The Fellowship of Life
a Christian-based vegetarian group founded in 1973

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Literature

Calling All Christians and People of Goodwill (1990's edition)

Love and life to all creation
Scripture: They shall not hurt nor destroy in All My Holy Mountain."  Isaiah 11:9


BORN FREE  For this indignity


A REFINEMENT OF CRUELTY. . .
The geese are strapped down to boards and an electric force feeder is used to stuff them with grain. Can you now eat pate de fois gras??

 
"Behold I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree-bearing seed; to you it shall be for meat."     GENESIS 1:29
 
"...and what doth the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"    MICAH 6:8


UNWANTED  Saved from a watery grave


SPORT?  Surely not


THE FUR TRADE  Agonisingly deprived of their life so that women can wear their skins. What price luxury?


Skinned alive - for ladies' shoes and handbags


FACTORY FARMING  Deprived of natural conditions and freedom of movement


VIVISECTION LABORATORY  Inoculated with syphilis   Forced to chain-smoke      Clamped for some unspeakable torture


Birds - SLAUGHTER  What you do when you eat meat

 
The KILLING FOR FOOD  table is next in the sequence and has a different preface to those of previous FoL leaflets:
 
The pictures on the foregoing pages are far from comprehensive but may serve to give some idea of what actually happens to animals to satisfy the misguided belief that they must be sacrificed that we may feed, heal, clothe and entertain ourselves. This is moral pollution at its worst and most subtle, of which ALL are guilty who create the demand for the products of killing and cruelty.
 
                                     Live on the fruits of the earth.
 

 
At the foot of the table there are acknowledgements:
 
Our thanks for help in the production of this leaflet are due to:
 
The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection.
National Society for the Abolition of Factory Farming.
National Equine (and smaller animals) Defence League.
The Scottish Anti-Vivisection Society.
Compassion in World Farming.
Captive Animals Protection Society.
Beauty Without Cruelty.
Oeuvre d'Assistance aux Betes d'Abbatoirs.
Syndication International.
 

"LIBERATION OF LIFE"

 
Excerpt from the report from the Church and Society Consultation of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, meeting at Annecy, France in September 1988.
 
"The ethic of the liberation of life is a call to Christian action. In particular, how animals are treated is not "someone else's worry', it is a matter of our individual and collective responsibility. Christians are called to act respectfully towards 'these, the least of our brothers and sisters.' This is not a simple question of kindness, however laudable that virtue is. It is an issue of strict justice. In all our dealing with animals, whether direct or indirect, the ethic for the liberation of life requires that we render unto animals what they are due, as creatures with an independent integrity and value. Precisely because they cannot speak for themselves from the shackles of their enslavement, the Christian duty to speak and act for them is the greater, not the lesser.
 
"In facing this new challenge - this challenge to liberate all life, the animals included - Christians should aspire to two ideals: 1. Seek Knowledge, 2. Act justly.
 
"The first ideal enjoins us to break the habit of ignorance when it comes to how animals are being treated. It bids us to ferret out the truth, to make the invisible visible, to make the obscure clear. The second ideal bids us to make our own life a living expression of justice towards God's creation, to bring peace to our own lives even as we work to bring peace to the world. Indeed, we are unlikely to succeed in doing the latter if we fail in doing the former. There is little hope, that is, that we can change the world if we cannot even change ourselves: in the choice of the cosmetics and household products we use, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the entertainment we patronise. The ethic of liberation of life begins at home"
 
Members of the Christian community are therefore encouraged to act according to such guidelines as the following:
 
1. "Avoid cosmetics and household products that have been carefully tested on animals. Instead, buy cruelty free items.
 
2. "Avoid clothing and other aspects of fashion that have a history of cruelty to animals, products for the fur industry in particular. Instead, purchase clothes which are 'cruelty free'.
 
3. "Avoid meat and animal products that have been produced on factory farms. Instead, purchase meat and animal products from sources where the animals have been treated with respect, or abstain from these products altogether.
 
4. "Avoid patronising forms of entertainment that treat animals as mere means to human ends. Instead, seek benign forms of entertainment, ones that nurture a sense of the wonder of God's creation and reawaken that duty of conviviality we can discharge by living respectfully in community with all life, the animals included."
 
Printed by kind permission of Rev. Freda Rajotte, secretary of the sub-unit on Church and Society of the World Council of Churches, 150, Route de Ferney, P.O. Box 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland, which produced the report, "Liberation of Life".
 
It is not an official statement but does provide a starting point for Christians as they set out to widen their love to embrace all creation, animal, environmental as well as human.
 
Letter from THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS - The Right Reverend Dr. George Carey; The Palace, Wells, Somerset, BA5 2PD:
 
Mrs. M. Lawson,
Nirvana,
12 Argyle Street,
Inverness IV2 3BA
                                                                                    17th April 1990
 
Dear Margaret,
 
Thank you for your letter of the 10th April enclosing a report of the World Council of Churches 'Liberation of Life'. I am grateful to you for sending me this and all power to your elbow as you seek to drive home to people's conscience an ethic that concerns the whole of God's creation.
 
Yours warmly,
 
+GBW,
(Dictated but not signed personally owing to absence)
 
Extract from "The Ethics of Meat Eating" by Hugh Montefiore
Reproduced with permission of The Church Times; 25/5/90
 
According to the scriptures mankind has an affinity with God, and we are made "in God's image". This involves us being given dominion over all living things, but that does not mean that we can do what we like with them.
 
As for eating meat, according to Genesis I, animals are to eat grass, while man is to eat grains and fruit. In other words unfallen man is a vegetarian. As at the start, so at the end. Isaiah tells us that in the last days "the cow and the bear shall feed, their young lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox...They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain." Vegetarianism, according to the scriptures, far from being "unnatural", belongs to both the Garden of Eden and Paradise Regained. Eating flesh is a mark of Paradise Lost. After the wickedness which caused the flood, Noah is told: "Every moving thing that moves shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, so I give you everything." And the result of eating flesh? "The fear and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, all birds of the air, everything that creeps, all the fish of the sea..." That actually happens.
 
Modern methods of farming can be cruel (did you know that battery hens often arrive to be stunned with broken bones, because they cannot take proper exercise?); and I find it very offensive to feed up animals just so as to eat them. I myself believe - but I'm sure most readers will not - that the best thing that could result from Mad Cow disease would be that world beef production should cease. An ox consumes ten times as much grain as a human, and for the last three years the growing world population has outstripped world food production. Cattle worldwide produce huge quantities of methane gas from their digestive tracts which contribute considerably to the warming of the planet. My guess is that over the next century beef-eating, pace Mr Gummer, will be gradually phased out.

Available as a fold-out pamphlet for a small donation from: The Fellowship of Life, 43 Braichmelyn, Bethesda, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 3RD, U.K.

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