Welcome to Regents Theological College as a CreatureKind Partner

by David Clough

CreatureKind is delighted to welcome Regents Theological College as our latest partner institution. Regents campus is on the western slopes of the Malvern hills in England. Regents is among the foremost Pentecostal Bible Colleges in Europe and one of the largest in the UK. It is also the national training centre for the Elim Pentecostal Churches.

Regents kindly invited me to give their annual Wesley Gilpin lecture in March 2018. I offered a number of possible lecture titles and was delighted they opted for ‘Eating More Peaceably: Christianity and Veganism’. A good number of staff, students, and external visitors attended and the response was encouraging: the audience was engaged and there were no shortage of questions to follow. I took the opportunity to meet with the college’s catering manager in advance of the lecture and was delighted to hear that for a long time he had been strongly committed to the idea that the college’s catering policy should reflect its Christian values.

Since then, CreatureKind has been in conversation with Regents about the possibility of their becoming a CreatureKind partner institution. CreatureKind partners typically commit to:

• an audit to review trends in their consumption of animal products and report on where the animal products are currently sourced from;

• an action plan to reduce consumption of animal products and move to higher welfare sources of animal products they continue to serve;

• continued reflection on further ways to attend to the implications of a Christian understanding of animals for their institutional life.

It’s been great to see Regents’ commitment to embark on this process and to raise the issue within the Elim Pentecostal Church nationally. In the partnership agreement, Regents affirm that they are ‘committed to living into the promise of a reconciled creation by learning more about animals as a faith concern and by taking action to improve the lives of farmed animals’. CreatureKind looks forward to continuing to work with Regents as they continue along this path.

“Regents affirm that they are ‘committed to living into the promise of a reconciled creation by learning more about animals as a faith concern and by taking action to improve the lives of farmed animals’.”

It’s a particular pleasure for me to welcome the first Pentecostal CreatureKind partner. Pentecostal churches share my own Methodist Church roots in the Wesleyan Holiness movement. As I’ve explored in another video lecture, ‘Early Methodists and Other Animals: Animal Welfare as an Evangelical Issue’, both John Wesley and the early Methodist movements were known for their concern about cruelty towards animals. Wesley wrote an essay on the souls of animals as an undergraduate at Oxford, and he preached against animal cruelty (most famously in his 1781 sermon ‘The General Deliverance’ on Romans 8). He copied letters he received concerning cruelty to animals into his journal and published books on animal theology. Neither modern Methodists nor modern Pentecostals are often aware of this legacy, but I’m excited that institutions such as Regents are helping to recover this distinctive legacy.

If you know of an organization that might be interested in making connections between its Christian values and concern for animals, do get in touch. CreatureKind’s partner programme can support theological colleges, seminaries, churches, and Christian schools, universities, and other organizations in finding the right first steps for practical action in their particular contexts. We’d love to hear from you.

Virtual Visit with David Clough

If you’d like a chance to meet and discuss Christianity and animal ethics with CreatureKind founder and co-director, Professor David Clough, please plan to join us on October 21 and 22, 2019, for the “David Clough Virtual Visit,” a series of interactive online sessions, hosted by Farm Forward.

You can sign up for this free event by filling out the form here! You can participate as an individual, or as a group. We hope to see you there!

CreatureKind Presents at Eco-Minded Theological Symposium

“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.” Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace

Those among us who work in animal or environmental advocacy work often feel the effects of that “want,” although not the “want” for physical resources that Berry described. Instead, we suffer from “want” of community. This creation care truth that we see as core to framing our daily activities is often quickly dismissed by food producers and consumers. That’s one big reason why it is such an enormous blessing when the occasion arises to join together with like-minded others for conferences and events that highlight our mutual mission.

Sarah Withrow King with co-presenter, Rev. Sarah Macias (left) and Green Seminary Initiative Director, rev. abby mohaupt (right).

In March, CreatureKind co-director Sarah Withrow King was invited to participate in the Southwest Symposium on Ecologically Informed Theological Education at Brite Divinity School, where Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio (MTSO), the Green Seminary Initiative (GSI), and the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development hosted two days of insightful conversations and collaborations. Attendees included students, faculty, administration, alums, and staff from around the Southwest.

“The symposium at Brite Divinity School was an encouraging opportunity to gather and learn from educators who are committed to encouraging the next generation of faith leaders to fully integrate creation care into every part of their ministry,” King said. “Professors and administrators who want to equip their students to lead in a time of climate crisis should put this symposium on their ‘must-not-miss list’.”

A recap of topics covered is available in a blog by the Green Seminary Initiative.