Fasting from Injustice, Feasting in Freedom

by Alyssa Moore

I identify as Catholic, but until I began to study theology at a Jesuit university, I knew few other Catholics or practicing Christians my age. Among those vaguely familiar with Catholicism, a few common factoids floated around: we make a huge deal about “the holy wafer thing” at church (we do); women and queer people are restricted from taking on leadership roles (alas, usually true); we tend to have big families (at least historically); and—this was the most frequent one—we don’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent. 

For me, already an herbivore from the time I was old enough to begin fasting, this last one didn’t seem like a big deal. (It did provoke a few theological debates about whether or not Gardein chickenless chick’n nuggets, being made of plants, were acceptable Friday fare.) But I became increasingly aware that, to both Catholic and non-Catholic/Christian acquaintances alike, abstaining from meat was something unusual, something that set our tradition apart. 

I’ve been interested to discover that when you ask Catholics what this practice is all about, few are able to articulate a reason right away. Among those who attempt to, you get a wide variety of answers, some of them slightly unsettling. “It’s an act of self-discipline.” “It’s a way to remember your total dependence on God to provide for your needs.” “It’s a reminder that the mind and soul are more important than the body.” “It’s a way of respecting Christ’s ‘flesh sacrifice’ by not partaking in other ‘flesh sacrifices.’” “It’s a means of practicing obedience to the Church!” “I’m not sure, I’m not even really Catholic anymore, but my Irish grandmother would be horrified if I didn’t do it.”  

Strangely, no one thinks to suggest that we are fasting from an everyday act of violence and indifference: towards animals, towards creation, towards our neighbors. If they did, we might begin to ponder why we only do this for a few days out of the year. 

As an animal lover by nature, and an environmental scientist by training, I have always been frustrated by my church’s lack of engagement with animal protection and environmental justice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church goes so far as to argue that “we can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point,” suggesting that each individual animal being and species, constantly upheld by the love, care, and affection of their Creator, is a unique manifestation of God’s presence and characteristics. (1) It repeatedly describes animals and other forms of nonhuman creation as living revelation, imploring Catholics to remember that animals have their own purpose, value, and trinitarian destiny entirely apart from their “usefulness” to human beings. It emphasizes on multiple occasions that it is “contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly,” and preaches that animals should be treated with kindness, mercy, and restraint—both for their own sake, and because of their relationship with the Creator. (2) And, as we know—as governing bodies like the UN and IPCC are all but begging us to realize—our exploitation of animals on an industrial scale has devastating consequences for our health and the health of our planet. (3)

What does fasting mean if after we celebrate Christ’s resurrection we return to the daily sacrificing and killing of animal bodies—an endless Good Friday for God’s revelatory, beloved nonhuman creation?  

A parable of sorts: I worked for a while as an administrative assistant at my Jesuit Catholic university, doing general office work and helping prep for catered business events. While almost all of the school’s student gatherings were vegan or vegetarian events, apparently our sustainability scruples got set aside for faculty, donor, and board meetings, which always involved at least one kind of meat or fish: steak, ham, or various kinds of poultry. I was always bothered by this inconsistency, but conscious of the fact that I was an easily replaceable student worker, not in a good position to contest the higher-ups’ menu choices.

Less than forty-eight hours before once such dinner was to take place, I was cc’d on an email saying that the catering order needed to be redone: since it was Ash Wednesday, the faculty could not eat meat, so would it be possible to replace the chicken with salmon, please? 

I would like to think that twenty-odd portions of chicken did not go to waste that night, that these creatures were not slaughtered and butchered just to end up in a dumpster, unused, in a city in which almost twenty percent of residents are food insecure—all in the name of a more “appropriate” fish dinner. (4)

I would like to think that. Unfortunately, I don’t think that was the case. 

And it’s not just animal creation that suffers because of our shortsightedness around food.  

On March 2, 1980, less than a month before he was murdered while saying Mass, the Salvadoran martyr and saint Monseñor Óscar Romero proclaimed from the pulpit: “Lenten fasting is not the same thing in those lands where people eat well as is a Lent among our third-world peoples, undernourished as they are, living in a perpetual Lent, always fasting.” (5) In the global north, we have normalized the fact that our food consumption (of animal products and otherwise) comes at the cost of oppression and injustice elsewhere. In San Romero’s native Central America, for example, the United States helped plan and execute a 1954 coup overthrowing Guatemala’s democratically elected president, sparking a civil war in which 200,000 Guatemalan people, primarily indigenous citizens, were killed. Why? The US desire for cheap tropical fruit. The Guatemalan president had proposed land reforms which would have threatened the global fruit conglomerate United Fruit Co., now known as Chiquita Brands International. (6) In South America, cattle ranching, largely driven by the US demand for cheap beef, is currently the leading cause of deforestation in every single Amazon country. This demand accounts for 80% of deforestation rates as of 2015 with devastating consequences for indigenous communities whose land is polluted, burned, deforested, and even seized outright for ranchland. (7)

