By Norm Phelps
Taken as a whole, the animal rights movement is hostile to
religion. And this is tragic because until animal rights gains the
support of at least a sizable chunk of mainstream religion, we will
always be marginalized. In America, campaigns for social justice
succeed to the degree that they receive support from organized
religion. Causes that enjoy the sponsorship of our churches and
synagogues become public policy; those that do not remain marginal or
vanish from view.
It has been this way throughout our history. The original call to
end human slavery came from men and women in England whose
religious faith inspired them to speak out against evil. These
included George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, and his fellow
Quaker John Woolman, John Wesley, founder of Methodism, and Richard
�Humanity Dick� Martin and William Wilberforce, both of whom
credited their social conscience to religious conviction. On this side
of the Atlantic, their cry was taken up by religiously inspired
abolitionists like Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B.
Anthony, Maria W. Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and
Frederick Douglass. In 1783, eighty years before emancipation, the
Society of Friends yearly meeting for Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
Delaware, western Maryland, and western Virginia (the largest and
most influential Quaker meeting in the country) petitioned Congress to
abolish slavery. Right up to the signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation, churches were the most popular settings for
anti-slavery rallies, while their members filled the ranks of the
abolitionist movement, and the language of the Sunday morning sermon
became the language of abolition, filled with appeals to Christian
mercy and divine justice, drawing the parallel between the
American slavery of Africans and the Egyptian slavery of the
Israelites, while celebrating emancipation as �crossing the
Jordan� and freedom as �the Promised Land.�
Nearly a century later, the civil rights movement picked up where
the abolitionists had left off. Born in the churches of Atlanta
and Birmingham after World War II, it spread first through the
black churches of the south, then those of the north, and finally to
white churches and synagogues across the country. Martin Luther
King, Jr., who was the movement�s single most influential leader,
and his closest associates, Ralph David Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth,
Floyd McKissick, and Jesse Jackson were Baptist ministers; two
others, Edgar Nixon and A. Philip
Randolph, were the sons of
ministers, and yet another, Bayard Rustin, was raised on the
Quaker philosophy of his grandmother and educated at Wilberforce
College, which taught the Christian social gospel of its namesake,
William Wilberforce. They were all inspired by their religious
faith to take up the cause, and their followers came first and
foremost from the churches. The organization they created, the
largest, most important, and most effective civil rights
organization of the 20th century, was called The Southern Christian
Leadership
Conference.
As with the abolition movement, much of the rhetoric of the civil
rights movement was the rhetoric of religion. Consider this brief
passage from Martin Luther King�s �Letter from a Birmingham Jail.�
�But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.
Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their
villages and carried their �thus saith the Lord� far beyond the
boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his
village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the
far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry
the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.�
Dr. King is referring to Acts 16:9, which describes a vision in
which Paul was visited by a Macedonian who begged him to �come and
help us.� Macedonia was a rough and tumble frontier province on
the northern fringe of the Classical world. King is suggesting that he
has been called by God to the land of the barbarians, where he
will have to endure great hardships and risk great dangers.
When, a few days before his death, Dr. King said, �I have been to
the mountaintop, I have seen the promised land,� he was
identifying himself with Moses, who when death was upon him, was
taken by God to the top of Mount Nebo, where he could look out and see
the promised land that he would not live to enter. And more
importantly, he was identifying African-Americans suffering under
segregation with the suffering of the Israelites who were enslaved in
Egypt. Those were identifications that resonated with Americans of
all races and religions because the stories of the Bible are as
much a part of the American mythology as Paul Revere and the
Boston Tea Party�and they carry with them the moral authority that
even secular Americans grant only to values that are rooted in
religion.
Even Malcolm X, who is often portrayed as the polar opposite of
Martin Luther King, and after him was the most popular and
influential civil rights leader, found his inspiration in religion �
in his case, Islam � and invoked the moral authority of religion.
