MINORITY REPORT PART THREE:

ANIMALS, SOCIAL REFORM, AND CHRISTIANITY

IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

“Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God.”
                                                        ~ Cardinal John Henry Newman

            For those of us who care about animals, the silence of the church on the issue of compassion and mercy for animals is not only frustrating, it is a challenge to our faith.  When people ask us what animals have to do with faith or why we aren’t concentrating on “more important” issues involving human suffering, we sometimes want to (and some do) run from the church into the more welcoming arms of secular animal welfare organizations.  What kind of a God, we wonder, is silent in the face of a world filled to bursting with needless and extreme animal suffering at human hands?  What kind of a church fails to see the misery to which it contributes?

            The answer, it seems to me, is not the God we meet in the Bible, and it is not the church as it is called to be.  I am not the first to believe this, and in these Minority Report posts, I hope to bring to the fore our deeply rooted traditions that recognize the bonds between compassion for animals and holiness and the repeated calls from a variety of faith perspectives within the church for reform on this issue.  I hope to underscore, as these long-standing, if often unheeded, voices in our tradition have underscored, that this is not a matter of abstract theology, but it touches in a very real way who we are and how we live our day-to-day lives.