Faith.Food.Family

by Ciyadh Wells

Faith. Growing up, it never failed that I found myself in a church of some kind every Sunday morning. My grandmother, a leader of our church, used to sit in the exact same pew week after week. She loved me and our family. For many of us, she was home and she never met someone she did not care for like her own kin. Even more, she loved God and proudly proclaimed her faith. When I think of a Christian, I think of my grandmother. Her love of the Lord has taught me what means to follow Christ. She has instilled in me a belief to be faithful in all things, even beyond that which I can see. She was faith, and that faith also she instilled in me and my family. 

Family. I’m so incredibly privileged to be part of such a wonderful family. I can’t stress this enough. My family is able to love each other, to grow aside one another, and ultimately support each other without giving it second thought or question. We gather with food, we gather because of each our bond, and we also gather because of our faith. No meal goes without a proper blessing to acknowledge our continued faith and belief in the grace that God has given us for that meal. There is a rhythm to the meal and a way in which the conversations always lead back to the heart of it: our continued belief in God who makes sure we never had to go without, or at least not for long. 

Food. More than anything else, all creatures of God gather around food. Food is for all;  humans and non-humans alike. As food is central to the nourishment and sustaining of life, it is essential for healthy hearts and minds. Food—how it is produced, accessed, or consumed—brings an impact on God’s earth and the lives of its inhabitants. We, human creatures, at the very least owe it to the Body of Christ, including our non-human siblings, to understand how the food on our tables impact their lives. How does our communal plate affect the real lives of created beings near and far? 

Holidays. Gathering around special dates is important to many of us. These times provide humans ways to consider our connections to each other and to the rest of the world.  These times of celebration and sometimes of grief provide us essential opportunities for considering how human and non human animals come together around the communal table. How might we be connected to each other and to God via the food we eat when we gather? How might the food that connects and comforts us also be sources of comfort for non-human animals? For many people, food is comfort and food is home. The bread of the body and the spirit of life, it is home in a way that only home can be. How can food be home and shelter and comfort to those with whom we are entrusted with care? 

How are we able to know that change is possible if we have never experienced change for ourselves? 

When my family gathers for holidays, faith, food, and family come together. There is always a rhythm and a pattern that, as I grew up, began to bring a source of comfort in an ever-chaotic world. On Mother’s Day we would often have a specific, but not so dissimilar, meal than what we would have during the big holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas). Those holidays brought an extra special meal following the traditional American meals while adding in touches of our lived experiences as Black people, who like many, live on Indigenous lands. Central to all of these meals, though, was some sort of meat. Yes, veggies and fixings dressed the meat, but meat was always the center of it. For many years I failed to question the presence of meat because I thought that it had to be that way. How are we able to know that change is possible if we have never experienced change for ourselves? 

In the last several years though, I began to reexamine my own relationship with food, mainly around what the continued consumption of animals means not only for me but for others as well. Who suffers alongside our animal friends before they become holiday centerpieces? I came to understand that no life—human or non-human—enters or leaves this world without a great cost. When any class of living being (plant, animal, or human) no longer lives, there is an impact on all of us. Nothing is perfect, but I am not striving to create a society that is perfect. I am striving to work with others to create a society that is just when it comes to the lives of animals. 

There are opportunities for us all here. Traditions are traditions because we have made them so, but change and innovation are necessary for us all if humans and non-human animals want to continue to exist on God’s created Earth. Traditions at gatherings will need to change as care and concern for those most impacted by animal agriculture, BIPOC growers and climate refugees, come to the forefront. Change can start at the center of our tables. 

Food. It all means something different for me now. I want to eat in a way that causes as little harm as possible to animals and even less harm to those whose jobs and livelihoods depend on farmed animal agriculture. During holidays, this means choosing to create, in abundance and without waste, a meal that I can feel good about consuming. Change is imminent and that is okay. 

Family. My work as an advocate on behalf of all life, human or not, begins and yet does not end with my family. It might be throughout our lives that those closest to us may never truly understand our decisions and we may never understand theirs. That is okay. I am hoping, though, to continue to have the conversation about what it means to be a person of faith who takes great care and shows great concern for non-human life. It is well within the bounds of our faith to want to care for all living creatures. After all, they were here first. 

