Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They're Not)

An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology

King

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498201810
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Why should Christians care about animals? Is there a biblical basis for abstaining from eating animals? Is avoiding companies that use (and misuse) animals a viable way for Christians to better live out the message of God?In Animals Are Not Ours, Sarah Withrow King makes the argument that care for all of creation is no "far-fetched" idea that only radical people would consider, but rather a faithful witness of the peaceful kingdom God desires and Jesus modeled. This includes all living and breathing creatures that share this earth with us. King uses her decade-plus experience as a vegan, her seminary education, her evangelical Christian faith, and her years working with PETA to call Christians to examine how we treat and view the nonhuman animals with whom we share a finite planet.

1

Stealing Chickens in Austria

(it was an accident, i swear)

In 2004, I went to London to work with PETA UK. As a wannabe world traveler without two dimes to rub together, this was a dream come true. Close to the end of my time in London, I realized that I had spent far too many weekends wandering the same streets and watching DVDs by myself in a tiny rented flat, and I booked myself a ten-dollar weekend flight to Salzburg, Austria.

I arrived late, past dark, but managed, with the help of a Londoner in town for a dance-school audition, to find the hostel where we were both staying. There was a short walk after our bus ride, and though it was raining, we passed an outdoor sausage festival where a German band was playing the UB40 version of Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” one of my all-time favorite songs. I took it as a sign that I was in God’s hands, despite my travel jitters.

The next morning I set out to discover the city, found a vegetarian Indian restaurant, visited the free museums and Mahler’s birthplace, and strolled on the north bank of the river. I wandered into the nineteenth-century evangelical Christuskirche to sit in silence and prayer, my back against the cool wooden pew, while the organist rehearsed for the next day’s service. I had a deep sense of peace, of Christ next to me and accompanying my steps—perhaps the only way I could have managed a weekend trip to a foreign country alone.

On my second day in Salzburg, I took the obligatory Sound of Music tour (FYI, the gazebo is closed for those wishing to reenact a certain plucky dance scene, as some numbskull broke a leg attempting the feat) and navigated my way to a vegetarian festival that happened to be taking place in one of the city squares. In the category of “it really is a small world,” I ran into an old acquaintance in a city five thousand miles from my home in a country where I barely spoke the language. As the festival came to a close, my friend—we’ll call him Martin—let me know that a local grassroots activist group was going to do an undercover investigation at a nearby chicken factory farm that evening. He asked if I wanted to come along.

The nature of undercover investigations is that they are stealthy. I am not stealthy. I am big and klutzy and bookish and a rule-follower. But I said yes, I want to come along on this investigation. When in Rome . . . or Salzburg.

So Martin and I went to a meeting where the plans for the evening were carefully hashed out. In German. More fancy German than I know, which is the high-school-discussion kind, mostly relating to the name of my uncle and the location of the nearest bathroom.

After what seemed like hours of talking, we finally all piled into cars and drove for miles and miles, out of the city and into the surrounding countryside. At this point, I started to question the wisdom of my tagging along on this adventure. What if I got separated from the group and was left to wander the Austrian countryside alone, in the dark (this was pre-iPhone, mind)? If we were caught, would I be deported? Would I be sent back to London, or to the U.S.? I was terrified that because I worked for PETA, I would drag the organization into my poor choice. When I realized that I was carrying my reflective messenger bag emblazoned with the PETA logo, I kicked myself a little harder.

Eventually, the drivers turned their lights off and pulled onto a gravel road. We parked in a clearing and walked back down a path to a giant warehouse filled with captive egg-laying hens. I told Martin I didn’t want to go inside, pondering whether I’d claim he kidnapped me when the police caught and interrogated us under a harsh spotlight. Martin and a few of the others climbed through a vent and disappeared into the warehouse. I waited by stacks of crates. I knew what was inside—row upon row of cages, each packed with hens, stacked one on top of the other; the stink of ammonia, feces, dead and decaying birds would be overwhelming. Dead birds would be in cages with live birds, some of whose feet would have grown around the cage wires, since their movement was so restricted. I was afraid of being arrested, but I was also horrified to come face to face with the real-life suffering that, to this point, I’d only seen on video.

There was a steady rain falling and I was beginning to wonder if I should just cut my losses and start hiking back to Salzburg when Martin and a few of the others came back out of the warehouse. I asked him if we were done and was flooded with relief when he said yes. But my stomach turned into an iron ball when he followed with, “And now we are going to do the rescue!” He was elated. Despite the cold, I began sweating and my heart raced. I told him I wouldn’t carry any crates. Couldn’t. I was more concerned with my own well-being than with helping animals in desperate need of care.

The activists on the inside of the warehouse began carefully passing crates full of chirruping chickens out the open window. Each crate was carried down the driveway to a waiting van. Finally, the operation came to an end. I walked with two young activists carrying a final crate of chickens back to the clearing where we had parked. Halfway down the lane, we heard the crunch of tires on gravel and saw the stab of headlights in the distance. In the only agile moment of my lifetime, I dove over a fence alongside the road, into a ditch, and waited, panting and thinking many swear words to myself.

