From: wheeler@SUPER.ORG (Ferrell S. Wheeler)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Liberating Life
Date: 15 Oct 92 15:23:59 GMT


   
   In September 1988 at Annecy, France there was a consultation on
ecological theology organized through the sub-unit on Church and
Society of the World Council of Churches.  This consultation was
attended by fourteen persons whose fields included science, theology,
philosophy and ethics.  The papers delivered at this conference
along with other solicited contributions were compiled in the book:
   Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology
   Edited by Charles Birch, William Eakin, Jay B. McDaniel
   Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545, 1990.
The appendix of this book is the actual report (the "Annecy Report")
delivered to the World Council of Churches.  The report is about
18 pages long and the following is a few selected excerpts.


Liberating Life: A Report to the World Council of Churches

   The theme of the 1991 General Assembly at Canberra is "Come Holy
Spirit, Renew the Whole Creation."  There are many ways in which
creation needs renewal.  It needs renewal from the debilitating poverty,
repression, and violence under which hundreds of millions of people now
suffer.  It needs renewal from the shrinking of its forests, the loss of
its topsoil, the pollution of its atmosphere, and the contamination of
its waters.  It needs renewal from the abuse of individual animals in
factory farms and scientific laboratories.  It needs renewal from war
and the threat of nuclear war.  This renewal depends on us as empowered
by God, the Holy Spirit, who works in and through the whole creation.
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   Christian visions of the world and of salvation are profoundly shaped
by the biblical story of creation.  For many generations in the West,
this story was read primarily in human-centered terms; human beings were
created in the image of God, commanded to be fruitful and multiply,
given dominion over the rest of creation, only to disobey God and fall.
This one-sided interpretation led to reading the remainder of the Bible
as the story of human salvation alone.  It also supported exploitative
attitudes and practices in relation to the remainder of creation and the
destruction of the habitat of many species.
   As the disastrous consequences of this exploitation, both for the
rest of creation and for humanity as a whole, have become manifest,
Christians have reread the creation story.  We have found that it
locates the story of humanity in a much wider context, as a cosmic one.
Before and apart from the creation of human beings, God sees that the
animals are good.  When humanity is added creation as a whole is very
good.  The command to human beings to be fruitful and to multiply does
not nullify the identical command to animals.  The image of God with its
associated dominion is not for exploitation of animals but for
responsible care.  The plants that are good in themselves are given to
both animals and human beings for their food.  This is the integrity of
creation in its ideal form.
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   From these stories [creation & Noah] we acquire a distinctive
understanding of "the integrity of creation."  __The value of all
creatures in and for themselves, for one another, and for God, and
their interconnectedness in a diverse whole that has unique value
for God, together constitute the integrity of creation.__
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   An ethic for the liberation of life calls for seeing the whole of
creation in its integrity and therefore demands respect of every
creature.  Human respect for fellow creatures properly emphasizes
individual members of the human community itself.  Peace among nations
and justice both within and between them are crucial.  But this human
community is part of a larger community of creatures whose health
is essential for the well-being of human beings.  An ethic for the
liberation of life involves concern for this larger community not only
because of its importance to human beings but also for the sake of its
other members.
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   Section 4 is somewhat different.  It does not discuss the benefit to
human beings of right treatment of animals.  Indeed, it implies that
even when respect for animals does not coincide with human benefit it
is still required of Christians.  Perhaps it is partly for this reason
that this topic has been ignored by the World Council of Churches and by
most of its member churches up to now.  To bring this neglect to focused
attention, this section is more extensive.  It rejects anthropocentrism
by affirming the integrity of creation with peculiar vividness.  The
themes that unite this fourth section to the others [being: 1. peace &
justice, 2. sustainable society, 3. biological diversity] are two: first,
that the integrity of creation requires human beings to abandon domination
and exploitation as a style of relating both to one another and to the
rest of creation, and, second, that respect for the integrity of
creation calls upon us to expand our conviviality, that we live with
other creatures in peace and justice.
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[Section 4]      Respect for Individual Animals
   The biblical and theological messages about the value of animals
speak with one voice:  Animals do not exist for the sake of the