Many of us live a “perpetual Lent” in wealthy countries as well, forced into frequent fasting by income inequality, increasing cost of living, and lack of access to nutritious food. A few blocks to the south of our graduate theological campus lies the University of California, Berkeley, arguably one of the most well-regarded universities in the nation. Even pre-pandemic, 44% of undergraduate students and 26% of graduate students in the UC system described themselves as food insecure, meaning they had to eat less, or experienced periods of disrupted eating, due to a lack of resources. (8) In Alameda County more broadly, at least one in five people source food from food banks in order to make ends meet. Two thirds of food bank clients are children and seniors, and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by hunger and food insecurity. Nationwide, households of color, especially Black and Latinx households, are approximately twice as likely to experience hunger as white households. (9)

What does fasting mean, when our everyday meals come at the cost of colonialism, imperialism, oppression, starvation? 

What does fasting mean, in the midst of so much hunger and injustice? 

Pondering all of this, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that we must radically reimagine what we think of as “fasting,” seeking to rediscover the spirit of the act rather than just conforming to established practice. The Bible and its many prophets and visionaries model this for us. On the first Friday of Lent, we hear the words of Isaiah 58: 

Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits,

    and drive all your laborers.

Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting,

    striking with wicked claw.

Would that today you might fast

    so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish,

    of keeping a day of penance:

That a man bow his head like a reed

    and lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Do you call this a fast,

    a day acceptable to the LORD?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:

    releasing those bound unjustly,

    untying the thongs of the yoke;

Setting free the oppressed,

    breaking every yoke;

Sharing your bread with the hungry,

    sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;

Clothing the naked when you see them,

    and not turning your back on your own.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

    and your wound shall quickly be healed;

Your vindication shall go before you,

    and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,

    you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

What strikes me is that the prophet changes the paradigm from restriction to liberation—from an individual experience of mourning and penance to a communal project of change, healing, and solidarity. Our Lenten requirement is not sackcloth, ashes, and self-denial, but the explicit challenge not to deny or ignore our neighbors, human and nonhuman—“not turning our back on our own.” 

Father Greg Boyle, SJ, writes: 

Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, says, ‘How narrow is the gate that leads to life.’ Mistakenly, I think, we’ve come to believe that this is about restriction. The way is narrow. But it really wants us to see that narrowness is the way […] Our choice is not to focus on the narrow, but to narrow our focus. The gate that leads to life is not about restriction at all. It is about an entry into the expansive. (10)

What could fasting mean, if undertaken as part of an expansive community of creation? A community of solidarity directed towards a shared vision of justice? A community dedicated not just to “restricting” ourselves or abstaining from evil things for a few Fridays each year, but instead dedicated to breaking down structures of sin and replacing them with new patterns of love, equity, and justice? 

Speaking for myself, I am coming to see the act of fasting not so much as a temporary “opt-out” of the daily luxuries to which we’ve become accustomed, but as a daily “opt-in” to new choices, new ways of being, which build and strengthen bonds of connection and mutual love. Lent, then, becomes a privileged season to put into practice our responsibility to our fellow worshippers of the Creator, human and nonhuman alike, so that we may daily live the resurrection for which we’re preparing. Fasting from injustice helps us to prepare a glorious feast of liberation, justice, and love, to be shared and celebrated with all of creation. 

As individuals, and as a Church, we have a lot of work to do. We will need radical change in our power structures, our praxis, our ways of relating to one another. We will need an ethics of solidarity and inclusion, casting aside discriminatory practices, making reparation to those we have harmed. It will not be an easy task. But it is undoubtedly a worthy one, and can even be a joyful one, through which we might become a people that can be known and know themselves, in the words of Tertullian, by how they love one another. 

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Alyssa Moore (she/her/hers) is a CreatureKind Fellow. Since a young age, Alyssa’s love of animals and her vibrant experience of parish life have been her greatest joys, as well as tremendous sources of mission and motivation. She is a Catholic from Berkeley, CA, currently studying for a Master of Divinity degree at Santa Clara University’s Jesuit School of Theology (JST).

 

Vegan – and Christian, Too

by Nathan Porter

“You’re vegan? But I thought you were a Christian!” Comments like this one are familiar to followers of Jesus who have given up the use of animal products. I have been vegetarian for almost half a decade, and recently went vegan. Although I have received criticism from both religious and non-religious people, most of the censuring has come from my fellow Christians. This is at once expected and deeply unsettling: expected, because concern for animals has come to be associated with secular social and political projects; unsettling, because I believe that Christian theology provides a powerful impetus to care for the created order. Indeed, as a bit of historical digging reveals, modern animal welfare movements originated in early evangelicalism. Luminaries such as John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Hannah Moore, Augustus Toplady (author of “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me”), and many others wrote and preached unabashedly against cruelty to animals, while William Wilberforce and several evangelical clerics helped to established the first animal protection organization.

