simply created a state of affairs all at once that was perfect and complete? Is the long arduous process of cosmic and terrestrial evolution necessary to get to where God wants the universe to be?

    Here we get into a very sticky wicket, for the question, in essence, is what kind of universe was it possible for God to create? This may sound like a silly question, for if God is omnipotent, then presumably he could’ve created any kind of universe he wanted. But the Christian tradition of thinking about these things has rarely held that God can do absolutely anything without qualification (though there is a minority report that seems to take this ultra-voluntarist line). It has usually been said instead that, for starters, God can’t do evil, since that is inconsistent with his nature. Also, that he can’t do the logically impossible, not because logic is “outside” of or “above” God but because what is logically impossible is simply not something coherently describable or thinkable.

    With respect to the physical world there is a legitimate question as to how many combinations of physical laws or fundamental physical facts are possible which would give rise to a universe ordered in such a way that the existence of life is possible (or likely). For instance, cosmologists hold, as I understand it, that, were certain fundamental physical constants even slightly different from what they are, the universe would’ve expanded either too rapidly or too slowly for life to develop. Our existence, in other words, is rather more closely tied to the fundamental facts about the physical universe than we might’ve thought. So, if God wanted to get us (not to mention all the other creatures that we know of), it may be that he had to choose a universe very much like the one we inhabit.

    Now you may say, dear reader, that God could simply have created us with a snap of the fingers, so to speak, without going to all that trouble. But I’m not sure that such creatures would in fact be human beings, as opposed to a very well-executed simulation of human beings. Our history and our interconnections to other forms of life on earth, and to the earth itself, are part of what we are as a species. It’s not clear to me that God could get us without the whole messy history that goes along with it. (Incidentally, it’s even more doubtful that he could get you and me specifically since our identities are tied pretty darn strongly to our particular histories.)

    I’m not at all confident that this is right. It may be that there are no constraints on the kind of world God could create and still get all the creatures he wanted in it. But I’m not confident it’s not right either. And if it is, we can at least begin to tell a coherent story where the only means available to God for realizing certain great goods (i.e. the existence of the myriad creatures that populate this universe, including us as intelligent personal ones capable of entering into a loving fellowship with their creator) involve some degree of suffering on the way to realizing those goods. This doesn’t involve God choosing evil means when he could’ve chosen good means, but choosing unavoidable evil as a necessary concommitant (or side-effect) of great good (perhaps not unlike the doctrine of double-effect).

    So, I’m not really sure where this leaves us. On the one hand, a doctrine of a cosmic fall saves God from complicity in evil, but at the cost (or so I maintain) of removing him from much of the process of creation, especially if modern science is correct in seeing all of life as inherently bound up with processes of decay, dissolution, suffering, and death. On the other hand, if we say that God was bound by a finite set of possibilities, thus limiting what kinds of universe he could actualize in choosing to create a universe with life, are we tying God’s hands and diminishing his omnipotence? I’m not totally happy with either option, frankly.

  • August reading notes

    Some highlights from the past month:

    I blogged a bit about Keith Ward’s latest, Re-Thinking Christianity here, here and here. Ward continues his streak of intelligent, accessible theology that straddles the popular and the academic. The takeaway lesson from RC is that there isn’t exactly an unchanging core of doctrine, but that Christianity has changed throughout its history, sometimes in quite radical ways. And yet, Ward doesn’t draw the conclusion that therefore Christianity is a sham; he maintains that the history of Christianity is properly seen as an ongoing response to the God disclosed and incarnate in Jesus.

    Andrew Linzey’s Christianity and the Rights of Animals is an earlier work (published in the late 80s) that anticipates many of the themes in his Animal Theology and Animal Gospel, but it delves more into the underlying assumptions of his theology: creation as gift with intrinsic value, God as fellow-sufferer and redeemer of all creation, animals as bearers of “theos-rights.” As such it’s a bit more systematic and synoptic, while being a relatively easy read. A good place to start for someone looking for an “animal-friendly” take on Christianity, though the conclusions Linzey draws are quite radical.