Historians and sociologists, in thrall to the secularism which
these days is a litmus test for respectability among people who
fancy themselves intellectuals, treat the religious nature of the
civil rights movement somewhat like a Victorian gentleman would have
treated the case of a pregnant, unmarried sister: it is something
not to be mentioned in polite company. To them the religious roots
of the civil rights movement betray an eembarrassing lack of
sophistication. They prefer to patronize the black religious
community by treating it as a purely social institution whose role
was to lend logistical support to the civil rights movement, rather
than as the spiritual organism that gave birth to it. But whether
the academic community likes it or not, the most important
contribution of the churches � black, white, and integrated � to the
civil rights movement was not a communication network and
ready-made audiences for activists; it was moral authority. When
the pastors said that integration and equality before the law were
right and that segregation and inequality were wrong, their
congregations listened; and over time, so did the rest of America.
It was the same pattern that had characterized the abolition movement
a hundred years before.
The women�s suffrage movement grew out of the abolitionist
movement, and the two shared many of the same religiously inspired
leaders, including Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Sarah and
Angelina Grimke, Frederick Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison.
Again, the nation�s churches provided leadership, membership, and
rallying places for the suffrage movement, as well as a rhetoric
that carried a moral authority able to pull the rest of the
country along in its wake. Churches became battlegrounds in the
struggle for women�s suffrage, especially in the west, where harsh
necessity had forced women to work, fight, and endure hardship in
a fashion that quickly disabused men of the ego inflating myth that
women were the
�weaker sex,� unsuited by their gender to
responsibility and power.
If the modern feminist and gay and lesbian rights movements are
less obviously rooted in religion than these earlier movements, it
is nonetheless true that they have garnered the support of large
segments of mainstream religion in America. Most denominations now
ordain women pastors, deacons, and bishops, and even the Roman
Catholic Church, which does not, has its share of female
theologians, such as Marie Hendrickx, a high-ranking Vatican staff
member who is a close associate of Pope Benedict XVI, the very
conservative former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Only in the far
extremes of the evangelical Christian right do women who want to
pursue careers in traditionally male dominated professions, and who
expect to receive equal pay, equal treatment, and equal
opportunities while doing so, meet with systemic disapproval.
Although it has not, by and large, been shouting its support from the
rooftops, mainstream American Christianity and Judaism have
quietly accepted the goals of the feminist movement, at least as
they apply in the secular world, and in so doing, have assured its
lasting success.
Likewise with homosexual rights. The recent
appointment of an openly gay bishop by the Episcopal Church is
only the most visible evidence of a change that has been slowly and
quietly taking place in liberal and mainstream congregations
around the country over the past three decades. Gay civil marriage
could become a reality in America with little more than token
objections from most mainstream congregations. Among Christians, only
the evangelical right and the Catholic Church would line up
solidly against it, and among Catholics, the issue would serve to
open wider the already cavernous gap that exists between the hierarchy
on the one hand and the laity and much of the clerical
rank-and-file on the other. Like the women�s movement, the gay and
lesbian rights movement is bringing about a permanent revolution in
American society in large part because its appeal to conscience
has persuaded a major segment of the religious community to quietly
support it.
Progressivism Charges over the Cliff
At the other end of the
scale, the near total collapse of liberal and progressive movements
that was the most important social development of the second half
of the 20th century was due in large measure to the identification
in the public mind of progressivism with aggressive secularism and
atheism, and a corresponding identification of free-market
conservatism with religion. When the leaders of the socialist,
communist, and anarchist movements in the 19th and 20th centuries
wrapped themselves in the banner of materialism and declared religion
to be at best an irrelevant anachronism and at worst an instrument
of oppression and �the opiate of the people,� they were
unwittingly arranging their own failure in the United States. And
following World War II, the United States would intervene
politically, militarily, and economically to bring about their
failure in Europe. The much ballyhooed (at least until recent weeks; I
am writing in December, 2008.) triumph of virtually unrestrained
free-market capitalism is due in large part to the success of
conservatives in identifying democratic socialism in the public mind
with communism, and identifying both with atheism. By deliberately
poking a finger in the eye of the religious community, the
progressive movement succeeded in marginalizing itself for at
least a full generation. We are an increasingly � and frighteningly �
reactionary country today because the leadership of the
progressive movements of the twentieth century heaped scorn on the
religion which the overwhelming majority of Americans hold so dear
(whether they actually
practice it or not), while the robber
barons of industry realized that by saying the right prayers and
singing the right hymns they could persuade the public to vote against
their own economic and social self-interest.