Faith. Faith can and will always be at the center of this for me. Finding CreatureKind was like finding a home. A home where I could bring my Christ loving, Black, Queer, and plant-based eating self to the table and receive celebration without judgement. We are in a disciplined pursuit of less. Consuming fewer of our animal kin and their products, creating less harm. Living lives that by producing less helps all of us to create more. That is what I am hoping for. I am hoping that we as people of deep faith can continue to have conversations and engage with one another about how our ethics for animals start with our faith and can and should be guided by such.

Ciyadh Wells currently lives in Austin, Texas. She is a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Ciyadh was raised in the Baptist church and still identifies as such. During her CreatureKind Fellowship, she is working on a podcast about Christians and how their faith supports their animal advocacy work.

Vegan – and Christian, Too

by Nathan Porter

“You’re vegan? But I thought you were a Christian!” Comments like this one are familiar to followers of Jesus who have given up the use of animal products. I have been vegetarian for almost half a decade, and recently went vegan. Although I have received criticism from both religious and non-religious people, most of the censuring has come from my fellow Christians. This is at once expected and deeply unsettling: expected, because concern for animals has come to be associated with secular social and political projects; unsettling, because I believe that Christian theology provides a powerful impetus to care for the created order. Indeed, as a bit of historical digging reveals, modern animal welfare movements originated in early evangelicalism. Luminaries such as John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Hannah Moore, Augustus Toplady (author of “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me”), and many others wrote and preached unabashedly against cruelty to animals, while William Wilberforce and several evangelical clerics helped to established the first animal protection organization.

This history has largely been forgotten by today’s Christians, but it raises important questions for the contemporary church. What was it about evangelical Christianity that gave rise to animal welfare, and does it still have value for the church today? As a CreatureKind Fellow, I am setting up conversations between scholars, pastors, and laity to make a start at answering this question. Our discussions will highlight the wealth of resources that can be drawn from many streams of the Christian tradition in the service of the Gospel, clarifying and enriching the church’s vocation to confront sin in an age of factory farming. These resources will be drawn from Scripture, patristic theology, ascetical theology, and other sources, placing them in conversation with contemporary voices in animal justice.

“If dominion is part of what it means to carry the image of God, then it must be defined by the servant king who is the true Image of the Invisible (Colossians 1). ”

I hope that discussions like these will help the church to recognize its freedom to care for animals, not despite, but precisely because of its faithfulness to Jesus and the Gospel. For there are distinctly Christian reasons to be concerned about the wellbeing of other animals. I will consider two of them here. First, and above all, this concern is grounded in Scripture. God created a world that was inhabited first of all by animals, to whom the earth was given for a home before humanity took its first breath. God commissioned Adam to name the animals – a covenant-establishing act between humanity and other creatures that recalls God’s naming of Adam, Abraham, Sarah, and Israel, marking them out as recipients of blessing rather than as objects to be dominated. In the Flood narrative, God does not simply save humans and wipe out the animal world, but saves humans and animals alike. The concern and providential care that God exercises over all creation is a constant theme of the Psalter. The prophets witness to the terrifying effects of human sin upon other the created order (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea), and similarly express God’s tender care for animals in their suffering (esp. Joel 1-2 and Jonah 4). Jesus’ victory over Satan in the wilderness results in a moment of peaceful co-existence with the animals of the desert (Mark 1.13), and Paul claims that the whole creation groans in its longing for the revelation of God’s children (Rom 8). The sacrifice of animals comes to an end with the death of Christ (Hebrews), who dies the death of a lamb – in place of human beings, to be sure, but also in place of the animals who were thought necessary for reconciliation with God. So it is far from clear that “dominion,” whatever it means, gives humans tyrannical autonomy in our treatment of other creatures. (The work of Ellen Davis, Walter Brueggemann, and Richard Bauckham provides detailed exegesis of these and other important passages.) If dominion is part of what it means to carry the image of God, then it must be defined by the servant king who is the true Image of the Invisible (Colossians 1). Our view of animals must be subject to the judgement of the cross of Christ, where the patterns of domination that determine creaturely relationships stand condemned once and for all. The crucified Word of God, the head over all creation, revealed his lordship in self-giving love, refusing to exploit the vulnerability of others for his own ends. God’s reign in the world means liberation, a gift of freedom that extends to the whole created order.

