Animals in Christian Sacred Texts
What Scripture Reveals About Animals and Human Responsibility
Animals & Religion is designed for those who believe that sacred writings have moral authority and are the best way to understand how we ought to live. This website is for those who, with fresh eyes, would like to explore core sacred texts to better understand rightful relations between humankind and anymals.
Christianity is a path of grace, a journey that offers new opportunities and new insights with the passing of each day. Visitors to the Animals & Religion Website are invited to engage with the material thoughtfully and prayerfully, to return to Scripture, to recall how certain sacred texts have been read, taught, and lived in your religious community, and to ponder how these ancient, holy writings might speak anew in contemporary times.
Hebrews 4:12
Indeed, the word of God is living and active.
This section explores core Scriptures, focusing on the Gospels and Genesis, to prepare a moral foundation for human-anymal relations amid industrialized anymal exploitation and ecological crisis.
The Gospels, central to the New Testament, record the life and teachings of Jesus. Christians are to model their lives on the life of Jesus, whose teachings provide core Christian ethics.
Colossians 3:12
Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Explore this Chapter
The Bible outlines our relationship with animals amid creation, and also our personal responsibilities for God’s creatures.
Life of Jesus The life and teachings of Jesus include moments that invite reflection on care, responsibility, and the place of animals within human moral life.
Core Christian Ethics Christian teachings and traditions raise questions about how animals are regarded, used, and protected, and what ethical responsibilities follow from faith.
Creation The biblical account of creation presents animals as part of a shared world, inviting reflection on their place, purpose, and relationship to human life.
The Creator Biblical accounts of creation present animals as part of a shared world, inviting reflection on their place, purpose, and relationship to human life.
Common Questions
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The Bible teaches Christians that God cares about animals and that we are responsible to care for God’s creatures: We are to serve God on earth, caring for creation as the Creator would do, and we are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. God shows kindness to animals throughout the Bible, whether feeding birds, protecting an abused donkey, or commanding humankind to allow animals to rest on the Sabbath. Genesis teaches Christians to guard and protect creation, that creation is good and holy, and that God is in covenant with all that has been made. The Gospels show us that Jesus, who died to free all of creation from “enslavement to decay” (Romans 8:21), models tender care for those considered unworthy of concern, for those disempowered and overlooked, those pushed outside of society’s moral circle—which certainly includes animals today.
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The Bible—including core ethics in the Gospels—tells us that we are to care about and for God’s creatures. Animals are mentioned in almost every book of the Bible, including well over 100 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, water creatures, and insects. Animals appear as part of everyday life, as central to metaphors, and as key characters—even biblical law directly protects animals. Jesus understood Jewish Scripture to be binding, and birds, fish, and insects are all noted in the New Testament. He was kind and cared for all who were in need, no matter how lowly in the eyes of the larger community. On reading the Gospels, it would seem difficult to imagine Jesus not caring about animals, who are vulnerable, and whose simple needs are often overlooked by humankind.
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We are invited to treat animals as neighbors and kin, as the first people did, extending core Christian virtues such as love and mercy, humility and service, to God’s animals. Cruelty and indifference to suffering are unchristian; disregard for animals shows disrespect for their Creator. The Bible tells us that God is kind and merciful, tenderly caring for the needs of animals. Genesis tells us that the first people, who initially dwelled in God’s perfect creation as the Creator intended, lived with animals as neighbors and kin, peacefully as companions for one another. In all of these ways, the Bible shows us how to live faithfully with God’s creatures.
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Creation outlines our God-given relationship with animals. God creates animals and humankind on the same day and gives us all nephesh chayyah. We are created to share company, and all of us are given plants for food. We were made to share company and we have been given responsibility to God for all that the Creator has made. The Bible tells us that all of creation is good and holy. In all of these ways, Genesis is extremely important for a Christian understanding of our relationship with, and responsibilities to, God’s creatures.
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Dominion is outlined in Genesis: Humankind is placed in the peaceful Garden of Eden to serve as caretakers. God created a world of peace and harmony, a place of kinship and community, a world without bloodshed, and created humankind to tend creation. Genesis tells us that we were not permitted to harm other creatures for food in this garden of abundance and peace. We were given dominion “in the image of God”— to serve God amid creation by doing as God would have us do. Our “dominion” is one of service, of tenderly caring for all that has been made in God’s stead.
From Genesis to the Gospels
Matthew 25:40
Just as you did it to one of the least of these… you did it to me.
The New Testament records the life of Jesus and conveys core Christian ethics, including love, humility, mercy, service, peace, generosity, and sharing. As the quintessential moral exemplar, Jesus models service to God, often through attentive care to those considered beneath his moral consideration. Genesis reminds readers that God created a perfect, peaceful, vegan world, a place of kinship across species, where we are to serve God by lovingly protecting the land. The Hebrew Bible also reminds that God is the sole proprietor, indwelling, fully invested, attentive toward all living creatures, and in covenant with all of creation.
Hosea 2:18
I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground.
Many Christians now assume that humankind is somehow more important to God than the rest of creation, sometimes behaving as if creation were merely a backdrop for the human quest for salvation. Some Christians assert that only human beings can be saved, and it is therefore a waste of love and care to care about anymals or this wondrous Earth. While it is certainly possible to find a passage here and there that might seem suitable to defend a selfish, narrow, egocentric view, selfishness and human arrogance deny a God-centered Christianity.
2 Peter 3:15-16
Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, … which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.
Christianity is a path of grace, a journey that offers new opportunities and new insights with the passing of each day. A fresh examination of sacred texts and fundamental Christian ethics invites people of faith to rethink both their relationship with anymals more generally and their consumer habits. Even without a close and scholarly examination of texts, it would seem fundamentally unchristian for someone who is both sincere in faith and informed about contemporary anymal exploitation to argue that Christianity encourages or permits such indifference and cruelty to life.
Matthew 5:16
Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
From Genesis to the Gospels, animals appear within the unfolding of Scripture, offering insight into how they are regarded and how humans are called to relate to them.
Living up to core Christian ethics, following the example of Jesus and teachings in the creation narrative, two activists delight in the beauty of life as they hold two baby goats freshly rescued from Spain’s milk and meat industries. (We Animals Media)
Life of Jesus →
Encounters and teachings that shape moral understanding
Christian Living →
How belief shapes everyday choices
Animals in Jewish Teachings →
A parallel perspective from another tradition