PIGS ARE NOT "THE LAND"

CREATION CARE AND ANIMALS, PART TWO

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed.”
                                                                              Prov.31:8, New Living Translation

Last week, I began a look at a theological perspective variously known as “creation care,” “green theology,” “ecotheology,” and similar terms.  I noted that while this perspective has done excellent work in helping us to understand that Scripture places on humans obligations toward the rest of creation, rather than simply conferring rights, it falls short in addressing our obligations toward animals.  The problem lies in the fact that these authors most often fail to distinguish between sentient and non-sentient elements of the non-human creation.  They tend to consider animals as part of “nature.”  This allows them – and us - (intentionally or otherwise) to disregard the fact that animals are individuals and have value apart from their environment.  It also makes it easy to think of animals as “out there” – in the wild somewhere, and lets us avoid turning our gaze on the animals we impact most directly – the ones in places like factory farms and puppy mills and laboratories.[1] 

Ellen F. Davis, in her book, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, does turn her eyes directly on farm animals, ever so briefly, and in so doing helps to illustrate the disconnect between concern for animals and concern for the environment even when food is the topic. [2]  Davis has provided what she subtitles “An Agrarian Reading of the Bible.”  She describes agrarianism as “a way of thinking and ordering life in community that is based on the health of the land and of living creatures.”  

            Davis offers in this work a thorough-going indictment of our modern food delivery system.  “In this half-century,” she says, “it has given North Americans probably the cheapest food in human history, but at what cost?”[3]  She addresses at some length the destruction industrial agriculture wreaks on the land, on the farming families who cannot compete with this industrial model, and on “the natural machinery that supports life on Earth,” and puts it all in the context of the biblical covenant and the tie of the ancient Israelites to the land.[4]  She also addresses a host of other natural, economic, and social impacts of industrial agriculture.  One looks in vain, however, for any sustained discussion of the catastrophic suffering industrial agriculture imposes on animals or its theological implications.

 She writes movingly of the devastation caused by current agricultural practices from a number of perspectives, yet, notwithstanding her definition of agrarianism as addressing the health of “all living creatures,” she offers no theological vision for how an agrarian viewpoint should inform our relations with animals, either those animals within the industrial agriculture system, those few relatively fortunate animals raised for food on humane farms, or those in the wild who are impacted not only by the pollution resulting from overworked soil, but also by industrial agriculture practices (particularly those involving animals raised for food) that befoul the water, the air, and habitat.  Most disappointingly, notwithstanding her grave concerns about our food supply, she gives only passing attention the staple of the American diet: factory farmed meat. 

That passing consideration comes in her examination of Leviticus.  She opens this chapter quoting Aldo Leopold’s comments regarding ethical considerations being extended “to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively, the land.”[5]  Thus, as is so often the case in creation care writings, Davis (and Leopold) appears to conflate the needs of animals with the needs of inanimate nature.  Yet, animals, as sentient creatures, are manifestly not “the land” and are entitled to a whole collection of ethical considerations that have no analogy to those for soils, waters, or plants. 

Nevertheless, in a section of her discussion of Leviticus entitled “Eating To Blessing Or Damnation,” animals raised for food do come briefly to the fore.[6]  She points out that biblical writers considered eating “a religious act, and all these writers treat thoughtless eating a sacrilege,” and argues that provisions for clean and unclean animals and methods of slaughter harken back to Genesis 1.  Here is another disconnect, since in Genesis 1 only plants were given as food.  However, she is clear that while scripture allows for the eating of animals, it is to be done with respect for the life taken; “it is an occasion for covenant faithfulness.”  

By contrast to this biblical vision for eating, she addresses the realities of our current food production system and declares, “[o]ur own culture, especially in North America, certainly operates the most death-dealing market the world has ever known.  Considered within the context of creation, it epitomizes our ingratitude for what God has done.”[7]  She then briefly discusses factory farming, accurately describing it as motivated solely by profit, resulting in the management of animals in completely unnatural environments.  She also correctly notes that while costs to the consumer for meat at the market are kept low as a result of the system, the real cost is much higher.  

Even here, however, she does not turn first to the cost in the suffering of the billions and billions of animals who exist in this system.  Instead, she first addresses human suffering, identifying the cost to mostly nonunionized workers in slaughterhouses, who must handle huge numbers of animals with split-second timing, slaughtering thousands of animals a day in poor working conditions.[8]  Turning only then to conditions in factory farms, she notes, “[s]uffering, disease, and wasteful death for so-called domesticated animals is also a large part of the cost our eating habits and food production system,” and then she gives particular attention to hogs in gestation crates, emphasizing the industrialized atmosphere in which hogs are handled, “from birth to bacon,” including mechanized slaughter methods.  Quoting Matthew Scully, she describes the scene on the slaughterhouse floor, where “[t]he electrocutors, stabbers, and carvers who work on the floor wear earplugs to muffle the screaming.”  All of this is covered in a few paragraphs, with minimal discussion of the impact on the animals themselves and without consideration of the theological implications of the sheer cruelty to animals this system entails.  

Davis also provides insight into her views on animals earlier in her book, in a reflection on the creation stories and what it means to have been created in the image of God and given dominion over the animals.  

Citing Genesis 1:26, she points to the connection between “mastery among” other animals (a translation she prefers to “dominion over”) and our creation in the image of God.  In considering what it means to be created in that image, she argues that more than anything, the image of God gives human life value.[9]  She acknowledges the view that the image is tied to the ancient role of kings and the unique Biblical perspective that all humans (not just kings) are created as representatives of God’s rule on earth.  This vision includes the call to be holy, and for Davis, this holiness is tied to proper use of the land for the good of community.  According to Genesis, she argues, “the form of human life is fundamentally ecological,” which she understands as involved in the science of infinitely complex relationships, with God at their center.[10]  For agrarians, she argues, these relationships are “best known as ‘food chains.’”  Quoting Aldo Leopold, she describes, “a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.  Food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil.”[11]  She concludes that “the most essential activity befitting humans created in the image of God is to secure the food system that God gives to sustain all creatures.”[12]  Considering our exercise of “mastery among” the animals, she notes that humans are called upon to actively manage animal populations, particularly in view of the damage human activity has caused to natural ecosystems.[13]  She does not address what value animal life may have in view of her assertion that human life derives its value from the image of God; she does not address the fact that only plants are part of the food chain in the creation stories; and she does not address any potential conflict between managing animal populations and compassionate care toward individual animals. 

Thus, while Davis’ work provides important insights into several problems with our current food system, even while she holds up agrarianism as concerned with “all living creatures,” she fails to take the opportunity to address the cruelty and suffering that our food system imposes on animals.  Instead, the attention that animals do receive suggests that she considers them to be resources in the same way the land is a resource, to be treated well and with a view to sustainability, but not as individual beings with their own inherent value and whose suffering is a theological concern.

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[1] Sadly, our impact is increasingly felt by those in the wild, as well, as we crowd them out of their habitat and use up the resources they need to survive and then complain that they are turning up in “our” yards.

[2] Davis, Ellen.  Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

[3] Davis, p. 13.

[4] Davis, pp. 13-20.

[5] Davis, p. 83.

[6] Davis, pp. 94-100.

[7] Davis, p. 97.

[8] Davis, pp. 97-98.

[9] Davis, p. 56.  For my thoughts on the image of God and human value, see this post.

[10] Davis, pp. 56-57 (emphasis original).

[11] Davis, p. 56.

[12] Davis, p. 58.

[13] Davis, pp. 53-54.