Second, concern for animals is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus. Christians who defend the eating of animals frequently argue that our world is fallen, governed by death and broken relationships between humans and other creatures, so that abuse of other creatures is simply part of the world we live in. Of course, it can hardly be denied that something is terribly wrong with the world as it stands. It does not follow, however, that the church is justified in accepting this brokenness as determinative for its own way of life. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has inaugurated a new reality, one in which suffering and death do not have the last word in Christian ethics. The risen Lord holds the keys of death and Hades, and the New Testament insists that those who have been baptized into Christ have died and been resurrected with him. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, “If anyone is in Christ – new creation!” This means that followers of Jesus are not justified in giving the old order of violence, greed, and subjugation a say in Christian ethics. To do so is to deny the transformative power of the risen Lord.

“The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has inaugurated a new reality, one in which suffering and death do not have the last word in Christian ethics. ”

It must not be forgotten, of course, that the promised future of God has yet to arrive in its fullness. Nonetheless, the church exists as a kind of outpost of that future, inhabiting the frontier that divides the old order from the new reality that God will one day usher in. It should come as no surprise that giving up the use of animals is extraordinarily difficult. It demands a genuinely ascetical way of life that embraces voluntary self-denial for the sake of our fellow creatures. This is misunderstood by many Protestants as a kind of “works righteousness,” but it is best understood as part of the process of sanctification. The aim is not asceticism for its own sake. What looks like self-denial now will be ubiquitous as a way of life when Christ returns. Yet such a way of going about in the world, embodying as it does the radical otherness of God’s future in the face of present structures of political and social life, unavoidably entails an ascetical view of the possibilities that are available to those who have been confronted by the demands of the Gospel. Indeed, for many people, veganism is experienced as a rupture, a dramatic break with the sort of life they had previously lived. Many familiar and cherished foods are now off the table (literally); one’s favorite restaurants may become forbidden territory. Tensions may arise between friends, with whom one can no longer share a cheeseburger, and between relatives, with whom one can no longer share a Thanksgiving turkey. It takes a great deal of time and work to find new ways to experience flourishing as an individual and in community (though such ways are increasingly available). Those who give up the use of animals find themselves in the center of the collision of God’s future with the brokenness of reality as we know it, so we should not be surprised that it is difficult and requires self-sacrifice. Although not all struggle is a good thing (especially when it is forced upon one by others), however, struggle is not by nature un-Christian. Forms of life that are built upon the abuse and exploitation of other creatures, the social and political ways of being in the world that press upon us in modernity, stand under the judgement of God, and it is faith in the risen Lord that compels Christians to resist them.

This, at any rate, is why I am a Christian vegan. At the same time, I realize that all theology is done in space and time, and therefore from a specific location. Mine is a situation of economic, social, and racial privilege, which necessarily qualifies the ascetical theology just outlined. For many people throughout the world, eating meat is a privilege that can hardly be taken for granted. What I have just written is directed to those for whom this is not true, and I recognize that the right approach to animal welfare will look very different in different contexts. I also recognize that sins against other human beings are deeply entangled with sins against animals. Not only has industrialized agriculture been built upon and fueled by racism, but racism has even infected the struggle for animal justice. Mainstream environmentalism and animal protection have too often been defined and driven by what Christopher Carter has called the “white racial frame.” No adequate Christian approach to the crisis of modern agriculture can afford to ignore the voices of those who have suffered from it. It is imperative to include the perspectives of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people of color who have suffered from the racism that is endemic to factory farming and who are also among those at the front lines of the fight for animals. This is a matter about which I am learning more on a daily basis, and my own assumptions are increasingly called into question by those who approach the issue from very different starting points. Yet this dialogue is crucial to the development of a truly Christian conception of animal justice, and it is one to which I am committed.

