Weekly Newsletter - December 14, 2016
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)

  1. Please Begin or Renew Your Annual Membership
  2. News: Canadian Woman Charged for Giving Water to Thirsty Pigs
  3. On Slavery
  4. This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman

1. Please Begin or Renew Your Annual Membership

There is no charge for receiving the weekly CVA e-newsletter, but our ministry depends on the contributions of our members, primarily for printing and distributing our booklets at Christian concerts, revivals, and other events. Please donate at CVA: Membership Level (all donations are tax-deductible).


2. News: Canadian Woman Charged for Giving Water to Thirsty Pigs

Matthew Scully, author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, describes how animal advocate Anita Krajnc is accused of criminal mischief for providing water to pigs bound for slaughter. The crammed pigs were panting and foaming at the mouth on a hot June day, and Krajnc offered them water from a plastic bottle while the trailer was stopped at an intersection. To read more, go to Showing Mercy to Suffering Animals Is Not ‘Criminal Mischief’.

Comment: The forces of evil always strike fiercely at those who oppose them. This story inspired me to write about nonviolent resistance, and the first short essay in this series is below.


3. On Slavery

Marjorie Spiegel’s book The Dreaded Comparison (1988) details the many similarities between human and nonhuman slavery. These include the methods of oppression, the brutality of the oppressors, and the arguments used to justify enslavement. The American antislavery movement was largely an abolitionist movement – it was not focused on ameliorating the conditions under which humans were forced to labor. Does this history have relevance to animal protectionism? Specifically, should we seek to abolish animal abuse rather than try to reduce the degree of animal suffering?

In my opinion, this is not an either/or proposition. Some people will gravitate toward abolitionist activism and others toward reductionist activism, and I think it is hard to predict which efforts will prove most fruitful in the long run. However, there are at least two major differences between the anti-human slavery and anti-animal slavery movements that make extrapolation from one to the other difficult. First, humans have been much better at advocating for themselves than nonhumans. While nonhumans might try to resist abuse, humans are far more skilled at coordinating collective resistance strategies. Second, nearly everyone in our culture believes that they benefit from animal exploitation for food, clothing, medicine, and other purposes. In contrast, only a small minority of people owned slaves. So, while most people believe they have a vested interested in exploiting nonhumans, few people had a direct vested interest in exploiting human slaves.

These observations can help us discern which strategies are most likely to help nonhumans. Next week, I will begin to reflect on nonviolence and the animal protection movement.

Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.


4. This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman

Evil People Corrupt Creation


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