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Before closing the week’s discussion on faith and animals, I thought I’d pass along a bit more information related to consumption and animal products. While this issue inevitably comes up when discussing animal advocacy, it’s often hard to know where to look for a balanced, let alone faithful, approach to this aspect of animal stewardship. Is it possible to consider the issue without attaching oneself to PETA or committing to lifelong veganism? Hopefully the following resources will be of some help:- “Eating Mercifully,” a short film (26 min.) produced by the Humane Society’s Animals & Religion program is a very helpful and moderate introduction for the Christian community. Please check it out, or the shorter preview. You’ll be glad you did.
- Greg Boyd, featured in “Eating Mercifully,” has an excellent miniseries responding to a question he is frequently asked about his diet. The series includes “Why I’m a Vegetarian,” “The First Fruit of the Coming Non-Violent Creation,” and “Compassionate Dominion and Factory Farms.”
- If you’re looking for additional reading material, “Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy” by Matthew Scully, “Good Eating” by Stephen Webb, “Good News for All Creation” by the Christian Vegetarian Association and Andrew Linzey’s “Animal Theology” are highly recommended. Also, you can download Matthew Halteman’s thoughtful booklet “Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation” and my own “Not One Sparrow is Forgotten: A Biblical-Theological Foundation for Animal Welfare” for free.
- Lastly, please see my own work with Not One Sparrow, including our consumption page and blog, for more food for thought (sorry for the poor pun).
Many, many thanks again to Jason for the invitation to continue the dialogue this Summer, and to Nancy Janisch for joining me. It’s been a pleasure, and please feel free to let me know if I can be of any further help.
(image courtesy the Humane Society of the United States, Animals & Religion)
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Building on part one of her provocative post from yesterday, Nancy Janisch writes:If modern science tells us that animals possess many of the traits we thought make us uniquely human, how can the pre-scientific ancient world help us resolve our dilemma? How can going back help us move forward?
When we look back we discover that our ideas about the image of God are not exactly the same as those of ancient people. In Egypt, images did not depict what a god looked like. An image was not created to describe a god, but represented certain qualities or attributes of it. The statue was one of the main places where the god was present and manifested itself.
In Egypt and Mesopotamia, kings were believed to be the image of a god. For example, Pharaoh was understood to be the earthly manifestation of the god, functioning on earth just as the image of the god functioned in the temple. Certainly the ideas of ‘dominion’ and ’subduing’ found in Genesis were part of the function of kings. The king was the designated representative of the gods, ruling on their behalf. Bearing the ‘image of god’ was not about form and appearance, it was about function and position in creation.
The Biblical accounts in Genesis (1:26-28; 5:1-3; 9:6) appear to set humans apart from the rest of creation. Because the Hebrew Bible views people as integrated, whole beings, body and soul, the text probably means that the entire human person is created in the image of God, and not a particular ‘part’ of a person.
Genesis tells us all humans, not just the king, bear God’s image. Therefore, all humans occupy an important place in creation. All men and women have dignity and worth. Genesis denies human hierarchies, and this seems to have been an uniquely Israelite idea. Recall that early Israel had no kings. Israel also, uniquely, lacked images. The divine image was not to be found in a statue, or in a king. In God’s eyes, all humanity is royal. All bear His image. This was a revolutionary idea. So the text isn’t about the distinctions between humans and animals, but about the lack of distinctions – between people.
But what about our relationship with animals? Can the text help us at all? Yes, but we need to be aware that our tendency is to think about the imago dei as something we inherently possess, rather than something which is the result of God’s will and intention. This human-centered understanding of creation ought to replaced with a God-centered understanding of creation. The image-of-God texts in Genesis are a theological statement about who humans are: part of creation, but also beings with a particular relationship to their Creator. The image-of-God language in Genesis tells us that humans are one venue for God making Himself known to the rest of creation.
I believe this means we are called to a relationship with animals that finds its orientation in the ways God relates to us. We know who God is by what He does. And that is the clue to thinking about how we ought to be the image-bearers of God.
