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The Animals & Religion website exposes a disconnect between core religious ethics and how people treat animals.
People of faith do not argue that their religion teaches them to be cruel or indifferent to anymals, yet many eat flesh, eggs, dairy products, wear silk and wool, entertain themselves with animals purchased at a pet shop, and look the other way when they see a hungry stray or an injured animal beside the road—without even thinking about whether or not such behavior is immoral. When people fail to live up to the moral expectations of religious teachings, those sacred writings become useless.
The Animals & Religion website demonstrates that religions share core ethics.
How could people trust one another if we did not respect life and if honesty were not a core moral principle? And so major religions teach people to care about one another, be kind, and protect the vulnerable—which includes anymals.
When the world’s largest and oldest religions, diverse in innumerable ways, come together, they have likely struck upon something particularly important.
In the midst of tremendous diversity, every major religion teaches that we are to respect and be kind to anymals.
The Animals & Religion website examines core religious texts rather than common religious understandings or actual practices—there is often very little correlation between the two.
Core religious writings teach that
nature (including anymals) is sacred,
anymals are central to our spiritual landscape,
we share a fundamental kinship with other living beings,
we owe animals respect and kindness,
how we treat animals will affect our fate beyond the grave,
all beings have come from the same place and face the same possibilities after death,
animals have personality and intellect,
all living beings and the earth itself form a deep, fundamental, and sacred unity.
The Animals & Religion website demonstrates that core religious ethics require human beings to avoid supporting anymal industries:
Texts Teach: Human beings may not cause anymals to suffer.
Fact: Industries that exploit anymals (food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries) cause anymals to suffer.
Fact: Investing in industries that exploit anymals supports and encourages anymal suffering.
Conclusion: Sacred texts teach that we may not buy products from contemporary food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries because to do so is to support and encourage harming anymals. This requires choosing vegan.
The Animals & Religion website also demonstrates that core religious ethics require people to take action on behalf of anymals:
Texts Teach: Human beings are to defend those who are marginalized and oppressed.
Fact: Anymals are marginalized and oppressed.
Conclusion: Sacred texts teach that we must defend anymals.
Sacred texts provide a moral foundation that requires actively working toward anymal liberation.
To fail to protect anymals and choose vegan is to not care about core religious teachings, which is to say, such a failure indicate that one is not religious after all.
The word “choose” is critical: If someone does not have a choice in what they eat, they are not required to choose vegan—but if you are reading this, you are among those who can choose vegan.
There is no medical condition that requires eating meat, dairy, or eggs. Vegan foods are not only widely available, but comparatively cheap, whether in the form of canned kidney beans and frozen falafels, instant rice and frozen veggies, potatoes and lentils, tofu and quinoa, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Religious ethics value human life and choosing vegan also protects people.
A plant-based diet protects the planet: Choosing vegan is the most effective way to minimize climate change, freshwater depletion, deforestation, water pollution, and desertification, all of which enhance species extinction.
A plant-based diet is an efficient diet: Choosing vegan allows billions of tons of grains to be redirected to feed hungry human beings.
A plant-based diet helps avoid major health problems: Heart disease, a number of common cancers, obesity, diabetes, and infections from pathogens such as E. coli are linked with eating flesh, diary, and eggs; anymal agriculture causes respiratory diseases, antibiotic resistance, and zoomorphic diseases.
A plant-based diet assures that people work in fields handling plants rather than in slaughterhouses dismembering anymals.
It is not surprising that religions speak boldly and decisively in defense of anymals—
would it not be far more surprising to learn that sufferings and deaths in industrial anymal agriculture, the frivolous anymal exploitation for the clothing industry, and the selfishness of anymal experimentation aligned with religious ethics? Would it not be much more troubling to discover that religious ethics ignore the plight of those who are vulnerable and exploited?
Religious communities have the power to close down anymal industries.
Consumers decide which products are offered. If people of faith refuse to buy anymal products, anymal exploitation will cease to be profitable. Whatever we say about our faith commitments, what we do speaks unerringly. Religions are only as influential as their constituents.
So why don’t they? People of faith tend to lack information about religious ethics and/or about anymal industries.
We invite you to access undercover footage—know that what you see common place behind the ever-thicker walls hiding the realities of anymal agriculture.
The Animals & Religion website presents and analyzes core sacred texts in nine of the world’s major religions (Christian, Confucian, Daoist, Hindu, Indigenous, Islamic, Jain, Jewish, Buddhist), focusing on five key topics:
Texts and Teachings: Animal Ethics
Diet: The Vegan Debate
Sacred Stories: Revisiting Anymal Narratives
Abusive Traditions: Teachings vs Practice
Activism: Religious Ethics in Action
We are Here for You
Animal Activists
who advocate among people of faith, and who will be able to advocate much more effective if they understand and use core ethics from sacred texts, such as mercy, humility, and the requirement that we show attentive care to living beings.
People of Faith
who want to understand what their religion teaches about ethics and animals and who will then be able not only to align their lives with core religious values and moral expectations, but help their faith communities to also walk the finer path of kindness and respect for animals.
Scholars & Students
of animal studies and religious studies, whose knowledge is not complete without an understanding of core religious ethics with regard to animals, and who can use this information in classrooms and publications to help bring change for animals.
Stronger Together
The Animals & Religion website is a much-needed and very solid bridge connecting these normally separate groups, whose collective strength, when working together, will help tip the scales of justice toward animals.