If we do not want animal rights to go the way of decent public
education, universal higher education, universal health care, and
a social safety net that offers genuine protection to those who
cannot cope on their own, we had better learn the lessons that the
failure of these goals teaches. And the most important of those
lessons is this: In our one nation under God, if religion is
against you, you lose.
A Holy Nation
Only in Muslim countries is religion as dominant a
factor in public life as in America. Because we are divided among a
number of denominations, the profoundly religious orientation of the
United States is not as apparent as the religious orientation of,
say, the countries of Latin America where the vast majority belong
to a single denomination, but it is actually stronger. Whether
they actively practice it or not � whether or not they even believe
most of it in their secret heart of hearts � most Americans look
to religion for their moral values and their ethical
principles.
Thus, religion has a radiating influence that extends far beyond the
walls of the church to permeate our entire culture. Our social and
political discourse is framed in terms of religious concepts to a
degree that is incomprehensible to Europeans and to most American
progressives. But the latter, as we have seen, ignore it at their
peril.
Throughout the world as a whole, there are only two circumstances
in which social movements can succeed while appearing to disrespect
religion. The first is where the population is highly secularized
and religion plays a very minor role in public life, as in
Scandinavia. The second is where there is strong anti-clerical
sentiment based on the church�s historic alliance with an
oppressive ruling class, as in Italy and much of Latin America.
Neither circumstance obtains in the United States.
In his book The European Dream, social analyst Jeremy Rifkin
recites some mind-boggling numbers about religion in American
life. Rather than simply rehearsing familiar statistics about
religious affiliation and church attendance, let�s focus on the more
pertinent question of the role that religion plays in shaping
Americans� values and their understanding of the world. According
to Rifkin, who relies on published polling data by respected,
independent groups like the Gallup Organization and the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press, �Nearly half of the
American people say that it is necessary to believe in God to have
good values,� while 58% believe that �the strength of American
society is �predicated on the religious faith of its people.��
�Forty-five percent of Americans believe that �God created human
beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the
last 10,000 years or so,� and an equal number believe that the
second coming of Christ will occur in their lifetime.� Sixty-eight
percent of college graduates and 55% of holders of masters degrees
and doctorates �believe in the devil.� A whopping 82% of Americans
believe in Heaven as a literal place to which souls go after
death. Sixty percent of Americans �say that their faith is involved in
every aspect of their lives,� and 82% say that �God is very
important to them.� A public that describes their religious faith
in these terms is not going to be responsive to an animal rights
movement that treats religion as part of the problem and actively
teaches that it ought to be replaced by a secular worldview.
The Failures of Religion
There can be no denying that animal
advocates have good reason to be distrustful of religion. The
Judeo-Christian tradition that is dominant in the United States has a
miserable record on animals. Not only has it failed to provide
leadership, it has more often been actively on the side of animal
exploitation and murder, as is shown in the Jewish and Christian
practice of thanking God before each meal for the dead flesh of
murdered animals. Exhortations from the pulpit to show animals
kindness generally have stopped far short of suggestions that we ought
not be
abusing and killing them for our own purposes. And it is
certainly no coincidence that Western Europe, where personal
lifestyle and public policy are much less shaped by religion than they
are here, is far ahead of the United States in the protection of
animals.