We often think about God as king or ruler. God has dominion, royal responsibility for creation. But dominion is also given to us, and our dominion should not be like the dominion of human kings. As history tells us, the dominion of human kings is about power, about the taking of resources and the exploitation of others. The dominion of God, on the other hand, is not about power and might, but about relationship and care. God is the ruler who heals, feeds, rescues, saves and restores. God is the king who rules sacrificially with care and compassion. And so should our dominion be.
Christians also believe God is triune. A lifetime of reflection on the Trinity would not exhaust the subject, but let’s consider this for now: The relationships between the persons of the Trinity are inextricably part of what it means to be God. God is relationship, and if we are indeed created in the image of God, then we too are created for relationship: with God, with each other and with the rest of creation.
There is much more that can, and should, be said about all this. I invite you to enter into the conversation which a growing number of Christians are having about what it means to be human, and what that means for our relationships with animals.
(Many thanks to Nancy for her own valuable contribution to that conversation, and to this week of discussion at Deep Church specifically. Again, you can read more of her reflections on creation, science and faith at Conversation in Faith. Image courtesy Farm Sanctuary.)
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The following is from my good friend Nancy Janisch, a former veterinarian of twenty years and currently ministry coordinator for True North Campus Ministry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nancy blogs at Conversation in Faith, often on matters of creation, science and faith (image courtesy Cheryl DeVries):
We won’t understand our relationship with animals until we understand who we are as human beings. And oddly enough, we won’t understand who we are as human beings until we understand our relationship with animals.
We have defined ourselves as humans, both theologically and biologically, by emphasizing the distinctions between ourselves and animals. We have assumed ourselves to be the only beings who are self-aware, the only beings with the ability to reason, the only beings who could modify their environment, with a conscience and moral awareness, and with culture and language. But as our knowledge about animals has increased, the distinctions between humans and animals have decreased. The literature is vast, but here are just a few examples to illustrate the point:
Chimps, elephants and dolphins have been shown to have self-awareness. That is, they know themselves as individuals who are distinct from other individuals. Some animals like rats and ravens have, if not the ability to count, at least an awareness of numbers. Tool using, making and modification are well-known phenomena not only among chimps, but also wasps and birds.
Animal groups develop distinctive ways of communication. They learn from each other, they form complex social bonds and they work cooperatively. Animal groups have standards regarding what constitutes acceptable social behavior. They have methods of deaing with unacceptable behavior, and they also have ways of resolving conflict when group norms have been violated.
Chimps in different regions of Africa demonstrate different behaviors, distinctive methods of tool use, and different styles of vocalization. They have developed different cultures. Elephants live in matriarchal groups and form lifelong relationships. They appear to grieve the death of group members. You may recall reading about elephants in zoos who, after being separated for many years, not only recognized each other but appeared happy to see each other when they are reunited. Whales develop complex songs to communicate, form alliances, act cooperatively in hunting, and pass along those skills to younger whales. And they have social networks similar to primates and humans.
In captivity, dolphins and chimps can learn artificial languages and sign language, becoming in a sense bilingual. Some chimps who know American Sign Language teach it to their offspring, and have also been found to use ASL to communicate with other chimps even when humans are not present. Animals can even be deceptive. Wolves will store food and then retrieve it when other wolves are not looking. Baboons who are being harassed by other baboons will signal that a predator is near, and when the harassing baboons check to find the fictional predator, they slip away.
The more we study animals, the more qualities we thought made us different from animals are slipping away. Animal communication is much more complex than we previously imagined. The family and communal life of animals is more rich and emotionally meaningful than we believed possible. Some animals even seek particular plants to consume apparently as treatment for parasites or certain diseases. So what differences remain between us?
Some may claim that our own sense of awe and wonder, a recognition of the divine, separates us from other animals. But there are a growing number of scientists who believe that certain animals, particularly primates, have a sense of awe and wonder. There are recorded episodes of gorillas stopping to watch the sun set or gazing at a waterfall.