This history has largely been forgotten by today’s Christians, but it raises important questions for the contemporary church. What was it about evangelical Christianity that gave rise to animal welfare, and does it still have value for the church today? As a CreatureKind Fellow, I am setting up conversations between scholars, pastors, and laity to make a start at answering this question. Our discussions will highlight the wealth of resources that can be drawn from many streams of the Christian tradition in the service of the Gospel, clarifying and enriching the church’s vocation to confront sin in an age of factory farming. These resources will be drawn from Scripture, patristic theology, ascetical theology, and other sources, placing them in conversation with contemporary voices in animal justice.

“If dominion is part of what it means to carry the image of God, then it must be defined by the servant king who is the true Image of the Invisible (Colossians 1). ”

I hope that discussions like these will help the church to recognize its freedom to care for animals, not despite, but precisely because of its faithfulness to Jesus and the Gospel. For there are distinctly Christian reasons to be concerned about the wellbeing of other animals. I will consider two of them here. First, and above all, this concern is grounded in Scripture. God created a world that was inhabited first of all by animals, to whom the earth was given for a home before humanity took its first breath. God commissioned Adam to name the animals – a covenant-establishing act between humanity and other creatures that recalls God’s naming of Adam, Abraham, Sarah, and Israel, marking them out as recipients of blessing rather than as objects to be dominated. In the Flood narrative, God does not simply save humans and wipe out the animal world, but saves humans and animals alike. The concern and providential care that God exercises over all creation is a constant theme of the Psalter. The prophets witness to the terrifying effects of human sin upon other the created order (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea), and similarly express God’s tender care for animals in their suffering (esp. Joel 1-2 and Jonah 4). Jesus’ victory over Satan in the wilderness results in a moment of peaceful co-existence with the animals of the desert (Mark 1.13), and Paul claims that the whole creation groans in its longing for the revelation of God’s children (Rom 8). The sacrifice of animals comes to an end with the death of Christ (Hebrews), who dies the death of a lamb – in place of human beings, to be sure, but also in place of the animals who were thought necessary for reconciliation with God. So it is far from clear that “dominion,” whatever it means, gives humans tyrannical autonomy in our treatment of other creatures. (The work of Ellen Davis, Walter Brueggemann, and Richard Bauckham provides detailed exegesis of these and other important passages.) If dominion is part of what it means to carry the image of God, then it must be defined by the servant king who is the true Image of the Invisible (Colossians 1). Our view of animals must be subject to the judgement of the cross of Christ, where the patterns of domination that determine creaturely relationships stand condemned once and for all. The crucified Word of God, the head over all creation, revealed his lordship in self-giving love, refusing to exploit the vulnerability of others for his own ends. God’s reign in the world means liberation, a gift of freedom that extends to the whole created order.

Second, concern for animals is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus. Christians who defend the eating of animals frequently argue that our world is fallen, governed by death and broken relationships between humans and other creatures, so that abuse of other creatures is simply part of the world we live in. Of course, it can hardly be denied that something is terribly wrong with the world as it stands. It does not follow, however, that the church is justified in accepting this brokenness as determinative for its own way of life. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has inaugurated a new reality, one in which suffering and death do not have the last word in Christian ethics. The risen Lord holds the keys of death and Hades, and the New Testament insists that those who have been baptized into Christ have died and been resurrected with him. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, “If anyone is in Christ – new creation!” This means that followers of Jesus are not justified in giving the old order of violence, greed, and subjugation a say in Christian ethics. To do so is to deny the transformative power of the risen Lord.

“The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has inaugurated a new reality, one in which suffering and death do not have the last word in Christian ethics. ”

