The Herbivore Family
The Theology of Flesh
w is the ancient Greek word for flesh um it’s it’s a word which describes humans and animals alike um so it’s of Bas s of commonality between all creatures and flesh or S is also the substance of God uh just to become in Christ and it’s the substance that um of course he shares with his Cree humans and animals alike.
Mobilizing a Faith-Based Movement
So um I began to not on my own but actually with a group of light-minded people who like me believe that uh animals is should be a a prime Faith issue and um and and we as Christians should be at the Forefront of of protecting animals and enabling for their flourishing.
Exploring the Good News
At the at the end of today as you sit down what do you want to have happened yes the theme is is is Christianity good friend us and that’s a really robust challenging question a question that we explored in the panel discussions in the talks in your conversations today so I’d like people to be infused about this and want to continue those conversations continue back exploration in their lives and communities.
A Vanguard for Compassion
And I think that those of us gathered here could be part of a Vanguard that is the Catalyst for provoking a new understanding about the place of animals in Christianity I think if you look at the unprecedented scale of the needless cruelties that we visit on farmed animals uh you would uh take a clear impression that the societies which endorse that way of treat animals must uh care nothing at all for the well-being of uh nonhuman animals.
The Paradox of Secular Concern
Any Facebook feeds it seems to be uh when it’s not about Donald Trump it’s pretty much all fluffy pictures of kittens if you look at the amount of resource that uh people invest in caring for companion animals uh both financial and in terms of their time uh if you look at how much money people give to animals related Charities uh it seems like the concern for animals is very very widespread.
The Church’s Silence on Animals
If we look around and ask what organizations are prominent in caring for Animals I think the organizations which might come to mind are those that seem to have a secular uh uh ethos that’s really striking is that animals are not prominent in terms of the concerns of uh the churches that uh I’m a member of that you uh May will be members of two I think few Christians think about concern for Animals As a faith issue I think we tend to think about concern for animals in the same kind of category as soap operas or Game of Thrones or football or your favorite guilty pleasure of choice we love them we’re concerned about them passionately but we often don’t make the connections between our enthusiasm for them and our faith we don’t often expect to hear about them in church.
Disenfranchised Care
So we confess faith in Jesus Christ and we love animals but we don’t often put them together so my diagnosis is that care care among Christians for Animals is disenfranchised care among Christians for Animals is disenfranchised it’s there but we don’t think we have permission for it from our faith or the churches we belong to and perhaps that’s what brings some of us here feeling strongly that we need to be that we’re concerned about treating animals well but puzzled about how that fits with our faith and more puzzled that other Christians don’t seem to feel the same.
Alienation from the Church
For some people that puts them on the fringes of the church for some people that makes them give up on the church alt together perhaps that’s you or perhaps that’s someone you know and this situation seems very odd to me because there are such strong biblical and Theological reasons to care about animals and it’s a abundantly clear that Christians in the past have seen concern for Animals As fundamentally belonging to their faith and have acted in response.
Redefining Dominion
Languaging cannot be any kind of exploitative relationship in relation to uh other animals if we have a particular capacity to have dominion that kind of dominion must be the kind of dominion that’s trying to be a gracious presence in relation to all other uh animal life if we move on from uh the Bible to uh Christian theological tradition it’s really striking to me that one of the primary arguments that Christian theologians were having in the first centuries of the Christian church was arguing against uh opponents later judged to be Heretics that creation was good.
Engaging the Wider Church
I think we need to get together to take this conversation out to our sisters and brothers in Christ in The Wider church that’s why I founded the organization creature kind uh a year ago which is a new organization seeking to engage Christians with farmed Animal Welfare as a faith concern while Humanity has a special place in lordship over all creatures that lordship brings the responsibility of care for all creatures in this world which is our common hope that the evangelists were not concerned with recording anything that Jesus might have said about nature and the Animal Kingdom for the evangelists in their very brief rendition of 3 years of Ministry of Jesus their primary need was to record the teaching.
The Delicate Balance of Nature
I think we would all agree that we now have sophisticated technology which shows us that there is a delicate balance of all nature in our common home and we are entrusted with maintaining its well-being education would now seem to be the greatest challenge for us all the reality of climate change the consumption of unsustainable resources the detrimental impact of industry and consumerism particularly on people who have done least to damage our world and a care for the animal kingdom with this delicate balance and dependence.
Dignity and the Right to Thrive
Animals have their own dignity as part of God’s creation we hear of the extinction of thousands of species each having their own place within that balance of nature we fail to recognize their value and their right not just to function but to thrive within nature as was intended by their creation and development while we should be see pleased to see a growing voice but by no means yet a universal voice to tackle climate change and to protect the environment we must also include all the connections that the animal kingdom has with the environment and the essential part that they play in sustaining our world.
Harmony vs. Domination
There’s a big difference between Harmony and domination it was all the way back at the time of St Francis that the living in harmony with nature became a primary motif of the Christian faith I contend and some of the best theology that ever been written is in hyms rather than in theological tones but all of us sing the DU Sal praise God from whom all blessings flow praise him what All Creatures did you get the word All Creatures.
Confronting Anthropocentrism
We live since the Reformation time in a very what we we call a sociologist anthropocentric world we think that human beings are the center of the universe the truth is that calvinistic writings said that you know that God created this whole universe for us to enjoy wrong we we should not look at the world that way the heavens were not created for us to enjoy you know you go out and say look at the stars look at look at the heavens look at the beauty of it all think that God created all this universe for us w w especially in this day and age when we find that billions of miles out in space there are galaxies that we never even seen or will we ever see.