What if the differences between us may be more of degree than of kind? What does that mean for us as humans? What does it mean to be created in the image of God if it does not mean we are quite distinct from animals? To answer that question we must first consider the role of images in the ancient near east, following which we must consider what the Genesis story meant to the original audience. And then we will be able to read the story in a new way.
to be continued tomorrow …
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Many thanks to Jason for the invitation to post another miniseries on the relationship between our faith and animals. Last Summer Karen Swallow Prior and Stephen Webb joined me for an initial go-round, with perpsectives on the emerging church’s surprisingly limited attention to animal welfare, becoming more aware of animal cruelty, and God’s domesticated intentions for all animals. This week I’ll be posting some resources related to eating humanely and my own work with Not One Sparrow, and Nancy Janisch will be adding a compelling look at what the imago dei means to our relationship to animals.But I thought I’d get this fringe-issue-party started (right?!) by asking what a deep church approach to animal welfare and advocacy might look like? I have to admit, as with many working from the evangelical tradition, I’m not very familiar with the early church. But from what I’ve read in animal theology tomes (e.g. Webb’s Good Eating), it didn’t have all that much to say about animals which would point us towards a more intentionally redemptive ethic.
Still, I identify in many respects with the deep church ethos which Jason and others have been part of introducing, and I think it relates significantly to formulating a most meaningful and gospel-oriented perspective on animals and our relationship to them. Here are two correlations which stand out to me:
Most foundationally, a deep church ethos calls us to place focal emphasis on the narrative trajectory which God has established throughout Scripture and flowing from it (see e.g. “A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future”). And this trajectory is distinctively redemptive, not just for the “frozen chosen,” as those heading the call to social justice have faithfully reminded us, but for all humanity; and not just for humanity, as the creation care community has expanded our horizons of late, but for all creation and its creatures. But sadly, this last category of God’s creative and redemptive work continues to be the most neglected.
In the Testaments we see a clear depiction of what are sometimes called the “biblical bookends of innocence,” pointing to God’s original and ultimate ideal for his creation, in which all of his creatures are cared for and safeguarded by his image bearers, even related to just as God knows and delights in every sparrow. I don’t mean to discount the reality of the fall and its thoroughgoing consequences in between those bookends; in fact, it forms the basis for God’s permissions to utilize animal existence for our benefit even to the point of death. But far too often we acquiesce not only to this tragic grace, but to its most degrading, and explicitly unbiblical, perversions: rolling our eyes at the fuss about homeless pets, dog fighting and shameful hunting practices, and most prominently accepting the farming systems which generate the vast majority of our animal products (Stateside at least, but Europe is far from blameless) and which embody the antithesis of the animal husbandry depicted, and expected, in the Bible. As others have said before me – we can, and must, do better.
A deep church ecclesiology also calls us to come together as one Church, from all its rooms as Lewis would say, to ground our stewardship of animals in the biblical narrative and trajectory. We may differ on how our concern for animals specifically works itself out, and that’s ok. But the gospel calls us to one body, not bodies. And as Paul so poignantly writes in Romans 8, creation’s animals are aching to join with this one body of “God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay” (vs. 21, NLT), and to reach their full created potential expressly because of our redemption.
May it be so, Lord.
(For more on the biblical narrative as it relates to animals and our relationship to them, please see my “Not One Sparrow is Forgotten: A Biblical-Theological Foundation for Animal Welfare” or a condensed version at Not One Sparrow’s motivation page. Image courtesy The Animals Voice.)
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I’m on vacation and away from blogging for a few days. Elizabeth Chapin is moderating comments whilst I’m gone. Also starting 23rd August, we have Ben De Vries from ‘Not One Sparrow‘, providing some guest posts for us.
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JR Woodward has kindly interviewed me about the upcoming Global Missional Leadership Doctor of Ministry (GML D.Min) that I will be leading for George Fox Seminary.
Aside from great content, he should win the award for best designed site/blog.