It must not be forgotten, of course, that the promised future of God has yet to arrive in its fullness. Nonetheless, the church exists as a kind of outpost of that future, inhabiting the frontier that divides the old order from the new reality that God will one day usher in. It should come as no surprise that giving up the use of animals is extraordinarily difficult. It demands a genuinely ascetical way of life that embraces voluntary self-denial for the sake of our fellow creatures. This is misunderstood by many Protestants as a kind of “works righteousness,” but it is best understood as part of the process of sanctification. The aim is not asceticism for its own sake. What looks like self-denial now will be ubiquitous as a way of life when Christ returns. Yet such a way of going about in the world, embodying as it does the radical otherness of God’s future in the face of present structures of political and social life, unavoidably entails an ascetical view of the possibilities that are available to those who have been confronted by the demands of the Gospel. Indeed, for many people, veganism is experienced as a rupture, a dramatic break with the sort of life they had previously lived. Many familiar and cherished foods are now off the table (literally); one’s favorite restaurants may become forbidden territory. Tensions may arise between friends, with whom one can no longer share a cheeseburger, and between relatives, with whom one can no longer share a Thanksgiving turkey. It takes a great deal of time and work to find new ways to experience flourishing as an individual and in community (though such ways are increasingly available). Those who give up the use of animals find themselves in the center of the collision of God’s future with the brokenness of reality as we know it, so we should not be surprised that it is difficult and requires self-sacrifice. Although not all struggle is a good thing (especially when it is forced upon one by others), however, struggle is not by nature un-Christian. Forms of life that are built upon the abuse and exploitation of other creatures, the social and political ways of being in the world that press upon us in modernity, stand under the judgement of God, and it is faith in the risen Lord that compels Christians to resist them.

This, at any rate, is why I am a Christian vegan. At the same time, I realize that all theology is done in space and time, and therefore from a specific location. Mine is a situation of economic, social, and racial privilege, which necessarily qualifies the ascetical theology just outlined. For many people throughout the world, eating meat is a privilege that can hardly be taken for granted. What I have just written is directed to those for whom this is not true, and I recognize that the right approach to animal welfare will look very different in different contexts. I also recognize that sins against other human beings are deeply entangled with sins against animals. Not only has industrialized agriculture been built upon and fueled by racism, but racism has even infected the struggle for animal justice. Mainstream environmentalism and animal protection have too often been defined and driven by what Christopher Carter has called the “white racial frame.” No adequate Christian approach to the crisis of modern agriculture can afford to ignore the voices of those who have suffered from it. It is imperative to include the perspectives of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people of color who have suffered from the racism that is endemic to factory farming and who are also among those at the front lines of the fight for animals. This is a matter about which I am learning more on a daily basis, and my own assumptions are increasingly called into question by those who approach the issue from very different starting points. Yet this dialogue is crucial to the development of a truly Christian conception of animal justice, and it is one to which I am committed.

It is tragically unsurprising that the church has ignored the plight of animals when its white constituency has just as willfully ignored or been the perpetrators of racial subjugation. Christians who cannot love their fellow humans will be equally incapable of loving other-than-human creatures. All forms of domination embody the reign of death that loyalty to Jesus compels the church to renounce, for just to the extent that the church remains complicit in the suffering of humans and other animals, it sets itself against the life-giving power that flows from the resurrected Christ. But the situation is not hopeless, as the unexpected blossoming of concern for animals in early evangelicalism reveals. It is my earnest hope that the church will come to recognize the wealth of theological resources that are at its disposal in the struggle on behalf of animals – not only traditional resources, but also those that can be found only in conversation with people whose voices have often been excluded. Then will the church’s pursuit of justice truly reflect “the wisdom of God in all its rich variety” (Ephesians 3.10).

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Nathan Porter is a student at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. He is pursuing a career in academia (focusing on patristic creation theology) and seeking ordination as an Anglican priest. His passion for animal justice, creation theology, and preaching led him to CreatureKind, and he hopes that this fellowship will launch his life-long work on behalf of all God’s creatures.

What Does Christianity Have to Do With Animals (Book Excerpt)

From Genesis to Revelation, and from the early church to the present day, there are vivid examples of God's—and the church's—love of, care for, and delight in animal creatures.

By Sarah Withrow King

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From Genesis to Revelation, and from the early church to the present day, there are vivid examples of God's—and the church's—love of, care for, and delight in animal creatures. William Wilberforce and other leaders of the British antislavery and anti–child labor movements were also early founders of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and worked to pass legislation protecting animals from various forms of cruelty.

Many accounts from the lives of saints include moving tales of meaningful friendships between saints and animals, such as the story of St. Macarius, who healed a blind hyena pup: the pup's mother tried to repay Macarius's kindness by bringing him a sheep's skin. As the story goes, Macarius took the skin, but only after insisting that if the hyena was hungry, she was not to kill another creature, but should come to him for food, which she did.

Today, many churches include food for companion animals in their food pantry programs. Others take special care to protect and provide for wildlife who wish to make a home on church grounds. Christian college students take internships at animal welfare organizations and ask their campus dining halls to provide vegan and vegetarian food options. Some pastors publicly support legislation that promotes better animal welfare, preside over pet funerals, or preach on topics that include concern for animals. Church animal welfare groups hold film screenings, book discussions, and small group studies to promote dialogue about Christianity and animal welfare in their congregations. There are many ways to care for animals, and Jesus followers are often moved to do so not in spite of their faith, but because of it. Of course, human beings are a kind of animal creature, different from sibling species by a matter of physiological and genetic degrees. But for our purposes, I refer to human beings as "humans" and nonhuman beings as "animals."