    I’m still working my way through George Monbiot’s Heat. Monbiot is both extremely pessimistic about the dangers of climate change and optimistic that it’s possible to actually cut our carbon emissions by the requisite 90% or so while still retaining something like a modern industrial economy. Monbiot is a very engaging writer, willing to admit when he’s not sure about something, unafraid to take on shibboleths, including those of environmentalists, and passionate about his cause. I may post some more about this in the near future.

  • The cow-man cometh

    This story reports that the UK has given the green light to scientists to create human-animal ‘chimera’ embryos for research purposes (see here for a bit more background).

    Essentially this involves combining an animal egg (cows in this case) with human genetic material to create an embryo from which stem cells can be extracted. The hope, I take it, is that these embryos will be close enough to human embryos for the resulting research to be of value.

    Some opponents have objected to what they consider the blurring of the boundary between human beings and other animals. Researchers respond that getting eggs from animals is more efficient and less ethically troublesome than getting them from women, a process that is described as “invasive, painful and potentially dangerous.”

    This research doesn’t remove the moral controversy over destroying the resultant embryos: though there may be some debate about whether such an embryo is “technically” human, it’s close enough for those who oppose embryo-desctructive research more generally. Ironically, this concern is somewhat at odds with the “blurring the lines” argument, but not outright inconsistent with it.

    There’s also the question of whether it’s ethical to get the eggs from cows. If the process of getting eggs from women is dangerous and painful, how do the cows fare? None of the stories I read addressed this particular issue, but one can only assume that the well-being of the cows isn’t foremost in the minds of those who are using them in this way.

    Of course, this touches on the issue of using animals in scientific research more generally. Is it permissible to use them, without their consent (obviously), and in a fashion that leads to pain, suffering, and/or death on the animal’s part?

    I don’t have a settled view on this. I’m strongly inclined to say that routine product testing and experimentation sheerly out of curiosity or the desire to know aren’t sufficient justifications for most animal experimentation. It’s hard to see how, say, having another variety of deodorant on the shelves justifies subjecting animals to painful tests.

    On the other hand, research aimed at curing serious disease has, at least on its face, a stronger claim. Surely saving human lives justifies sacrificing some animals?

    Still, it might be worthwhile to at least examine a dissenting view. As it happens, I’ve been reading Andrew Linzey’s Christianity and the Rights of Animals. Among other topics, he examines the argument for animal research and ties it to concerns about research that destroys human embryos.

    Linzey’s concern is that animal experimentation, justified as it is in terms of harms and benefits, or an essentially consequentialist moral framework, is intrinsically likely to lead to experiments on unwilling human subjects. If experiments on animals are justified by pointing to their prospective benefits, what stops us from experimenting on embryos or “sub-standard” human beings for the same reason? “Once our moral thinking becomes dominated by crude utilitarian calculations, then there is no right, value or good that cannot be bargained away, animal or human” (p. 120).

    He goes on to ask: even if we can accept that these kinds of moral trade-offs might sometimes be justified, do we want to institutionalize them? That is, do we want entire industries whose products (and profits) are premised on treating both animal life and nascent human life as disposable commodities to be exploited for our benefit? Or do we want to somehow recognize that they have intrinsic value that must be respected in some way?

    Like I said, I don’t have a settled issue on the matter, but I think it’s worth thinking about. Our tendency is to see the non-human (or even the marginally human) as essentially a resource. For a variety of reasons I don’t think this is a healthy, sane, or sustainable view. And yet it’s not easy to draw the line between abuse and legitimate use.

  • Liberation, human and animal

    (This post actually started out short. Honest!)

    Christopher (at his new blog) directs our attention to this article by Andrew Linzey on the connection between violence against animals and violence against humans.

    Clearly it’s not a matter of cruelty to animals causing violence against human beings in a straightforward way. Rather, as Linzey says, “cruelty to animals is one of a cluster of potential or actual characteristics held in common by those who commit violence or seriously anti-social acts.”

    This raises the question of how animal liberation and human liberation might be connected. Animal liberationists are often faced with the objection that human oppression is so severe and widespread that to divert efforts and resources to injustices against animals would be irresponsible at best and misanthropic at worst.

