The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

Some Objections Answered / 209
eat them because we’ve been given dominion over them. While these
objections reflect the orientation of the herding culture in which they
originated, biblical scholars point out that the Hebrew word translated
as “dominion” in Genesis has the connotation of stewardship and
would certainly never imply or condone the extremes of exploitation,
confinement, neglect, and torture to which animals are routinely subjected
today for our use. The Bible has been interpreted in a wide variety
of ways, and the religious institutions that are seen as our culture’s
primary vehicles for moral and ethical guidance, have, like science,
almost unquestioningly adopted the herding paradigm that considers
animals mere property objects.
However, as soon as we look beyond the shallow doctrines, we
find that there have been strong voices resisting the oppression of animals
from within the Jewish and Christian traditions since the beginning,
from the later Hebrew prophets like Isaiah and Hosea to Jesus
and his Jewish disciples; to the early church fathers like St. Jerome,
Clement, Tertullian, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Benedict; to the
later voices of John Wesley (founder of Methodism), William Metcalf
(Protestant minister and writer of the first book on vegetarianism published
in the United States), Ellen White (a founder of the Seventh-Day
Adventist Church), and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore (co-founders of
the Unity School of Practical Christianity); as well as the voices of
prominent Jewish rabbis and writers like Shlomo Goren, Moses
Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. 9
The vegan ideals of mercy and justice for animals have been articulated
for centuries, often from within the religious establishment, and it
is fascinating and instructive to see how these voices have been almost
completely silenced or marginalized by the herding culture. It seems to
be an unconscious reflex action. For example, if we read Jesus’ teachings,
we find a passionate exhortation to mercy and love, yet the possibility
that the historical Jesus may have been a vegan is a radical idea
for most Christians. Nevertheless, Jesus’ exhortation that we love one
another and not do to others what we wouldn’t want done to us is the
essence of the vegan ethic, which is a boundless compassion that
includes all who can suffer by our actions.