There are many ways to care for animals, and Jesus followers are often moved to do so not in spite of their faith, but because of it.

A reading of the Scripture that is attentive to animals shows that humans and animals are both created by God, worship God, and are provided for by God; humans are made in the image of God and given a particular role in that image; the whole (broken) world is in the process of being reconciled to God through Jesus Christ; and the vision of the promised kingdom is marked by peace between and flourishing of all species.

Humans are made in the image of God.

While the creation narrative in Genesis 2 portrays animals as potential partners to humans, in Genesis 1, God says, "Let us make mankind in our image, in likeness" (Gen 1:26). In English translations, Christ is also referred to as the image of God: "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth" (Col 1:15‑16).  Humans have not always lived up to the image endowed by the Creator in us. Eleazar S. Fernandez posits one possible source of this failure:

We have learned to develop our identities as human beings through disconnection, rather than through connectedness and interdependence. Our way of relating to fellow human beings parallels our way of relating to other beings in the cosmos. We seek to disconnect ourselves because we want to establish our difference from other forms of life. But the difference that we seek through our acts of disconnection is an adjunct to claim our superiority. We establish our difference through disconnection because we believe deep in our hearts that it is only in disconnecting ourselves that we can claim superiority. Rather than seeing our difference and uniqueness as a reminder of our interdependence, we confuse our difference and uniqueness with superiority.

When we downplay the kinship between animals and humans portrayed in Genesis 2 and center ourselves in the story of the creation and redemption of the world (anthropocentrism), there are far-reaching consequences not only for our relationship with animals and the environment, but for our relationships with other humans as well.

When we downplay the kinship between animals and humans portrayed in Genesis 2 and center ourselves in the story of the creation and redemption of the world (anthropocentrism), there are far-reaching consequences not only for our relationship with animals and the environment, but for our relationships with other humans as well. Liberation ethicist and pastor Christopher Carter asks us to consider whether humans are "living up to their potential as beings created in the image of God? Are they capable of re-imagining their divinely appointed role in Creation to care for nonhuman animals in a way that conforms to this image?"

Humans are given a particular role in that image.

Immediately after creating and blessing humans, God tells these beings made in the image of their Creator that they are to "rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the earth" (Gen 1:28). And right away, God points to the lush landscape and says, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food" (Gen 1:29). Our first responsibility was to cultivate the plants of the land so that all God's creatures could eat. Even as the Scriptures describe sin and its consequences, including the reality of food from animal and human death, God placed limits on human use and consumption of animals, outlined in the Law. Working animals were to be given weekly rest (Ex 23:12); fields were to lie fallow, in part to allow wild animals the opportunity to eat (Ex 23:10); and it was a sin to kill an animal without giving appropriate thanks to God (Lev 17:3‑7).

When humans fail to obey God, the whole world suffers (Gen 7–8); when humans fail to keep God at the center of their lives, the whole world suffers (Jer 7:16‑20; 12:4).


This piece appears in Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice, edited by Mae Elise Cannon and Andrea Smith and appears here with permission. Copyright (c) 2019 by Mae Elise Cannon and Andrea Smith. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.

Undoing Domination, a Sermon

Sermon written and delivered by Michael Anthony Howard at Stanley Congregational Church, Chatham, NJ on July 15, 2018. Reprinted with permission. Listen to the sermon audio, download sermon notes, and access the sermon worksheet here.

IMAGE CREDIT: Die gelbe Kuh (The Yellow Cow), by Franz Marc (1911) [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franz_Marc-The_Yellow_Cow-1911.jpg]

IMAGE CREDIT: Die gelbe Kuh (The Yellow Cow), by Franz Marc (1911) [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franz_Marc-The_Yellow_Cow-1911.jpg]

The Logic of Domination

There are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone. It is amazing when you think about it. The Milky Way isn’t even very big. Every star has an approximate average of 1.6 planets. So, if you do the arithmetic, that’s 650 billion planets. The Earth is home to roughly 2 billion species of life. Some 70 to 90% of those species are bacteria. There might be a total of 40 million insect species. Yet, our science is just in its infancy. Some 10,000 species are discovered each year. To date, only about 1.5 million species have been described, and less than 1% of those are bacteria. Of those two billion species (or 1.5 million species we have named), almost 60 thousand are vertebrates, 5 thousand are mammals, and 350 are primates. Human beings are but one of them.

While the universe has been around for 13.772 billion years, we homo sapiens have only been around some 300,000 years. If my middle school math days serve me well, 13.772 billion minus 300,000 is still 13.772 billion — in other words, we’ve not been around long enough for our history to be within the order of significant digits.