    In this article philosopher Stephen R.L. Clark suggests, however, that while some proponents of animal welfare and liberation have neglected issues of human oppression, the two causes are actually integrally connected. In his words, “[a]s long as we live, as human beings, in hierarchical, class and caste-divided societies, we must expect us to be cruel,” and a “genuinely humane endeavour on behalf of the non-human cannot be separated from a similarly humane endeavour on behalf of humans.” The idea being, I think, that as long as we have the mindset which takes domination and exploitation as natural and inevitable, neither animals nor weaker and more vulnerable humans are safe.

    At the level of our general view of the world, at least, there is a significant connection between our view of other human beings and our view of other animals. If God creates all this is out of love, then, to the extent that we share in or imitate the divine love, we will see other beings as having a value and integrity and mystery that is independent of whatever benefits we might get from them. As Clark says “[i]n love, we attend to things as being beautiful. Willing their good, we come to know what ‘good’ is in their case. False love imposes burdens, fantasizes, and grows angry when the ‘beloved’ is not as we wish. True love puts aside concupiscence.”

    Love isn’t just a sentiment; it’s the most truthful and accurate perception of reality there is. Our typical perception of reality is in terms of how things affect us. This is natural and probably inevitable to a great degree, but moral progress largely consists in moving beyond this egocentric perspective and recognizing the independent reality and value of beings other than ourselves. “Love is the recognition, the realization, of a creature chosen from eternity by God, who ‘hates nothing that He has made (why else would He have made it?)’…What God has chosen is not only what is, literally, human: every thing is a message of love, which we misread or miss entirely as long as we suppose that we are ourselves the only centre of the universe.”

    Consequently, when we perpetrate violence against others, or exploit them for our own gain, we are denying their independent reality and treating them as mere means to our ends. Humanism and most traditional forms of Christianity agree in holding that only human beings are genuinely ends-in-themselves. But unlike humanism, Christianity has a certain built in trajectory toward a wider apprehension of the value of all created being.

    The worry, of course, is that a greater appreciation of the value of non-human creatures will somehow downgrade the moral status of human beings. Though rarely is actual evidence offered to back this up, critics can point to thinkers like Peter Singer who simultaneously advocate for better treatment of animals and argue for the permissibility of killing “defective” or “unwanted” infants. Thus in the minds of the critics any blurring of the line between the value of human and non-human life seems inextricably tied to a diminished appreciation of the dignity of human beings.

    But I don’t see why this has to be the case. Singer is a bit of a unique case because, as an ultra-consistent consequentialist, he is willing to follow the premises of his arguments to the bitter end where someone else might balk at his conclusions, many of which are highly counterintuitive to say the least! But it by no means follows that someone arriving at similar conclusions about our treatment of animals by a different route needs to embrace the same conclusions as Singer regarding, e.g. abortion or infanticide. Andrew Linzey, for instance, not only argues for a paradigm shift in the way we look at animals, he has also argued against using human embryos as experimental subjects on the similar grounds that life is not simply ours to do with what we will as long as it seems to serve our interests.

    In other words, concern for animals isn’t properly understood as an attempt to downgrade the moral status of human beings but as an attempt to upgrade the status of other animals. No one (well not no one) thinks that feminism must necessarily result in downgrading the moral worth of men. As the somewhat sardonic bumper sticker puts it, “Feminism is the radical idea that women are people.” We might say, less pithily, that animal liberation is the radical idea that living, sentient creatures are more than mere objects or material to be used in whatever way we see fit. Human beings should feel threatened by that assertion only to the extent that our present lifestyles are premised upon its denial.

    This doesn’t mean that genuine human and animal interests won’t ever conflict (though I’d argue far less so than some anti-animal liberation polemicists would lead you to believe). But to the extent that the moral life is about learning to see others as independent realities having their own worth and goods proper to their nature, I don’t think we can, at least on religious grounds, set the limits of our moral concern at the boundary of the human kingdom.

    But even if that’s right it doesn’t resolve the question of priorities. Even if we agree in principle that animals are beings whose welfare and dignity ought, in an ideal world, to be safeguarded and that concern for animal well-being and human well-being is part of the same view of created being as intrinsically valuable, how can we justify attending to animals when there is so much human misery in the world? Shouldn’t we focus on the most important issues first?