unbridled pursuit of human avarice and greed.  And yet the increasingly
powerful transnational corporations prefer that people not know, or not
care, about the pain and death literally billions of animals are made to
suffer every year in the name of corporate mass-production and consumer
over-consumption.  Some examples follow.
   Cosmetics and Household Products.  ...[discussion of eye-irritance
tests and lethal dose tests and the fact that they are unnecessary since
alternatives exist]...
   Fashion.  ...[discussion of fur trapping and fur farms and the
unnecessaty of these forms of exploitations]...
   Food.  ...[discussion of factory farms, battery cages, farrowing pens,
veal calves, dairy cows, amount of grains fed to these animals, protein
production in reverse, thwarting natural behavior, and the unnecessity
of these exploitations because of (basically) vegetarianism]...
   Entertainment.  ...[discussion of bull fights, rodeos, circuses, cock
and dog fights, and the alternatives to these forms of exploitation]...
   Education.  ...[discussion of compulsory dissection and alternatives]...
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   The ethic of the liberation of life is a call to Christian action.
In particular, how animals are treated is not "someone else's worry," it
is a matter of our individual and collective responsibility.  Christians
are called to act respectfully towards "these, the least of our brothers
and sisters."  This is not a simple question of kindness, however
laudable that virtue is.  __It is an issue of strict justice.__  In all
our dealings with animals, whether direct or indirecct, the ethic for the
liberation of life requires that we render unto animals what they are
due, as creatures with an independent integrity and value.  Precisely
becaues they cannot speak for themselves or act purposively to free
themselves from the shackles of their enslavement, the Christian duty to
speak and act for them is the greater, not the lesser.
  In facing this new challenge -- this challenge to liberate all life,
the animals included -- Christians should aspire to two ideals:
   1.  Seek knowledge.
   2.  Act justly.
The first ideal enjoins us to break the habit of ignorance when it comes
to how animals are being treated.  It bids us to ferret out truth, to
make the invisible visible, to make the obscure clear.  The second ideal
bids us to make our own life a living expression of justice towards
God's creation, to bring peace to our own lives even as we work to bring
peace to the world.  Indeed, we are unlikely to succeed in doing the
latter if we fail in doing the former.  There is little hope, that is,
that we can change the world if we cannot even change ourselves: in the
choice of the cosmetics and household products we use, the clothes we
wear, the food we eat, and the entertainment we patronize.  The ethic
for the liberation of life begins at home.
   Much else remains to be considered.  Laws and institutions that
permit or encourage the oppression of animals need to be identified and
changed.  The truth about the ways animals are oppressed needs to be
made known, beginning in the church itself.  Our children need to be
sustained in their natural empathy with and compassion for animals, and
this means that certain traditional practices in their eductation,
including in particular compulsory dissection, will have to be altered.
Clearly, the struggle to liberate life is not for the faint of heart.
   Yet just as clearly it is a struggle no thoughtful Christian can
avoid.  When St. Paul says that "the whole creation has been groaning
in travail together until now," he speaks to our time and our
circumstances.  For the animals have been groaning, though we have heard
them not.  We hear them now.   They cry for justice.  We cannot fail to
answer.
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               Recommendations
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   6. In view of the widespread maltreatment of animals throughout
the world and in view of the intrinsic value of individual animals
to themselves and to God we recommend that Church and Society take
appropriate steps to:  (a) encourage the churches and their members
to acquire knowledge about how animals are being treated and in what
ways this treatment departs from respect for the intrinsic value to
themselves and of animals as creatures of God and how abuses could be
minimized through legislation and other means; (b) encourage members
of the Christian community to act according to such guidelines as the
following:
   i.  Avoid cosmetics and household products that have been cruelly
tested on animals.  Instead, buy cruelty-free items.
   ii.  Avoid clothing and other aspects of fashion that have a history
of cruelty to animals, products of the fur industry in particular.
Instead, purchase clothes that are cruelty-free.
   iii.  Avoid meat and animal products that have been produced on
factory farms.  Instead, purchase meats and animal products from
sources where animals have been treated with respect, or abstain
from these products altogether.
   iv.  Avoid patronizing forms of entertainment that treat animals as
mere means to human ends.  Instead, seek benign forms of entertainment,
ones that nurture a sense of the wonder of God's creation and reawaken
that duty of conviviality we can discharge by living respectfully in
community with all life, the animals included.
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