It is tragically unsurprising that the church has ignored the plight of animals when its white constituency has just as willfully ignored or been the perpetrators of racial subjugation. Christians who cannot love their fellow humans will be equally incapable of loving other-than-human creatures. All forms of domination embody the reign of death that loyalty to Jesus compels the church to renounce, for just to the extent that the church remains complicit in the suffering of humans and other animals, it sets itself against the life-giving power that flows from the resurrected Christ. But the situation is not hopeless, as the unexpected blossoming of concern for animals in early evangelicalism reveals. It is my earnest hope that the church will come to recognize the wealth of theological resources that are at its disposal in the struggle on behalf of animals – not only traditional resources, but also those that can be found only in conversation with people whose voices have often been excluded. Then will the church’s pursuit of justice truly reflect “the wisdom of God in all its rich variety” (Ephesians 3.10).

Nathan Porter is a student at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. He is pursuing a career in academia (focusing on patristic creation theology) and seeking ordination as an Anglican priest. His passion for animal justice, creation theology, and preaching led him to CreatureKind, and he hopes that this fellowship will launch his life-long work on behalf of all God’s creatures.

What Does Christianity Have to Do With Animals (Book Excerpt)

From Genesis to Revelation, and from the early church to the present day, there are vivid examples of God's—and the church's—love of, care for, and delight in animal creatures.

By Sarah Withrow King

From Genesis to Revelation, and from the early church to the present day, there are vivid examples of God's—and the church's—love of, care for, and delight in animal creatures. William Wilberforce and other leaders of the British antislavery and anti–child labor movements were also early founders of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and worked to pass legislation protecting animals from various forms of cruelty.

Many accounts from the lives of saints include moving tales of meaningful friendships between saints and animals, such as the story of St. Macarius, who healed a blind hyena pup: the pup's mother tried to repay Macarius's kindness by bringing him a sheep's skin. As the story goes, Macarius took the skin, but only after insisting that if the hyena was hungry, she was not to kill another creature, but should come to him for food, which she did.

Today, many churches include food for companion animals in their food pantry programs. Others take special care to protect and provide for wildlife who wish to make a home on church grounds. Christian college students take internships at animal welfare organizations and ask their campus dining halls to provide vegan and vegetarian food options. Some pastors publicly support legislation that promotes better animal welfare, preside over pet funerals, or preach on topics that include concern for animals. Church animal welfare groups hold film screenings, book discussions, and small group studies to promote dialogue about Christianity and animal welfare in their congregations. There are many ways to care for animals, and Jesus followers are often moved to do so not in spite of their faith, but because of it. Of course, human beings are a kind of animal creature, different from sibling species by a matter of physiological and genetic degrees. But for our purposes, I refer to human beings as "humans" and nonhuman beings as "animals."

There are many ways to care for animals, and Jesus followers are often moved to do so not in spite of their faith, but because of it.

A reading of the Scripture that is attentive to animals shows that humans and animals are both created by God, worship God, and are provided for by God; humans are made in the image of God and given a particular role in that image; the whole (broken) world is in the process of being reconciled to God through Jesus Christ; and the vision of the promised kingdom is marked by peace between and flourishing of all species.

Humans are made in the image of God.

While the creation narrative in Genesis 2 portrays animals as potential partners to humans, in Genesis 1, God says, "Let us make mankind in our image, in likeness" (Gen 1:26). In English translations, Christ is also referred to as the image of God: "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth" (Col 1:15‑16).  Humans have not always lived up to the image endowed by the Creator in us. Eleazar S. Fernandez posits one possible source of this failure:

We have learned to develop our identities as human beings through disconnection, rather than through connectedness and interdependence. Our way of relating to fellow human beings parallels our way of relating to other beings in the cosmos. We seek to disconnect ourselves because we want to establish our difference from other forms of life. But the difference that we seek through our acts of disconnection is an adjunct to claim our superiority. We establish our difference through disconnection because we believe deep in our hearts that it is only in disconnecting ourselves that we can claim superiority. Rather than seeing our difference and uniqueness as a reminder of our interdependence, we confuse our difference and uniqueness with superiority.