    I think the response to this objection has at least three parts. First, much of our mistreatment of animals would be abated merely by ceasing to do certain things. This doesn’t require us to dedicate new resources to the well-being of animals, but merely to stop harming them. I’m not going to claim that, say, vegetarianism is morally obligatory, but the greatest source of human-inflicted animal suffering, both quantitatively and qualitatively, is almost certainly animal agriculture. Virtually all of us (meaning those of us in the industrialized West, the kind of people with reliable internet connections. ;-)) have it in our power to stop contributing to this by, at least, seeking alternatives to factory farmed meat.

    Secondly, in allocating our resources dedicated to alleviating suffering or improving the lot of others, very few of us adhere to a strict utilitarian ordering by focusing all our efforts on the single most serious problem currently facing the world. For instance, you could argue that nuclear disarmament is the most serious moral problem there is because it alone has the potential to result in the utter destruction of the human race (and most other life for that matter). By this standard, pretty much every other problem pales in comparison. And yet many people feel eminently justified in dedicating time and resources to causes other than nuclear disarmament.

    Why is this? I think it’s partly because we don’t order our priorities in quite that rationalistic a fashion. Different people feel drawn to different issues or causes for a variety of reasons that often have more to do with personal experience than a dispassionate ordering of priorities. And this applies to people who’ve dedicated part of their lives to working toward improving the lot of animals. Is someone who works on behalf of animals to be criticized for spending that much less time working to alleviate poverty or fight illiteracy if the person who has taken up those causes isn’t to be criticized for failing to dedicate all their efforts toward eradicating war or disease? There is properly a kind of division of labor, it seems, based on interest, personality, experience, and sympathy that doesn’t admit of a simple hirearchical ordering.

    Third, it can be argued that we have, by our assertion of dominion over other living creatures, incurred special obligations toward them. Our obligations, for instance, to animals in the wild may largely be to “do no harm,” but our obligations toward domesticated animals may well be stronger precisely in light of the fact that we have taken them into our service. Just as a man has obligations to his own children that he doesn’t have to the children of strangers, we may well have special duties of care to “our” animals as a consequence of the rights we have asserted over them and the use we make of them.

    We also often recognize special duties to the weak and vulnerable; contrary to some theories of morality, moral considerability isn’t directly dependent to one’s abilities as a free, independent agent capable of discharging duties and entering into agreements. In fact, our moral sentiments often point in quite the opposite direction: those who are weak and unable to fend for themselves call for greater care just because they are at our mercy.

    It’s also worth pointing out that some of the most important efforts on behalf of animals were undertaken by those with impressive humanitarian records. William Wilberforce, not exactly a slouch in the area of human rights, co-founded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It may be that widening the circle of moral concern, far from being some kind of zero-sum game where some can benefit only at the expense of others, actually reinforces benign attitudes, making people more sensitive to suffering and injustice wherever it’s found. And it may even be that proper attention to the rightful claims of humans and animals will only be acheived together.

    [Note: this post has been slightly edited for clarity.]

  • Who is my neighbor?

    *Christopher has posted the text of a talk he recently gave on Christianity and the environment. It’s terrific stuff, with a very Lutheran and Benedictine flavor.

    I think that rooting our ethics (including our environmental ethics) in our response to what God has first done for us is exactly right and it’s one of the insights of Reformational Christianity that I resonate the most with.

    Andrew Linzey has written that one of the things that Christians can contribute to the movements for animal and environmental well-being is a sense of our solidarity in sin and our dependence upon grace. This can provide a powerful counterweight to temptations toward self-righteousness, as well as a motivation for doing good without falling into despair or utopianism.

  • Creatures of the Same God

    I’m excited to see that Anglican theologian Andrew Linzey is publishing a new book by this name. It looks like it will build on his earlier work on animal theology and develop it in some new ways.

    Unfortunately, I don’t see any indication that it will be available here in the US upon publication, and it appears to be a fairly pricey university press publication.

    I reviewed Linzey’s Animal Theology here.