1.
CVA’s New and Improved Booklet
2. Prayer Request
3.
Christianity and Violence: Animal Issues, part 3
1. CVA’s New and Improved Booklet!
The CVA is pleased to announce that it has revised and updated the
booklet Honoring God’s Creation, which has been renamed Are We Good
Stewards of God’s Creation? Astute readers will note many changes,
including information about animal agriculture and global warming.
To view the new booklet, go to
www.christianveg.org/honoring.htm.
Let’s get this booklet out there and into the hands of Christians! To
find out about upcoming leafleting and tabling opportunities in your
area, join the CVA Calendar Group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group.christian_vegetarian/. Read the home
page, and then join. You will then be able to log in anytime to identify
upcoming events in your region. Contact Paris at
christian_vegetarian@yahoo.com if you might be able to help.
2. Prayer
Request
Saiom writes: My brother Leonard had a heart attack on
Saturday. He is home now
I would be grateful if you added him to your prayer list.
3. Christian and Violence [ongoing essay series]
Animal Issues (part 3 of 3)
Contemporary treatment of animals contrasts sharply with the biblical
description of God’s ideal in Genesis 1-2. In Genesis 2, Adam’s naming
of the animals showed concern and respect: “So out of the ground the
Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and
brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the
man called every living creature, that was its name.
The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to
every beast of the field” (2:19-20). Note that Adam did not specifically
name the species or the type of animal; he named every living creature,
including “every beast of the field” individually.1
We give individual names to those about whom we care,2
while humans nearly always identify those animals whom humans abuse by
their species name, such as “cow” or “pig.”3 Similarly, those
aiming to abuse individual humans typically describe the victims as
objects rather than as feeling, individual persons, and victimizers use
impersonal or pejorative terms, such as the Japanese in World War II
calling American prisoners “logs” and the genocidal Rwandan Hutus
calling their Tutsi victims “cockroaches.”
Callousness toward animals has had tragic consequences for humans as
well as animals. Reminiscent of the “law of karma,” many of the greatest
threats to our well-being relate directly or indirectly to humankind’s
collective hardness of heart with respect to animals. Much disease in
the West results from eating animal products.4
Animal agriculture contributes substantially to global warming,
pollution, species extinctions and other components of the growing
environmental crisis, and it also squanders dwindling resources upon
which our society depends.5
Intensive animal agriculture facilitates the transfer of infectious
organisms from animals to people, increasing the risk of bird flu or
other pandemics.6 Regarding animal experimentation, even if
it were true that the practice helps alleviate disease, the implicit
“ends justifies the means” mindset contributes to callousness and
heartlessness toward other humans.
Indeed, Roberta Kalechofsky has thoroughly documented the
relationship between animal experimentation and unethical human
experimentation. The mindset that places knowledge above morality has
led to abuses of humans throughout the world, notably by Nazis and
Japanese scientists during World War II.7 Contemporary
safeguards have protected human subjects in the West, but
disenfranchised people everywhere are at risk as long as our culture
endorses activities that countenance abuse of innocent individuals.
We know from the experiences of the last century that the cultural
disease of violence is now a greater threat to human well-being than
medical diseases,8 and a mindset that disregards animal
victims can easily come to disregard human victims. Whether the victims
are humans or animals, the psychology of abuse seems to be similar in
both cases.
In general, victimization involves a conviction that one’s actions
are righteous and approved by God combined with demonization or
objectification of the victims. This allows victimizers to disregard
suffering and to not see death at their hands as murder.
I cannot imagine that a God of love approves of humankind’s massive
abuse of God’s creatures. As the future of humankind becomes
increasingly precarious, will God grant mercy to those who have shown so
little mercy toward God’s animals? The Bible relates that God promised
never to destroy the earth again with a flood on account of violence,
but the Bible does not contain a promise that God would spare humankind
from the consequences of its own violence.
Notes
1. Some have argued that, in this passage, Adam was performing the
necessary task of giving names to species. I do not think this
interpretation is reasonable. First, the instruction to name “every
beast of the field” singles out individual creatures. Second, this
passage does not appear to describe Adam performing the task of
ascribing names to things, since there are no instructions for Adam to
name all the plants and inanimate objects. Genesis 2:18 reads, “Then the
LORD God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him
a helper fit for him.’” Since animals were created as Adam’s helpers and
companions, it seems most reasonable to conclude that naming animals
reflects to Adam’s positive, mutually beneficial relationships with the
animals.
2. Youths involved in 4-H or similar programs typically name the
animals for whom the youths must care for an animal until the animal is
sold for slaughter, and they often find betraying the animal’s
friendship and trust heartbreaking. Evidently in an effort to
desensitize the youths, adults often encourage the youths to give names
that relate to the animals’ destiny, such as Sausage Patty (the title of
a nice children’s book by Diane Allevato, published by Animal Place,
1998).
3. Similarly, animal experimenters typically identify individual
animals by their species name and assigned number, such as “monkey 212.”
Animal experimenters, as other people engaged in activities that harm
animals, generally refer to individual animals with the impersonal
pronoun “it” rather than “he” or “she.” See Dunayer, Joan, Animal
Equality: Language and Liberation. Derwood, MD; Ryce Publishing, 2001;
Phillips, Mary T. Constructing Laboratory Animals: An Ethnographic Study
in the Sociology of Science (dissertation in the Department of Sociology
of New York University). 1991.
4. Mangels, Ann Reed, Messina, Virginia, and Melina, Vesanto.
“Position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada:
Vegetarian Diets” Journal of the American Dietetic Association
2003;103:748-765; Barnard, Neal. Food for Life: How the New Four Food
Groups Can Save Your Life. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1993.
5. Worldwatch Institute. “Meat: Now, It’s Not Personal! But like it
or not, meat-eating is becoming a problem for everyone on the planet.”
World Watch 2004 (July/August) pp. 12-20; Sapp, Amy. “Production and
Consumption of Meat: Implications for the Global Environment and Human
Health” www.med.harvard.edu/chge/course/papers/sapp.pdf; The University
of Chicago News Office. Study: vegan diets healthier for planet, people
than meat diets. http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060413.diet.shtml;
Sierra Club. Clean Water & Factory Farms http://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/.
6. Gregor, Michael. Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching. New York,
Lantern Books, 2006; Lyman, Howard F. Mad Cowboy. New York: Scribner,
1998.
7. Kalechofsky, Roberta. The PoetPhysician and the Healer-Killer: The
Emergence of a Medical Technocracy, in progress.
8. More people die of preventable diseases than direct human
violence, but many of these people succumb because human violence has
displaced them from food sources, and then malnutrition has predisposed
to disease.
Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.