When we downplay the kinship between animals and humans portrayed in Genesis 2 and center ourselves in the story of the creation and redemption of the world (anthropocentrism), there are far-reaching consequences not only for our relationship with animals and the environment, but for our relationships with other humans as well.

When we downplay the kinship between animals and humans portrayed in Genesis 2 and center ourselves in the story of the creation and redemption of the world (anthropocentrism), there are far-reaching consequences not only for our relationship with animals and the environment, but for our relationships with other humans as well. Liberation ethicist and pastor Christopher Carter asks us to consider whether humans are "living up to their potential as beings created in the image of God? Are they capable of re-imagining their divinely appointed role in Creation to care for nonhuman animals in a way that conforms to this image?"

Humans are given a particular role in that image.

Immediately after creating and blessing humans, God tells these beings made in the image of their Creator that they are to "rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the earth" (Gen 1:28). And right away, God points to the lush landscape and says, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food" (Gen 1:29). Our first responsibility was to cultivate the plants of the land so that all God's creatures could eat. Even as the Scriptures describe sin and its consequences, including the reality of food from animal and human death, God placed limits on human use and consumption of animals, outlined in the Law. Working animals were to be given weekly rest (Ex 23:12); fields were to lie fallow, in part to allow wild animals the opportunity to eat (Ex 23:10); and it was a sin to kill an animal without giving appropriate thanks to God (Lev 17:3‑7).

When humans fail to obey God, the whole world suffers (Gen 7–8); when humans fail to keep God at the center of their lives, the whole world suffers (Jer 7:16‑20; 12:4).

This piece appears in Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice, edited by Mae Elise Cannon and Andrea Smith and appears here with permission. Copyright (c) 2019 by Mae Elise Cannon and Andrea Smith. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.

Virtual Visit with David Clough

If you’d like a chance to meet and discuss Christianity and animal ethics with CreatureKind founder and co-director, Professor David Clough, please plan to join us on October 21 and 22, 2019, for the “David Clough Virtual Visit,” a series of interactive online sessions, hosted by Farm Forward.

You can sign up for this free event by filling out the form here! You can participate as an individual, or as a group. We hope to see you there!

Guest Post: Is the Gospel “Good News” for Animals Too?

As both a Christian and a vegan, something that I think about often is the way in which my faith is compatible with my vegan values. I stopped eating meat at around the same time that I started seminary school, and at the time I did not consider the two things to be connected in any way. However, as I began studying Scripture more in depth, I began to realize that actually, my concern for animals and the environment, which originally caused me to ditch meat, and later on all animal products (including dairy, eggs, honey, leather, fur, etc.), was in fact very much related to my faith in God as Creator and Redeemer.

The question that I’ve been reflecting on and which I would like to discuss is whether or not the Christian Gospel (the “Good News”) has any bearing on animals and the earth. The answer I have come to is that yes, it has absolutely everything to do them as well. This may seem like a bit of a jump to some of my Christian brothers and sisters, many of whom are of the opinion that God actually made animals FOR us to eat (I used to be of this opinion too for most of my life), and that we have some kind of license to use them and use the planet as we see fit since God said that we are to “have dominion” over them (Gen 1:26).

Furthermore, the way that the Gospel has been presented most frequently has been with a very heavy emphasis on “personal salvation” to the extent that we think that it is all about us – US being forgiven by God, US for whom Christ died, US for whom the earth was created, US who will be going to heaven (“Do animals even have even have souls?” some may argue). It’s no wonder many have accused Christianity of being an anthropocentric (human-centered) religion. But while I would agree that Christians can often come across as such, and tend use the Bible to support their anthropocentric views, the Bible itself does not condone such a mentality.

In order to go about answering this question of whether the Gospel is good news for the animals (and the earth) as well as humans, we must start by giving a little bit of background. In the Biblical account, it all begins with God creating “the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). This earth that God created was deemed as “good” (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).

What was this creation like? The first word that comes to my mind when I read the creation account is “abundant.” It was abundantly filled with fruits and vegetation and all kinds of animals. Then God created the man and the woman and God's mandate to them was to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1:28). This is where some people start getting confused, thinking that this rulership somehow gives them permission to take advantage of and exploit what God has put under their care.

