I’m against ’em, basically. Any practical benefit they serve (education, entertainment, scientific research, species conservation) can be provided in other ways that don’t infringe the natural liberty and well-being of wild animals. I mean, I’m not fanatical about it, and there are plenty of other more pressing issues, but I think it’s a practice that’s pretty hard to justify.
Category: Animal Rights and Issues
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Animal protection in the farm bill
Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society, summarizes four animal protection amendments that made it into the Senate version of the Farm Bill, dealing with issues ranging from imported puppies to using cloned animals for food.
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Hillary and the meat-industrial complex
The recently announced co-chair of “Rural Americans for Hillary” is the former head of “the main trade group representing CAFO [concentrated animal feeding operations, a.k.a. factory farms] operators.” More here. Hard to think of too many things that’ve been more generally detrimental to the livelihood of “rural Americans” that industrial farming (not to mention their effect on the animals).
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All theology is animal theology
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.
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A humane life
There’s a nice article in Newsweek by Wayne Pacelle, the current CEO of the Humane Society of the US about how he got into activism on behalf of animals.
The HSUS has recently ramped up its efforts on behalf of farm animals, such as promoting ballot measures that would mandate slightly more humane conditions for animals raised for food.
Some critics, awash in industry cash, accuse the HSUS of departing from its core mission of looking out for puppies and kittens. But, of course, if you’re concerned about animal well-being you can’t consistently ignore the plight of the literally billions of animals raised and killed for food every year. The dread specter of “giving animals the same rights of humans” seems less sinister when the right in question is the right not to be confined for the majority of your life to a crate that makes it impossible to turn around.
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Edwards on confinement farming
One of the oft-neglected aspects of factory farming is the environmental degradation it gives rise to, and the diminishing quality of life it results in for those who have to live around it.
A Thinking Reed 