But it is equally true that many of the same churches that now
defend animal slavery as ordained by God once defended human
slavery on the same basis, and not without justification. There
are several passages in the Bible that approve of human slavery, while
there is no passage in the Bible that condemns it. The Bible
actually lends more support to animal rights than to the abolition
of human slavery.
And yet, as we have seen, the movement to end slavery was born and
nurtured in the churches, White churches as well as Black. And it
is this pattern that we must strive to replicate. Religious
abolitionists like Garrison and Douglass generally ignored the
passages in the Bible that could be quoted in support of slavery.
Instead, they focused on the passages that express the heart of the
Bible�s spiritual message, such as �You shall love your neighbor as
yourself,� �Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,�
�Blessed are the merciful,� and �Blessed are the meek.� Slavery,
they repeated over and over again, is incompatible with the Bible�s
overarching message. The Bible�s teachings on love and mercy can
only be understood as a condemnation of slavery.
This is the same message that we must take to the churches and
synagogues of America. Animal exploitation � animal agriculture,
vivisection, hunting, fishing, rodeos, and so on � are
incompatible with the Bible�s overarching message. Jewish and
Christian teachings on love and mercy can only be understood as a
condemnation of animal exploitation. Imprisoning, torturing, and
killing God�s innocent sentient creatures for our own benefit cannot
be reconciled with
Judaism�s and Christianity�s teachings on love,
self-sacrifice, and mercy. The Bible clearly and consistently
teaches that animals are sentient beings, able to suffer just as we
are. The Bible also teaches that, like us, animals have immortal
souls and will be present in the Kingdom of Heaven (the Messianic
Age). Building on this foundation, we must repeat over and over again,
to everyone who is willing to listen, and some who aren�t, that animal
exploitation violates the foundational teachings of Judaism and
Christianity on love and mercy.
If the abolitionists had thrown up their hands in disgust at the
level of support for slavery in White churches and condemned religion,
they would have sabotaged their own cause by alienating almost the
entirety of the American public. If we throw up our hands in disgust
at the level of support for animal abuse in America�s churches and
synagogues, we will set back the animals� cause by at least a
generation and probably more. Like the old abolitionists, we must
convert the churches, not write them off.
Among Christians, we will make the best progress by starting with
the liberal and traditionally mainstream churches, including (among
others, I do not mean to rule out a denomination by not mentioning it)
Unitarian-Universalist, Quaker, the churches of the Anglican
Communion, the Dutch Reformed Churches, the more moderate Lutheran
congregations, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of
Christ, the Church of the Brethren, the Seventh Day Adventists, the
Congregationalists, the Eastern Orthodox churches (which have an
ancient tradition dating back to the Desert Fathers of ethical
vegetarianism and respect for animals), and, interestingly enough, the
more liberal elements of the Roman Catholic Church. There are several
very dynamic inter-denominational groups, including the Christian
Vegetarian Association, led by Dr. Steven Kaufmann, Viatoris
Ministries and Humane Religion Magazine, founded by the late Rev. J.
R. Hyland, God's Creatures Ministry, led by Janice Fredericks, and
All-Creatures.Org, led by United Methodist minister Rev. Frank Hoffman
and his wife Mary. The mainstream, secular animal rights movement
ought to be reaching out to these groups and to the churches, and
offering them resources and support. PETA is the role model here with
an outstanding program of outreach to religious communities � created
and guided by their vice president for international grassroots
campaigns Bruce Friedrich, a devout Catholic. And it is an encouraging
sign that The Humane Society of the United States has recently created
a religious outreach program headed by Christine Gutleben.
Judaism has always had a stronger tradition of respect for animals
than most Christian denominations, and except for the so-called
ultra-orthodox, all the major branches of Judaism, Reform,
Conservative, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist are potentially open to
the animals� cause. Here, groups like Jewish Vegetarians of North
America, founded and led by Dr. Richard Schwartz, and Jews for Animal
Rights, founded and led by Dr. Roberta Kalechofsky, are doing
outstanding work. Again, they need more support from the secular
animal protection movement.