From Object to Sacred Subject
21st century is we’re moving into an ER in which there is a rediscovery of deep spirituality and that has altered our attitudes towards an an i relationship or an i relationship is the other person an it a thing to be used for your own gratification or is the other person view as sacred the difference is that one has an objective relationship with a thing with an A but one enters into subjective empathy if the other is that is the person you meet s then when Adam sinned and he sin and the fault of that not only were human beings dragged down but all of nature was dragged down as well and the Animals suffer but animals suffer through no fault of their own but as a consequence of what we human beings did and continue.
Context: The Conference
I’m inter and M yeah where are we we’re at the SS conference and at the moment in the ACT interactive Workshop uh what’s the conference about it’s about Christianity and their theology about animals and where Christian is could use animals a lot.
Citizens of the Peaceable Kingdom
Christians should care about animals because of who and how Christians are called to be my longer answer comes in four parts through the resurrected Body of Christ we are also citizens in the peaceful Kingdom our job was to reflect the promise of Heaven in how we live on earth do we believe that Christ’s reconciliation of the cosmos is greater than the financial practicalities of mass-producing hamburgers if we do then we can choose a bean burger over a beef burger as a reflection of that belief even if we can’t demonstrate that one bean burger will transform industrial factory farming so Christians should care about animals because the body of Christ should behave as if the Peaceable Kingdom is real.
Diverse Manifestations of Love
Some Christians provide faithful persuasive examples of discipleship that we have not yet taken on ourselves we should not dismiss them as another sort of Christians as if it makes sense is there to be Christians for Animals Christians for economic Justice Christians for refugees and Christians for normal stuff we are all Christians for Christ as one body we can learn from each other about how to be more and more fully for Christ in all we do no one individual can be an expert in all manifestations of love any more than one individual can be all parts of the body.
Marks of an Animal-Friendly Church
The Anglican Society for the welfare of animals decided to give Awards to churches that are animal friendly and it’s proved an interesting exercise and I want suggest that an animal friendly church congregation is one that firstly takes some practical steps to being animal friendly secondly is one that has a pastural heart um and are expand on that and thirdly one that is Evangelistic and outward looking and wants to grow so God so loved the world the Greek word is Cosmos it’s not God so loved human beings it’s God so loved the entire creation that he gave his only son and if God so loved the world then so should we.
A Personal Awakening
Animals never really featured as a part of the Christian understanding that I that I inherited a deep appreciation for the natural world a deep love of the natural world but never entirely an understanding that that our Christian faith might have something to say about animals and then at the start of my adop life when I was at University and in the early years of my marriage I would say that God took me and my now husband on a a kind of fast track around issues particularly of social justice and issues of poverty and caring for other people and for me that took a slant that was very definitely environmental and I’ve read a book around the the biblical basis for environmental care that uh really was like an epiphany it was like the scales fell from my eyes as I suddenly saw for the first time that actually the Bible was relevant for for the whole world and had something to say about the whole world and not only human beings.
The Ethics of Consumption
When my children were born I was suddenly faced with the question of what do I want to put into their tiny bodies I want them to grow up good and healthy I don’t want to fill their bodies with chemicals and pesticides and and rubbish and lots of salt and sugar and E numbers and etc etc so that got me looking at the food industry got me thinking around issues of organic and open my eyes to this whole massive thing that is the food industry and got me moving along those lines and as a part of that I began questioning meat and the sort of meat that we were eating as a family and that I was feeding my children and I came to that realization as I know we we all have here that if we are going to be meat and I I know there will be a spectrum of views around that here if we are going to eat meat then it really matters how animals are kept.
Food as Theology
And I came to understand that actually that wasn’t a a fringe issue for me as a Christian this was a central part of my theology it mattered this was a theological statement what sort of meat at that stage I would or would not by as as I have gone through the last 20 years also trying to live in ways that that take care of the whole world and and respect it and look after it.
Image of God and Creaturely Sameness
The first really obviously is Genesis 1 and the creation account that we have there often the emphasis in that is placed on Genesis 12628 and our distinctiveness in terms of being the only creature that is made in God’s image but what has become really important to me has been yes recognizing that and we might want to discuss that maybe in our panel later but actually recognizing that in every other respect we are the same as all the other creatures but more important than having the theology is to have the presence of Christ in your life Jesus prays before his crucifixion father I pray that I might be in them even as you are in me and so I always say to people are you is Christ in you because one of the evidences that Christ is in you is that you will respond in a Christlike manner to other people and to all the world around you.
God So Loved the Cosmos
John 3:16 is the verse that we all know for God so love the world and the clergy types who are here know that the word world World there is Cosmos that God didn’t just love human beings he loved all that he created he so loved the world and it’s gotten messed up and we have messed it up certainly those ecologists and environmentalists that are here saying you’re saying it right here we have really messed up the planet we messed up everything about the life on this planet yes and when Jesus came into the world world he came into the world with a purpose and that was to create a people who would rescue the world from the mess of it in and restore it to what God meant for it to be when it was created.
The Promise of a Pain-Free Creation
Talks about the end when Christ returns and the kingdom is actualized in its fullness it says that the lion and the lamb will lie down together that the destruction of nature will be no more in the 65th chapter of Isaiah it says neither shall they hurt the Earth anymore I mean there’s all kinds of good biblical reasons for taking the positions that we do and being Humane and being caring for animals but in the end there’s a love that has to be shed abroad and the kind of love that we’re talking about here is a gift to the holy spirit it’s in the book of Galatians the fifth chapter and the fruits of the spirit the result of being spiritual number one is love number one is love and love between persons one thing but love goes beyond the husband wife relationship it goes beyond even relationships with children it goes beyond and the more you are filled with the Holy Spirit the more you will approach animalism with love I mean when you go through the writings of the New Testament you you get this over and over again love love love it’s all about love and the kingdom of God is where love is expressed as it should be expressed you say what about justice justice is nothing more than love transl into social policies you know that love :
