- Upcoming Activist
Opportunities
- Essay: When Should We Make Analogies to the
Holocaust?
- This Week’s Sermon from Rev Frank and Mary Hoffman
- The January-February Issue of The Peaceable Table Is Now Online
- Comment on “Universal Prayer of
Forgiveness” [in last week’s e-newsletter,
January 2, 2013]
1. Upcoming Activist Opportunities
1/17 PA
Reading Winter
Jam Christian Concert
1/18 PA University
Park Winter Jam Christian Concert
1/19 AZ Phoenix
Thousand Foot Krutch Christian Rock Concert
1/19 OH Columbus
Winter Jam Christian Concert
1/19 KS Hays
Third Day Christian Concert
1/20 IN Ft. Wayne
Winter Jam Christian Concert
1/20 KS Oakley
Third Day Christian Rock Concert
2/21 VA Fairfax
Third Day Christian Rock Concert
1/25 TX Amarillo
Third Day Christian Rock Concert
1/25 MO Kansas City
Winter Jam Christian Concert
1/26 IA Des Moines
Winter Jam Christian Concert
1/27 IL Peoria
Winter Jam Christian Concert
1/30 IN Evansville
Winter Jam Christian Concert
2. Essay: When Should We Make
Analogies to the Holocaust?
I have been exploring the question of
whether we should use Nazi and Holocaust imagery when discussing
contemporary treatment of nonhuman beings, particularly in relation to
factory farms. As Charles Patterson shows in his book Eternal
Treblinka, the analogy is a valid one in many respects – the
experiences of the victims and the strategies and rationalizations of
the victimizers are very similar. Yet such analogies often anger
people, in part because some people claim that the analogies denigrate
the victims of the Holocaust in perhaps in part because people resent
being compared to Nazis.
Analogies can be important rhetorical
tools, but they can also undermine an argument if the focus of the
argument shifts to the validity of the analogy itself. If we are
trying to show that animals experience extreme suffering on factory
farms, we don’t want the discussion to shift from the animals’
experience to whether or not it is appropriate to make analogies to
the Holocaust.
Further, the emotions that analogies to the
Holocaust elicit in many people can make it difficult for them to
focus attention on the animals’ plight. Therefore, I think that,
however valid analogies to the Holocaust might be, we must be careful
when using them. Accusing people of Nazi-like behavior will generally
result in defensiveness and anger and will usually be unproductive.
However, referring to modern animal agribusiness facilities as “like
concentration camps” and noting that the extreme suffering and the
mechanized murder “resembles the Holocaust” can be, in the proper
setting and with the right audience, an effective way to communicate
what the animals experience.
Do analogies to the Holocaust demean
victims of this great tragedy? Which tragedy is greater – the
Holocaust’s murder of about 9 million people or contemporary animal
agribusiness’ murder of about10 billion sentient beings each year? I
will offer thoughts on these questions next week.
Stephen R.
Kaufman, M.D.
3. This Week’s Sermon from Rev Frank and Mary
Hoffman
Where Was Jesus Born?
4.
The January-February Issue of The Peaceable Table Is Now Online
Contents include:
* In the Editor's Corner Guest Essay,
"Communicating with Animals," Dorothy Tucker Samuel develops an idea
of Dallas Willard that in the Eden story, "have dominion" means that
human beings are charged by God with relating to animals as God
relates to us: in a way that fosters peace, healing, and liberation
among them. But the widespread human exploitation of animals,
especially killing them for food, is doing just the opposite.
Readers may be interested in the analogies between this
Biblically-based concept and Katherine Hulme's idea that "the animals
are waiting" for us to become increasingly God-realized, so that they
may climb the evolutionary ladder to peace after us (see the Editor's
Corner essay
http://www.vegetarianfriends.net/issue66.html).
* A NewsNote
tells of an international survey showing that empowered women are more
compassionate than their not-yet-empowered counterparts.
* The
Jan-Feb. Pioneer is Gina Cerminara, a compassionate Renaissance woman
who worked in the areas of psychology, parapsychology, general
semantics, spirituality, and vegetarianism.
* A review of the film
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey finds fault with its flood of
violence, but also points out its wonderful picture of the
relationship between rational beings and animals in Middle Earth.
To read this issue, see
http://www.vegetarianfriends.net/issue94.html.
Do you know of
outlets where you might distribute copies of our 16-page booklet "Are
Animals Our Neighbors? Taking the View From Below" (see Review,
http://www.vegetarianfriends.net/issue21.html .)
If so,
contact us and we will be glad to send you a copy to check out, and/or
as many copies as you can find homes for. We appreciate
financial help, but our central concern is getting the word out.
Toward the Peaceable Kingdom,
Gracia Fay Ellwood, Editor
5.
Comment on “Universal Prayer of Forgiveness” [in last week’s
e-newsletter, January 2, 2013]
I am troubled by what I see as the apparent inference
in the "Universal Prayer of Forgiveness" that every experience we may
have, including horrible ones such as attacks by criminals, should be
considered as "from God”. While we may learn from them the manner and
extent to which God allows his created beings to use or abuse their
gift of free will, and the danger that may pose to us or others
(including to the beings tortured on factory farms) I do not believe
that a loving God causes such things to happen; and we should not
believe that He does, as that may make us willing victims and/or
apathetic.
Rather, it should encourage us to band together with others
interested in leading lives of love and gentility; both for our
safety, and for the example it can set (especially by the witnessed
Blessings it encourages) for society at large.
Gordon