Islam, which is becoming increasingly important in the United
States, combines a strong tradition of animal welfare with an equally
strong opposition to animal rights. Just as Judaism is the Abrahamic
religion most open to the animal rights message, I believe that Islam
will prove to be the least open. But there are voices within Islam
speaking out in defense of animals, such as the late Al-Hafiz B. A.
Masri, the Saudi-born imam of an influential English mosque, who
called for an end to vivisection and animal agriculture.
A Built-in Bias
Far too many of the leaders of the animal rights movement have a
personal animus toward religion that disinclines them to reach out to
the religious community on behalf of animals. Some are anti-religion
on principle. They believe that religion is an outmoded superstition
that needs to be done away with for the general good of humanity and
society. Unfortunately, the recent ascendancy of the religious right
in America has reinforced this attitude in those already in that camp,
and pushed into it others who had not been there previously. To them I
can only say two things. First, you are never going to convert the
American public to atheism. And if you persist in identifying animal
rights with a materialist worldview, you will condemn the animals to
unending abuse. Second, the religious right does not represent true
religion. The religious fundamentalism wedded to political fascism
that is threatening to destroy the American way of life is alien to
the spirit of authentic faith, which is reflected in the teachings of
the Later Prophets and Jesus and represented by the ages old
principles of �You shall love your neighbor as yourself,� and �Blessed
are the merciful.� It is to believers who live by these themes that we
must appeal, not the fundamentalists who pay them lip service while
living by a code of militancy that displays love and mercy only toward
those who agree with them.
Other movement leaders (and rank and file as well) believe that
animal abuse arises from and is reinforced by the dominionist outlook
of Judaism and Christianity, which are inherently hostile to animals.
This view finds its most thoughtful and articulate expression in An
Unnatural Order by Jim Mason, an environmental and animal rights
pioneer whose expose of factory farming, Animal Factories (co-authored
with Peter Singer), has found a well-deserved place in the first rank
of animal rights classics. Near the end of An Unnatural Order, Mason
gives a passing nod to traditions within Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam that are friendly to women, animals, and the environment. Then
he notes that these traditions �would, if revived, contribute some
healing to the spiritual, sexual, and environmental crises we now find
ourselves in. One hopes that the progressive faithful can find them
and successfully revive them.� The conditional verb and the limiting
�some� in the first sentence suck the life out of the hope expressed
in the second. As long as the animal rights movement sits passively on
the sidelines and refuses to address religion with both respect and
uncompromising moral force, Mason�s �hope� will remain forlorn.
But Mason is right about one thing, those traditions are there, and
they reach in unbroken lineage back to the ultimate wellsprings of
human morality, which are in every society religious. In the Abrahamic
religions, they reach back to �You shall love your neighbor as
yourself,� �Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,�
�Blessed are the merciful,� �Blessed are the peacemakers.� One of the
fundamental challenges facing the animal rights movement is showing
modern Christians, Jews, and Muslims what these statements mean for
our relationship to animals in the modern world.
Our task is not to discredit or revise religious ethics. Quite the
opposite. Our task is to highlight the ethical teachings that already
stand at the heart of the great religions, and show that they apply
equally to all of God�s sentient creatures. The teachings that would
deny animals the full protection of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
ethics did not originate in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. They
originated in Classical Greek philosophy, specifically in the
teachings of Aristotle and the Stoics. They are alien imports into the
Abrahamic religions, and therefore, they are not of the essence of
these faiths. (For a description of this process, see Phelps, The
Longest Struggle, pp. 34-36 and 52-58.) It is universal, boundless
love and compassion that are of their essence, and that can lead the
religious communities to animal rights, just at universal, boundless
love and compassion have led them to human rights without regard for
such morally irrelevant factors as race, nationality, religion,
gender, or sexual orientation.
