By: Camila Mantovani
I want to start this conversation with you, reader, by telling a story that happened a few months ago in a small town in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.
It is the story of the buffalos from the city of Brotas.
It was in November last year that the police received a report that animals were being mistreated, and this led them to a farm named Agua Sumida. Once the police arrived, the scenario they found was devastating. There were more than 300 carcasses of buffaloes in a remote area that was isolated from the rest of the farm, as well as 1,056 buffaloes that were still alive but living in degrading conditions. They had no water or food and were badly wounded without medical care. Thanks to the mobilization of many activists and organizations fighting for animal welfare, today the farm and the animals are in the hands of a serious, ethical organization.
The events I’ve described happened because a farmer decided that his profit would come from the exploitation of buffaloes for the production of milk and cheese. At some point in the process, he changed his mind and decided that his farm would be more profitable as a monoculture. As such, he chose to grow soy for feed and decided to leave more than one thousand animals to die — animals he had once exploited but who no longer served a monetary purpose; animals whose exploitation had guaranteed the man’s wealth until that moment.
I have followed this story for months. I cried for each animal that could not recover, I cried to God for their lives, and I was filled with righteous indignation when I saw that the rich white man responsible for all of this continued to enjoy a life of privileges while the Black workers, who he also exploited, suffered the consequences of his actions and were incarcerated.
It was in between crying, reflection, and despair that I began to think about how sin distorts perspectives.
If there is a God who created everything that exists, and we are all God’s creatures, then the temptation of supremacy and domination must be what separates human animals from their proper place in creation.
Some believe that being one species among all those God created is not good enough, not worthy enough. The white farmer, for example, decided to give himself the place he thought he deserved: the top of the hierarchy! While at the top, he named himself the owner of everything, taking the role of God.
The sin of speciesism is, among many things, the sin of vanity.
In the world before the fall, before sin entered and changed humanity’s relationships with God and with other animals, creaturely relationships consisted of coexistence and harmony with the rest of creation. In the world after the fall, human beings have created a system in which animals no longer live for their own purposes, as designed by God, but now live and are raised on farms by industries to generate profit. Instead of being God's creatures, sinfully, they became human merchandise.
It is important to point out that this system of oppression is introduced in the world, especially in the Global South, through a long and devastating colonization process. Brazil was the last country in the world to abolish slavery of Black peoples, and even after that, these people were left with no options but to be exploited in the fields and on the farms, without dignity or rights. This system, which looks at non-human animals as merchandise, is directly connected to a slave system that also looked at Black and Indigenous people as chattel. It is the system that created a world completely opposite to the one created by God. It is a demonic distortion of what God created.
Even today, Black and Indigenous people suffer the direct consequences of the recent slavery past and also carry the burden of being the workers who are exploited by the industry that also exploits non-human animals. In the case of Indigenous people, there are more than 500 years of history of resistance in Brazil, including fighting for their land not to be stolen, destroyed, or used by large farms and industries that exploit animals. It is the profit of these industries and what they call "development" that have been used historically to justify the torture and extermination of non-human animals, but also the persecution and extermination of Indigenous peoples.
I grew up listening to sermons in church that condemned any ideology that put human beings in the center of the world because the place at the center belongs to God alone. And I am frightened today by the parts of the church that have been doing exactly that — removing God from the center and putting human beings in the center. This centering occurs when the church corroborates a food policy that exploits other animals, when it does not exercise its prophetic role of denouncing all the problems generated by the exploitation in the animal industry, or when it reinforces an ideology that places human beings above the rest of creation, a role that clearly belongs to God who created us all.
If parts of the Church have been historically silent in the face of a supremacist ideology that places human beings above the rest of creation, if parts of the Church have not only assisted but contributed to ways of living, consuming, and eating that constitute sin against God's creative holiness if we as a Church have preached against vanity but our actions reveal, instead, a sense of superiority, haven’t we removed God from the center of our theology, our worship, and our lives? Can we say we reflect the greatness of God in our lives if our lives instead reflect a great supremacist witness, far removed from the values of the Kin-dom of God?
“Don't be like the people of this world, but let God change the way you think. Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to God.
“I realize God has treated me with undeserved grace, and so I tell each of you not to think you are better than you really are. Use good sense and measure yourself by the amount of faith that God has given you. A body is made up of many parts, and each of them has its own use. That's how it is with us. There are many of us, but we each are part of the body of Christ, as well as part of one another.”
Romans 12: 2-5 CEV version
It is only by changing our understanding of dominion and our place within the created order — not by conforming ourselves to the injustices of the world — that all creatures, including humans, will actually experience God's will.
What is God's good, perfect, and pleasing will for non-human animals?
Is it that the list of endangered species gets longer and longer every year because of climate change, hunting, and industrial agriculture? Or is God’s will that they fill and multiply on earth just as God called them to do in Genesis?
Is it God’s will for non-human animals to be used, tortured, and killed by industry? Or just as occurred in the story of Balaam, is it God’s intention for non-human animals to speak with humans and help us confront our sins by asking, “What did I do to you that you beat me like this?” (Numbers 22)
Let us not think of ourselves as more than we should. We are but one member in Christ's Body.
May I invite you to consider that the Body of Christ contains all the plurality and diversity of God's creation?
Christ's Body has an arm, but it also has a paw, and a tail, and scales, and a snout, and is covered with wool, and has breasts that generate milk.
To ignore what has been done to animals by industrial agriculture and factory farms is to ignore what has been done to the Body of Christ.
How many more stories like that of the buffaloes in Brotas will take place before something changes?
How many workers will be made sick by animal cruelty and die?
Every great revival in human history is connected to a move of God that comes from the broken hearts of people who repent and cry out. Every great revival has brought about some significant change in culture and social structures.
I believe in a new revival, which will start from the movement of God before the repentant hearts of a generation that falls on its knees before the Lord and confesses its vanity, its arrogance, its historical sins against all members of the Body of Christ. I believe that there will come upon us the Fire of the Holy Spirit, able to change the reality around us, to stop the environmental collapses, to ensure the dignity of non-human animals, to ensure the end of the exploitation of human beings by human beings, to end the separation that sin has generated between us and the rest of creation and connect us again to the Creator.