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Cartoon by Dave Walker
I’ve been asked to write a chapter on the topic of, ‘Emerging Churches can be deep ones too’, for a book edited by Andrew Walker, titled ‘The Third Schism: Essays for a Deep Church’. Paternoster are publishing it, and it will be aimed at undergraduate level. I now have 5,000 words to write by the end of the year.
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I’ve taught a couple of times at Fuller Seminary, in the extensions department. I’ve now been asked to put together a module for D.Min students to have as an option.
My first stab at a draft outline for it is below.
Ecclesiology and Christian Identity in Consumer & Secular Culture. (8 units) Jason Clark
DESCRIPTION:
This course introduces students to a diagnosis of Consumerism, Secularism and the Market as analogous religious systems, and explores the implications for concrete missional ecclesiology for Christian identity and formation in our current emerging context, with specific application and assessment of current ‘state of the art’ Emerging Ecclesiologies. These course seeks to answer several questions: What is the relationship and nature of the western evangelical ecclesiologies, to Consumerism, Secularism and the Market and how does this affect Christian conversion, identity and formation? Does the Emerging Church attend to any inherent problems within this relationship or continue to perpetuate them? What alternatives are available for Ecclesiology in light of this examination for Christian conversion and formation?
In terms of method the main course elements are an investigation of the nature and history of Evangelicalism within Consumer and Secular Culture, the production of a theological, philosophical and social theory based account of the Christian identity and formation within that context, an examination of the resources of the Christian tradition for application to that account and any arising problems (in particular the Augustinian/Reformed tradition), and the use of that account for an assessment of current emerging church ecclesiologies. Continue reading »
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It’s taken me a few weeks to collect the books I need for my next tranche of PhD reading. This Autumn/Fall I’ll be exploring the development of the modern evangelical church and the relationship of the individual to the market, consumerism and ecclesiology.
This will form my chapter one of my PhD. I am going to explore the question of whether evangelicalism is a creature of modernity, and response to industrialism. I’ll be trying to provide an historical account of how much the evangelical church is a carrier and distributor of the market.
I’ll be trying to do that with a general historical account of the last couple of hundred years then some examples of specific cases studies of evangelical groups, such as methodism and the salvation army. I’ll also explore how unlike these movements later renewal movements don’t take determinate social forms.
In other words whereas previous forms of evangelicalism led to forms of church that ordered the rest of life, later renewal movements had no corresponding exploration of polity, or ceded that to the nature of the market and secularism. Or at least I’ll be trying to see if that was the case. Ultimately I’ll be asking if the emerging church ecclesiology lacks any determinative social forms, and if this is a continuing detriment to christian identity and formation.
This account, I expect will be a mixed bag, of how the church resisted the logic of the market and how it succumbed to it. Evangelicalism has an under-told story of it’s relationship to the market, that I want to uncover.
Below is the initial list of books I’ll be exploring. If you know any others, do let me know.
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In my last post, I gave the background to story and context to the “Ecclesia’ tattoo I recently had on my right forarm, and promised in this post to give as many reasons as I am aware of for why
I had this done.
Some researchers hold that the word ‘Britain’ is derived from a word used by The Picts (a pre-Celtic people) that meant ‘land of the painted people’, and that the Romans learned and copied the process of tattooing from the Britains. In 50 BCE, Julius Caesar wrote in his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars that, during his campaigns in southern Britain in 55 and 54 BCE, he observed that “all Britons paint themselves with woad, which turns the skin a bluish-green color; hence their appearance is all the more horrific in battle.”
For some reason I take some comfort that Tattooing might have such a long tradition for the British. So in no particluar order here are my reasons for a tattoo (and please remember these are my reasons for my tattoo).
1. Appeal: I like the idea of a tattoo, and like many people have thought about it for some time, but never had the nerve to have it done, or have something in mind that was important enough for a design. The idea for the word ‘Ecclesia’ as a tattoo has sat with me over the last year.
2. Family: I wanted something to mark on my body my identity in the family of the church, in light of the abuse and lack of family I have experienced. Church has been and is my family, and I wanted that on my body just as people mark the names of their family and friends. Continue reading »