Despite evidence to the contrary, many of us have been taught to think of our place in the world with an outrageous and unjust logic — the universe is ours and it exists for the taking.

But this logic doesn’t just stop with anthropocentrism. Let’s follow this logic down a little further. Of the 7.6 billion human beings on the planet, how many have access to clean drinking water, a healthy diet, good health care, a quality education, a living wage, etc? A little more than half of them are men. Of those 3.8 billion men, how many of us are white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, Christian, American? All of these characteristics are things that I share with most of our national leaders, almost all of our nation’s past presidents, and the richest man on the face of the earth. I find it curious and scary to believe that such a small portion of the world’s population has believed for so long that the world was made for them. But let us not be naïve, most of us humans think the same way about our relationship to the rest of Creation. Domination, see, comes in many forms.

This unjust logic of ours, our model of society, our understanding of the meaning of life, the way human beings have perceived themselves in relation to the rest of Creation — at least for the last four hundred years or so — has almost entirely shaped our way of life. It is hard to disagree with liberation theologian, Leonardo Boff, when he described the modern human. Most of us live, he said, as if the most important thing in life is

to accumulate vast amounts of the means of life — material wealth, goods, and services — in order to enjoy our short journey on this planet. In achieving this purpose we are aided by science, which comprehends how the Earth functions, and technology, which acts upon it for human benefit. And this is to be done as speedily as possible. Hence, we strive for maximum profit with minimum investment in the shortest possible period of time. In this type of cultural practice, human beings are regarded as above things, making use of them for their own enjoyment, never as alongside things, members of a larger planetary and cosmic community. The ultimate result, which is only now becoming strikingly visible, is contained in an expression attributed to Gandhi: The Earth is sufficient for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed. [1]

In other words, our basic model for relating with each other — how we know what life is all about — is domination. When we see ourselves as being above rather than alongside, we operate within a framework — a logic — of domination.

The Dominion Argument

At Brookside Church, we’ve been wrestling lately with our ability to own up to the fact the Bible has been used to justify violence. When it comes to our interpretation of the world, our relationship to Creation, the way we think about salvation, and how we understand what it means to follow Jesus, the Bible can be both helpful and problematic. Last week, I pointed out how the gospel’s portray Jesus as skipping over problematic passages when he read from the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue. That way of reading scripture, which is commonly know as “cherry picking,” I asked us to consider thinking about it as “avoiding landmines.” I argued that if we are not careful with the way we read scripture, we will find that the body of Christ may actually lose body parts.

This morning, I want to draw your attention to a specific biblical landmine. This is one of the most commonly referenced passages when it comes to Creation, justice, and the role of Christianity in the world: Genesis 1. It’s not so much an entire passage or even a verse — really, it’s just one word: dominion.

This entire chapter is a beautiful and poetic description of God’s relationship with Creation. That’s why it’s so unfortunate that when it is read with the intent of asking what our relationship to Creation should be, Christians tend to narrow in on this one word. And this is specifically true when you talk about the relationship between human beings and other non-human animals. God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion…”

Dominion? “Didn’t God set human beings over Creation? Didn’t God give people dominion over animals and doesn’t that mean we can… [kill them, eat them, wear them, cage them, experiment with them, fill in the blank]?”

First off, the word dominion is repeated twice. That must mean it was important to the scribe or scribes that used it. But that should never, ever, trump what God said about Creation at every step along the way, “It is good.” For God to declare these things to be good, especially animal life, even before human beings existed, implies that they are valuable in their own right — that God delights in them. As Jewish scholar, Roberta Kalechofsky points out, “this substantiates the view that animals were regarded as integral subjects in their own right. God’s [expressed] delight in these creations…does not reflect a god who created animal life to be in bondage.” [2]

Carol J. Adams, arguably one of the most important feminist writers today and author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, wrote, “The more the word dominion is broken away from [the context of this poem of beloved relationship in] Genesis 1, the more likely it is that what one is defending is a broken relationship between humans and other animals and the world they inhabit.” [3]

Even more, what is interesting is that while the word radah, which we translate as dominion, is mentioned twice in verse 28, in the very following verse (Genesis 1:29), God says, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.” In other words, whatever dominion humans have been granted over animals, it doesn’t involve eating them. Even more, if we’re going to be using this passage to understand our relationship with Creation, we must be constrained first and foremost by our reverence for the fact that God took delight in what God created. God said, “It is good.”

I mean, think about it.

“It is good,” so we are justified in separating a baby calf from its mother so we can have her milk. “It is good,” so it must be okay for us to cut off the beaks of chickens. “It is good,” so we can feel innocent when we pay someone to rip into their flesh in order to prepare our dinner, knowing that most of us would refuse to spill their blood if we had to do it ourselves. “It is good,” we think, because it is good for us human beings. That is the logic of domination.

