August 15, 2012 - Christian Vegetarian Association Update Newsletters


	2012 Newsletters

CVA Weekly Newsletter
August 15, 2012

Activist Feedback

Comments on the Milan Kundera Quotation

This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman

1. Activist Feedback

Jon, who leafleted with Darina at Ignite Fest in Schaumburg, IL, writes:

Ignite Fest in Schaumburg proved to be a successful event. On Saturday we arrived a few hours before the event ended, hoping to catch people leaving after some big name acts finished, but the security was such that we needed to leave and come back for the ending. Saturday was fairly rough - we received a decent amount of antagonism from people, which is a strange reaction at CVA events. I even had one guy become belligerent with me, yelling at me that we are allowed to eat meat, that the bible said so, and questioned who I thought I was to tell him what he could and couldn't eat. I was super polite with this person, asking him to just read the booklet and he would understand why, if nothing else, that Jesus would look differently on modern animal farms. However, he had his own agenda to prove, and continued yelling after me for a minute even after I decided to just walk away. We didn't let that spoil our night however, and continued leafleting until the crowd died down.

Darina had a much different experience on Sunday, citing numerous positive reactions and supportive feedback from the crowd. She didn't have any negative experiences, and said that several people thanked her for what she was doing. Overall, we handed out 679 booklets.

Please make any donations for our efforts to Justice For Animals.

2. Comments on the Milan Kundera Quotation

Last week, I encouraged people to comment on the following passage from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”

Gracia Fay Ellwood writes:

I tend to feel at a gut level that Kundera is right about all debacles stemming from this one. Yet something gives me pause. In the heady early days of the feminist Second Wave, the idea was common that when the heavy power imbalance between the sexes was corrected--when women were as much taken for granted as politicians and professors and ministers (et al) as men, the major evils in our culture would be done away: women would be more assertive, men no longer macho and aggressive. Equality, healthy parenting, freedom! We are much closer to that ideal now than in the 'sixties and 'seventies, but things are still very bad, especially in the political and ecological realms; we are almost more of a plutucracy now than a democracy, and the fate of the earth is hanging on a thread.

So what if we humans stopped exploiting animals, and especially raising animals to eat? Certainly the planet would be much better off, but would we be free of the evils of plutocracy, of the Big Lie, of aggressive wars, of major corruption in high places? Even now there are firebrand animal activists who care so much that they would sacrifice everything for animals, but who hate exploiters so intensely that they are ready for violence, verbal and physical. Would all people become peaceful once we human societies were at peace with our furry and feathered cousins? I hope so, but I can't feel assured of it.

Julius Johnston writes:

Very good passage from Milan Kundera – he is of course right.

If man can only be kind or respect those that are strong or protected by the strong, man is no more than what the imprisoned Marquis de Sade thought.

Vegetarians and respecters of animals are “Purists,” they try to weed out the hypocrisy and wrath in the human soul

3. This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman

Christians Are Made For Pouring

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