By: Nathan Brasfield

Because of the severe ecological harm it inflicts through the abuse and exploitation of non-human animals and humans alike, industrialized animal agriculture—which fills grocery stores and restaurants with meat, dairy, and eggs—is among the most significant moral blind spots of contemporary society.¹ And it is not well-known that one change many people can make in their daily lives that would help restore health to the air, soil, and water is to eat fewer animal products from industrial animal agriculture.

I was not informed about such harm or possible solutions by my church, the government, or even an environmental organization. I discovered it by reading the works of authors like Lisa Kimmerer, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Matthew C. Halteman. Ever since, I have watched as the issue has remained steadily unacknowledged in discussions and various resources about the ecological crisis.

This is an alarming problem, but it is a tremendous opportunity for the Church to fulfill our purpose. We are called to seek justice and peace together and to have sacred conversations. Ever since its inception, the Church has been a community shaped and identified by food traditions that promote justice, peace, and wholeness and that show gratitude for the gifts of God.²

How we eat, then, expresses our faith. This is not only apparent theologically, but it is also demonstrably biblical. Jewish and Christian scriptures hand down a rich variety of narratives, instructions, and poetry that reveal the significance of just eating. The scriptures attest to the importance of conveying gratitude, bringing justice, and restoring and sustaining peace on God's earth.

The same scriptural narratives have been crucial in developing my understanding of humanity’s vocation and identity as caretakers of the earth. And they explicitly pronounce our particularly human responsibility to care for non-human animals in ways that may surprise those of us who have been conditioned to believe that God and humanity share an exclusive relationship.³

Despite this contradiction, Christians in the U.S. consume an excessive amount of the flesh, milk, or eggs of farmed animals, which includes cattle, chickens, goats, sheep, swine, and turkeys. The amount consumed is more than the earth can sustain, and it is more than what would allow humans to treat fellow creatures with the care and respect owed to them.

About a decade ago I began to wake up to this reality. Before then, my consumption of animals was entirely unexamined, just as my plastic waste and greenhouse gas contributions went unchecked. But then, I began my seminary master’s degree and was invited to dinner by some new school friends. During our conversation over dinner, they would become the first Christians I ever knew who were mindful of how their food choices affected the earth, and they suggested I watch a certain documentary to learn more about where our food comes from.

My first ecological awakening, then, upon viewing this documentary was to the moral atrocities committed against the animals living in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), as well as the lives of people directly involved in the system (CAFO operators, slaughterhouse workers, neighbors of these facilities, etc.), most of whom are BIPOC, in poverty, and/or undocumented and face considerable food insecurity. I had grown up deer hunting and was taught by my father to say a prayer of gratitude for the animals we harvested. I don’t know why I had never considered it before, but I realized that this attitude was totally at odds with the one I had toward the animals from grocery stores and restaurants and the systems that produced them. The first change I made in my life, as a result, was to not buy meat at the grocery store, and then I gradually ate less meat when dining out.

Years later, I read a book that summarized the depth and breadth of the ecological harm caused by an unnecessary and wasteful industrialized animal production system. I was shocked to learn that in addition to the cruelty inflicted upon humans and non-human animals, the food system is a major driver of water, air, and soil pollution and degradation, it is one of the leading contributors to the human-caused climate crisis (approximately 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, not just agricultural emissions), and it is among the most inefficient methods of producing food while so many do not have enough to eat (approximately 10% of earth’s population).⁴

At this point, when I felt like I truly understood for the first time the scale of the damage being done by industrialized animal agriculture, I committed to buying as little of these products as possible and eating more plants instead. I also reoriented my life plans so that they would include bringing attention to and taking action on this issue in the Church and society to the best of my ability.

These plans began to fall into place in truly amazing ways a few years later when I began the Doctor of Ministry in Land, Food, and Faith Formation at Memphis Theological Seminary, where I was already on staff and where I currently co-chair the Green Team committee. On this committee, I am working to develop guidelines and recommendations for meals on campus that would allow us to be more ecologically responsible and mindful of the welfare of farmed animals. I will also be completing my doctoral project this year. My work will be supported by the CreatureKind Fellowship Program as I help educate and resource church members on this issue in the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, where I am also on the Creation Care steering committee.

As I center the welfare of animals farmed for food in my ministry, I realize that I face a challenging obstacle. Many people have become accustomed to making decisions about what to eat based purely on individual preference. But when food choices have such enormous ramifications for how we relate to God’s world, those of us who can choose differently should not continue to make decisions about what to eat based purely on preference alone. Such decisions prove to be starkly indicative of how we have been shaped more by a capitalistic economy and naive individualism than by theology and the scriptures.

Much like “being green” and becoming more ecologically conscious in general, eating fewer animals and animal products, like milk and eggs, has been allowed to remain niche, as if it is merely an option for those of us who just so happen to have a special concern about these things. This cannot be, as Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter, United Methodist pastor and professor of religious studies, has argued in his book, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice.¹ Forgoing participation in industrialized animal agriculture has to do with justice, even social justice. The reasons to make different food choices, therefore, have to do with everyone. It is certainly a personal decision to decide what to eat, but it is one of many decisions that we make every day that connect us all, for good or for ill. The Church has a tremendous opportunity here to eat in loving, sacrificial ways that bring justice and healing.

In consideration of the social and ecological importance of eating fewer animal products, Carter critiques popular notions of “veganism” by offering a different understanding of it from a Black perspective. This perspective helps frame the repercussions of individual and communal food choices that don’t take racial justice into account: “To be sure, veganism is often associated with white people who have too much disposable income and only care about animal suffering. This type of noncritical veganism does exist. However, black veganism as I define it is to eat in a way that decenters whiteness, challenges capitalism and colonialism, and reclaims the Black culinary and ecological heritage.”¹ Whether one decides to become strictly vegan or not, Black culinary and ecological heritage help show how decisions about food have not to do merely with individual preference but with all people being accountable—in daily life—to secure life and liberty on behalf of all of the creatures for whom it is our responsibility to care, including each other.

The problems of industrialized animal agriculture and humanity’s complicity in its cruelty have for too long been ignored in the Church. My decision to center food choices accordingly in my work is just that—a decision not to allow food choices to remain on the fringes nor relegated to individual preference. In light of the magnitude of the current ecological and social crises that are resulting from unjust food systems (such as the deaths and displacement seen from the recent floods in Pakistan), it is absolutely critical that we as the Church talk about the ways that food choices are often a substantial part of the problem. And it is our biblical and theological imperative as the Church to spur further conversation, even in the public sphere, as we play a collective part in giving rise to a good and just food system.

^{1. Nicholas Kristof, “The Mistakes That Will Haunt Our Legacy,” New York Times, July 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/opinion/sunday/animal-rights-cruelty.html. ↩}
^{2. As in Acts 2:44-47; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34↩}
^{3. Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18-20; 7-9; Exodus 23:10-12; Leviticus 17:1-4; Acts 15:19-20↩}
^{4. P.J. Gerber, H. Steinfeld, B. Henderson, A. Mottet, C. Opio, J. Dijkman, A. Falucci, and G. Tempio, Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock -- A Global Assessment of Emissions and Mitigation Opportunities (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2013), 15; Francis Vergunst and Julian Savulescu, “Five Ways the Meat on Your Plate is Killing the Planet,” The Conversation, April 26, 2017, https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-meat-on-your-plate-is-killing-the-planet-76128.↩}
^{5. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2021).↩}
^{6. Carter, Spirit of Soul Food, 19.↩}