Is It Christian to Hunt? By David Irving
From All-Creatures.org Book, CD and Video Review Guide

The intent of this book and video review guide is to help us to live according to Kingdom standards which bring Heaven to earth.

Author: David Irving
Reviewed by: Steven Kaufman, MD, Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)

Publisher:

christian to hunt
Is it Christian to Hunt?
By David Irving
Available from Books and Music By David Irving

Review:

This short, very well-written and thoughtful book makes a convincing argument that Christians who take their faith seriously shouldn’t hunt. Irving notes that hunting in its various forms (including trapping) involves pain, suffering, and death. Meanwhile, for nearly everyone in the United States, hunting is not necessary and in fact the flesh of wild animals is generally harmful to human health.

Irving considers those Christians who have defended hunting. He notes that their arguments rely almost exclusively on the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet Jesus, in fulfilling the law, announced a new commandment, that we love each other. Jesus’ message of love, compassion, mercy, and peace is totally at odds with the ethic of hunting.

What is striking is that Christian hunters defend their pastime using selected passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, such as those that seem to endorse eating animals and animal sacrifices. They tend to ignore passages from the later prophets that condemn animal sacrifices. Further, they do not embrace other ancient Hebrew laws and practices, including polygamy, child sacrifice, slavery, subjugation of women, and the murder of all of the inhabitants of cities the Hebrews conquered when they obtained the Holy Land.

Moreover, these same Christian hunters embrace the New Testament when articulating how people should treat each other. Indeed, many Christian hunters show significant compassion and concern for each other, and even for some animals, though they have few qualms about injuring and killing wild animals while engaging in an activity they misname as “sport.” We should be grateful to writers like Irving, whose books include The Protein Myth, for providing the arguments we need to show that oppression and abuse of nonhumans fundamentally violates Christian ethics.

About the Author:

David Irving's writing on animal rights issues have appeared on many blogs and journals. He is an accomplished musician and composer. David graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Bata Kappa from Columbia University. For more, visit his website here.


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