In fact, the core ethical teaching of all the world�s major
religions is identical. It is unbounded, universal love and
compassion. And this creates at the heart of each of the great
religions a natural receptivity to the animal rights message. At
present, this door of receptivity is most often blocked by selfish
barricades that would limit our love and compassion to other human
beings. But, as we have seen, similar barricades have just as often
and just as fiercely blocked members of other races, nationalities, or
religions from the love and compassion of the faithful, and those
barricades were overcome when they were shown to be at odds with the
ethical heart of the faith. In fact, the conflict between
fundamentalism and the more generous forms of religion (in
Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and other faiths) can be best
understood as the struggle between those who would limit religion�s
ethical teachings to a small, restricted group of �deserving�
recipients, and those who would apply them as they were originally
formulated�to all who stand in need of love, acceptance, and mercy.
A False Messiah
I do not share the hope of some that the replacement of a
religious, spiritual worldview by a �scientific,� materialist
worldview will advance the animals� cause. Historically, science has
treated animals no better than religion, and scientists are in the
forefront of contemporary animal abusers. Darwin may have believed
that nonhuman animals have rich interior lives not much different from
our own and that this has serious implications for our treatment of
them, but subsequent generations of scientists have ignored this
aspect of his work. Vivisection (which even Darwin supported) is the
creation of science, not religion, and one-hundred percent of
vivisectors are scientists. Biological, medical, chemical, and social
scientists have not hesitated to imprison, torture, and murder vast
numbers of animals in the name of science. Geneticists routinely
create �transgenic� animals who are deliberately designed to suffer
from diseases and other painful, disabling, and lethal abnormalities
that make them useful in experiments. They have gone beyond inflicting
suffering on already living beings to designing beings whose suffering
is built into them, an atrocity beyond the grasp of earlier
generations of abusers. The fathers of modern vivisection, Francois
Magendie and Claude Bernard, were among the nineteenth century�s
foremost opponents of religion and leading advocates for the
scientific worldview. But that did not stop them from conducting
experiments on unanesthetized animals so cruel that they almost
single-handedly gave rise to the anti-vivisection movement in Europe
and North America.
The dominionist outlook of the Abrahamic religions does not cause
animal exploitation, and abolishing religion will not end it. We
exploit animals because we enjoy the products of animal exploitation
and we can do so with impunity. Dominionism simply provides an
after-the-fact justification for what we already want to do. This is
why animal exploitation is not limited to Jewish, Christian, and
Muslim countries, but is found everywhere on Earth, regardless of
religion, culture, history, or economic system. We like the results,
and we can get away with it. If religion were abolished tomorrow, the
animal exploiters would never miss a beat. They would simply find a
new justification, and life�and death�would go on as before, business
as usual, just as scientists have found a nonreligious justification
for their cruelties and killings. Until we are made to face the pure
evil of what we are doing, we will always find a defense of animal
exploitation in whatever belief system we adopt.
In the final analysis, the argument for animal rights is entirely a
moral argument, based on compassion. It is wrong for humankind to
inflict suffering and premature death on sentient creatures because we
enjoy the taste of their flesh, milk, or eggs, or we think their skin
looks and feels good on our feet, or we hope that if we torture and
kill enough animals we can extend our own lives, or whatever. That is
the alpha and the omega of animal rights. There may be other, entirely
valid, reasons for doing things that advance the animals� cause � such
as adopting a vegan diet to improve our health, or eliminating animal
agriculture to reduce global warming and end world hunger�but there is
no reason other than morality for granting animals rights. And the
arbiter of American morality is religion. As long as our rabbis,
priests, pastors, and�increasingly�imams are telling Americans that
animal exploitation is not wrong, the bulk of Americans will see no
reason to give up their prime rib, their leather shoes, the research
that may cure cancer, or the circus elephants that their kids enjoy so
much. When you are making a moral argument, as we are, the refusal to
make it to the very people and institutions that honor morality above
all else here on earth is irresponsible. We have a powerful moral and
spiritual argument on behalf of animals. And like the abolitionists
and civil rights advocates of old, we need to use it.