Animals in Christian Sacred Texts
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
Across Christian sacred texts, passages and teachings invite reflection on how animals are regarded and how humans relate to them.
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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Yes. In Genesis, humans are given “dominion,” which many Christian thinkers understand as a calling to care, protect, and steward creation with responsibility rather than harm.
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Biblical teachings include concern for animals’ well-being—such as allowing them rest and protecting them from unnecessary suffering—reflecting a broader ethic of kindness and responsibility.
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Jesus did not directly teach about animal ethics, but he often referred to animals with care, reminding his listeners that even the smallest creatures are known and valued by God.
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While not always addressed directly, many Christian traditions understand cruelty toward animals as inconsistent with the values of love, mercy, and righteousness central to the faith.
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Some biblical passages permit the use of animals for food, while others—especially in Genesis—describe a vision of life without harm. These tensions have led to different interpretations across Christian traditions.
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Many readers see in Scripture a movement toward mercy, peace, and care for all creation. This invites reflection on how our daily choices, including how we relate to animals, might align with these values.
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 Food Ethics →
How belief shapes everyday choices
Animals in Jewish Sacred Texts →
A parallel perspective from another tradition