I heard the new vehicle continue past me, then stop a few yards ahead at our parked cars. A door opened and closed. I heard some words that I can only presume were “What the bleeding %*@ is this?” Some grunting followed, and I heard another door open, releasing a flood of soft chicken clucks into the still night air. An exclamation of surprise, probably some more German swearing, then the door closed and the clucks ceased. Another door opened, closed, and the wheels crunched on down the road, a little faster than before.

As soon as the visitor was out of sight, we bolted for the cars. I had no idea where Martin was and didn’t want to stick around to find out. “Do you have keys?” I asked, now frantic. My new friends did have keys—to the van with all the rescued chickens. We piled in and drove away, not too fast, not too slow. Several miles down the road, we passed two police cars headed in the opposite direction and I begged the driver to let me out at the first possible stop. A gas station in a small town appeared to be open, so we pulled over and I jumped out. “You never saw me—I was never here!” were my parting words. I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.

In the gas station, I splashed water on my face, straightened myself out, and tried to think of a reason, any reason, to be where I was (and just where was that?), in the middle of the night, alone. I came up with nothing, nada, zilch (did I mention that I am also a terrible liar?). When I came back out, by what I can only describe as God’s grace, a taxi van was waiting to pick up two men who had been attending what they said was a birthday party in the back room of the garage. Glad that my mother would never know I got into a van with three strange men in the middle of the night in a foreign country, I showed the driver my (exorbitant) cash fare, hopped in the front seat, rolled down the window, chain-smoked on the hourlong drive back to the city (it was my year of poor choices, what can I say?), and thanked God for taking care of me.

I slept late the next day and that evening watched a film called Blueprint starring Franka Potente that made me sob in a tiny village theater. Despite the leftover adrenaline rush, I left Austria the following morning with a profound sense of peace.

I’ve struggled a bit over the years with what I participated in that night. On the one hand, I feel guilty that I helped commit a crime, albeit unintentionally. But despite my good-girl tendencies, I know how important undercover investigations and rescues are to exposing the truth of what goes on behind well-locked doors. The rescued hens were going to be taken to a veterinarian so that their illness and injuries could be documented, and then to a sanctuary where they would live the rest of their natural lives in peace. They would be able to feel the sun, breathe fresh air, and would never know the terror of a slaughterhouse. I didn’t raise a finger to actually help those activists do the job that I believed they should be doing, because I was afraid for my personal comfort and reputation. Even though my convictions are strong, I was cowardly. It was my Peter moment.

part one

Looking at the Word through an Animal Lens

Introduction to Part One

As evangelicals, our lives and decisions are shaped by scripture. But simply because we think “that’s the way it’s always been,” we eat, wear, and use animals in ways that are not supported by the arc of the scriptural story, which starts and ends without violence and is infused with the anticipation and influence of the Prince of Peace.

In chapter 2, we’ll take a good overview look at the creation account. You probably remember that in the first Genesis account of creation, God creates humans and land mammals on the sixth day, saying, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” God gives the instruction to “be fruitful and multiply” to birds and fish on the fifth day, and to humans on the sixth day. Here’s what we overlook, though: to these humans made in God’s likeness and given dominion over the earth—indeed, over all creation—God prescribes a vegan diet.

Chapter 3 will explore what it means to have dominion and to be made in the image of God. I’ll point out that eating animals is one of many signs of the broken world after the fall, articulated in God’s post-flood chat with Noah (Gen 9). Instead of God’s perfect and balanced creation, this new world order is marked by fear and predation both between and among the species, though God clearly establishes a covenantal relationship with both human and animal creation, further evidenced by the inclusion of laws to protect animals in the Torah.

In chapter 4, we’ll look at prophetic passages throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, which point to a future kingdom marked by peace both between and among the species. Joel 2:28 proclaims, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh,” while Hosea 2:18 visions a renewed covenant with “the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground . . . I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety.”

Chapters 5–7 are all about Jesus and his orientation to peace, which extends to all animals.

In chapter 8, we’ll talk about how the book of Revelation continues the prophetic themes of the Hebrew Scriptures that point to the future reconciliation of God with all of creation, and of humans and animals with one another. Chapter 9 will address some of the commonly raised objections to the proposal that there is a biblical basis for Christian vegetarianism.

Now, let’s get into it, shall we?

2

Creation

(or, using animals says to God, “i don’t think you got it quite right in Genesis”)

Take a good, long, hard look at the first creation story set out in the first chapter of Genesis. Don’t skim because you’ve read it a million times, like I used to. Here’s the NRSV version of the bit I want us to focus on, in case you don’t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Stealing Chickens in Austria
• Part One: Looking at the Word through an Animal Lens
• Part Two: Intersections and Bridges
• Part Three: Now What? The Basics of Treating Animals Well
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Bibliography