If dominion doesn’t mean domination, what then does it mean?

Quoting again from Carol Adams:

It has been said that if kings and queens exercised dominion over their subjects the way human beings do over the other animals, kings and queens would have no subjects. So why is being in God’s image often interpreted in view of power, manipulation, and hegemony instead of compassion, mercy, and emptying unconditional love? We often anthropomorphize God as powerful, fierce, and angry (if not belligerent). When we are lording over others, using power — it is then that we are most likely to assert the image of God. Acts of unconditional love, suspensions of judgment, mercy for the weak, and kindness to animals get associated with a wishy-washy picture of who Jesus was, but are rarely discussed regarding God the Creator. [4]

The Impulse of Jesus

And here we come to the heart of the matter. Most of us have had our imagination of God shaped more by this logic of domination than by the teachings of Jesus. The Christian God as often taught by some Christians is a god of domination. He — and this god is always a he — could more easily be confused with the violent war gods of the Greeks or the Romans than with the teachings of Jesus. What if we approach the question christologically? What if we decided to ask what “dominion” might look like — our relationship to Creation and non-human animals — if we begin our thinking about God and humanity by learning from Jesus?

The central impulse at the heart of Jesus’ teachings was the proclamation of the Reign of God, or what Walter Wink called “God’s Domination-Free Order.” It was the creation of a new community, a new citizenship, based on a shared commitment to doing the will of God. This is what many of us have begun calling “The Beloved Community,” or the “Kin-dom.” Kin-dom, I think, helps point us to the truth that Jesus’ teachings challenge us not to see ourselves above Creation, but as alongside it as kindred earthlings. For followers of Jesus, this kin-dom teaching consisted of a twofold commitment to nonviolence and undoing that logic of domination. Walter Wink called it the Domination System: “An encompassing system characterized by unjust economic relations, oppressive political relations, patriarchal gender relations, prejudiced racial or ethnic relations, hierarchical power relations, and the use of violence to maintain them.”
 [5]

Understood in this way, Jesus’ ministry was a radical critique of the logic domination, aimed at bringing healing to Creation by calling people to repentance and helping them discover what it means to be fully human.

The central teaching of the church is based on the idea of the incarnation — that somehow, in Jesus, God was revealed not to be above Creation, but alongside Creation. The central quest for communities of faith today is to recover for ourselves what Jesus unleashed, that original impulse at the heart of his teachings aimed at undoing the old order of domination and bringing about a new order of life and freedom. Only then will the church have what is needed to bring about positive change in people and all Creation.

I pray that this becomes our quest, that hear the voice of our still speaking God and take up our call — to learn to stand alongside Creation as kindred earthlings, following Jesus to undo the logic of domination.
 — Amen

Notes:

[1] Leonardo Boff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), p. 2.

[2] Roberta Kalechofsky, “Hierarchy, Kinship, and Responsibility: The Jewish Relationship to the Animal World,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 97–98. Quoted in Carol J. Adams, “What About Dominion in Genesis?” In A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals (The Peaceable Kingdom Series Book 2) (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), p. 5.

[3] Carol J. Adams, “What About Dominion in Genesis?” p. 5.]

[4] Ibid., p 2.

[5] Walter Wink, The Human Being Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), p. 270.

Guest Post: Is the Gospel “Good News” for Animals Too?

As both a Christian and a vegan, something that I think about often is the way in which my faith is compatible with my vegan values. I stopped eating meat at around the same time that I started seminary school, and at the time I did not consider the two things to be connected in any way. However, as I began studying Scripture more in depth, I began to realize that actually, my concern for animals and the environment, which originally caused me to ditch meat, and later on all animal products (including dairy, eggs, honey, leather, fur, etc.), was in fact very much related to my faith in God as Creator and Redeemer.

The question that I’ve been reflecting on and which I would like to discuss is whether or not the Christian Gospel (the “Good News”) has any bearing on animals and the earth. The answer I have come to is that yes, it has absolutely everything to do them as well. This may seem like a bit of a jump to some of my Christian brothers and sisters, many of whom are of the opinion that God actually made animals FOR us to eat (I used to be of this opinion too for most of my life), and that we have some kind of license to use them and use the planet as we see fit since God said that we are to “have dominion” over them (Gen 1:26).

Furthermore, the way that the Gospel has been presented most frequently has been with a very heavy emphasis on “personal salvation” to the extent that we think that it is all about us – US being forgiven by God, US for whom Christ died, US for whom the earth was created, US who will be going to heaven (“Do animals even have even have souls?” some may argue). It’s no wonder many have accused Christianity of being an anthropocentric (human-centered) religion. But while I would agree that Christians can often come across as such, and tend use the Bible to support their anthropocentric views, the Bible itself does not condone such a mentality.