The second word that comes to mind when I think about what the original creation was like is “harmony.” Humans in harmonious relationships with God, with each other, with the animals and with the earth. Indeed, in the original creation, humans did not eat animals, and animals did not eat other animals. Genesis 1:29-30…“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it [souls?] – I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”

So what I see from the Creation account is that the world God created was good, it was perfect, it was harmonious and abundant, there was no harm, no evil, no violence, no death. What happened? This is where the bad news comes in, with sin and disobedience entering the picture, Adam and Eve doing the one thing God told them not to do (eating from one single tree out of the many they were allowed to eat from), wanting to live the way they wanted instead of how God wanted them to. And this is where everything falls apart.

It is at this point in the story that the relationships between God and humans, humans and each other, humans and animals, and finally, humans and the earth were distorted. The man and the woman were now hiding from each other by covering their nakedness that they were never ashamed of before (Gen 3:7). They were also hiding from God in the garden (Gen 3:8). They started playing the blame game for the sin they both committed (Gen 3:12). Now even the earth was uncooperative and would not produce food for people without hard labour (Gen 3:17). Finally, it is at this point that the first animal was killed in order to clothe the man and the woman (Gen 3:21).

Later on in the story, during the time of Noah, for the first time God actually gives humans permission to eat animals (Gen 9:3). It is important to note that this is not how things were meant to be, as we have seen from the Creation account, but rather that this is what people had actually started doing (ie. Abel raising livestock and sacrificing the fat of the firstborn to God, with the implication that the rest was eaten – Gen 4:4). This is not the only instance in Scripture where something was permitted which was not God’s original intention. When questioned about divorce, Jesus responded to the Pharisee that “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning” (Mt 19:8).

It was not a good thing, but rather a tragedy, that the once good relationship between humans and animals had devolved into “fear and dread” (Gen 9:2) on the part of the animals towards the humans that were meant to be their caretakers. It was against God’s intention for creation that humans began killing God's other created beings for food when God had abundantly provided them with fruit and vegetation to eat.

So there is the bad news. But what is the “Good News” that Christians speak of? It is that God still cares about God's creation, both humans and animals, and the earth as well. “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). Although things have gone downhill from the goodness of the original creation and how things were meant to be, God continues to love the world, and the story of the Bible is that God is making a way for everything to be restored once again. We tend to focus only on the restoration of the relationships between God and humans, and humans and each other, but we forget about the other relationships that were destroyed and which God also wants to restore.

The good news is not only that Jesus died for sin so that we can be saved, although that is a big part of it. It is also that God is working to make things right again and that this is done through Jesus Christ, who came to earth, not only as Saviour but also as King of the coming Kingdom of God. And what is this new Kingdom? It is not a castle in the sky, but rather a new heaven and a new earth (Rev 21:1). Everything made new, the goodness of creation restored. The prophet Isaiah gives a beautiful description of the coming Kingdom of God in Isaiah 11:6-9 when he says:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea. 

The conclusion of the matter then is this: In the original creation animals were not killed for food and humans were called to be caretakers of the earth and it’s creatures; and in the coming kingdom of God, the new earth, once again all killing and violence will cease. Although this Kingdom will not be fully accomplished until Christ returns again, Christians are called to advance the Kingdom of God on earth now. Therefore, I would argue that it is flows naturally from the biblical message for Christians, as the people of God who wish to please God and live according to God's will, to adopt a vegan ethic of nonviolence to animals and an environmental ethic of earth stewardship. This is the Gospel (good news), not just for us as humans, but for the animals and for the earth.

Patricia Chan says, "I was born and raised in a Christian home, and from a young age I developed a trusting relationship with Jesus Christ. I also grew up regularly eating animals and their products. I never imagined myself becoming vegetarian let alone vegan, but that is exactly where God has led me. In September 2014 I stopped eating animals for reasons of ethics. After a year of vegetarianism, I took the logical next step and cut out all animal products to the best of my ability. Through my studies in theology at Regent College, I have come to see that my faith is not only compatible with veganism but that a vegan ethic flows naturally from the biblical message of love." This article originally appeared on Patricia's blog and is reprinted here with kind permission.