In order to go about answering this question of whether the Gospel is good news for the animals (and the earth) as well as humans, we must start by giving a little bit of background. In the Biblical account, it all begins with God creating “the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). This earth that God created was deemed as “good” (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).

What was this creation like? The first word that comes to my mind when I read the creation account is “abundant.” It was abundantly filled with fruits and vegetation and all kinds of animals. Then God created the man and the woman and God's mandate to them was to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1:28). This is where some people start getting confused, thinking that this rulership somehow gives them permission to take advantage of and exploit what God has put under their care.

The second word that comes to mind when I think about what the original creation was like is “harmony.” Humans in harmonious relationships with God, with each other, with the animals and with the earth. Indeed, in the original creation, humans did not eat animals, and animals did not eat other animals. Genesis 1:29-30…“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it [souls?] – I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”

So what I see from the Creation account is that the world God created was good, it was perfect, it was harmonious and abundant, there was no harm, no evil, no violence, no death. What happened? This is where the bad news comes in, with sin and disobedience entering the picture, Adam and Eve doing the one thing God told them not to do (eating from one single tree out of the many they were allowed to eat from), wanting to live the way they wanted instead of how God wanted them to. And this is where everything falls apart.

It is at this point in the story that the relationships between God and humans, humans and each other, humans and animals, and finally, humans and the earth were distorted. The man and the woman were now hiding from each other by covering their nakedness that they were never ashamed of before (Gen 3:7). They were also hiding from God in the garden (Gen 3:8). They started playing the blame game for the sin they both committed (Gen 3:12). Now even the earth was uncooperative and would not produce food for people without hard labour (Gen 3:17). Finally, it is at this point that the first animal was killed in order to clothe the man and the woman (Gen 3:21).

Later on in the story, during the time of Noah, for the first time God actually gives humans permission to eat animals (Gen 9:3). It is important to note that this is not how things were meant to be, as we have seen from the Creation account, but rather that this is what people had actually started doing (ie. Abel raising livestock and sacrificing the fat of the firstborn to God, with the implication that the rest was eaten – Gen 4:4). This is not the only instance in Scripture where something was permitted which was not God’s original intention. When questioned about divorce, Jesus responded to the Pharisee that “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning” (Mt 19:8).

It was not a good thing, but rather a tragedy, that the once good relationship between humans and animals had devolved into “fear and dread” (Gen 9:2) on the part of the animals towards the humans that were meant to be their caretakers. It was against God’s intention for creation that humans began killing God's other created beings for food when God had abundantly provided them with fruit and vegetation to eat.

So there is the bad news. But what is the “Good News” that Christians speak of? It is that God still cares about God's creation, both humans and animals, and the earth as well. “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). Although things have gone downhill from the goodness of the original creation and how things were meant to be, God continues to love the world, and the story of the Bible is that God is making a way for everything to be restored once again. We tend to focus only on the restoration of the relationships between God and humans, and humans and each other, but we forget about the other relationships that were destroyed and which God also wants to restore.

The good news is not only that Jesus died for sin so that we can be saved, although that is a big part of it. It is also that God is working to make things right again and that this is done through Jesus Christ, who came to earth, not only as Saviour but also as King of the coming Kingdom of God. And what is this new Kingdom? It is not a castle in the sky, but rather a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21:1). Everything made new, the goodness of creation restored. The prophet Isaiah gives a beautiful description of the coming Kingdom of God in Isaiah 11:6-9 when he says:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea. 

The conclusion of the matter then is this: In the original creation animals were not killed for food and humans were called to be caretakers of the earth and it’s creatures; and in the coming kingdom of God, the new earth, once again all killing and violence will cease. Although this Kingdom will not be fully accomplished until Christ returns again, Christians are called to advance the Kingdom of God on earth now. Therefore, I would argue that it is flows naturally from the biblical message for Christians, as the people of God who wish to please God and live according to God's will, to adopt a vegan ethic of nonviolence to animals and an environmental ethic of earth stewardship. This is the Gospel (good news), not just for us as humans, but for the animals and for the earth.

Patricia Chan.jpg

Patricia Chan says, "I was born and raised in a Christian home, and from a young age I developed a trusting relationship with Jesus Christ. I also grew up regularly eating animals and their products. I never imagined myself becoming vegetarian let alone vegan, but that is exactly where God has led me. In September 2014 I stopped eating animals for reasons of ethics. After a year of vegetarianism, I took the logical next step and cut out all animal products to the best of my ability. Through my studies in theology at Regent College, I have come to see that my faith is not only compatible with veganism but that a vegan ethic flows naturally from the biblical message of love." This article originally appeared on Patricia's blog and is reprinted here with kind permission.