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

Some Objections Answered / 211
Tertullian, and Origen, that point to the understanding that Jesus, James,
Peter, and the direct disciples were ethical vegetarians, whereas Paul,
Barnabas, and others who came later were not. Through a detailed historical
analysis, Akers shows just how Paul’s non-vegetarian movement
was eventually able, often through brutal means, to eclipse the original
thrust of Jesus’ teachings regarding nonviolence, and why the original
Christians, the vegetarian Ebionites, were unable to survive.
In religion, as for science and society, major paradigmatic inconsistencies
cannot be tolerated. The dominant paradigm of the parent culture
is exploitation, symbolized and articulated in sacrificing animals,
and for Jesus to be widely recognized as Lord and Savior by the people
of that culture, his opposition to animal sacrifice had to be hidden and
denied. Why, then, was his revolutionary opposition to war, to religious
elitism, to seeking personal gain at others’ expense, to nationalism,
racism, and many of the other fundamental characteristics of the parent
culture preserved and canonized? His opposition to killing animals is
drastically more radical, practical, and threatening to the established
order, because it questions our meals, the intimate landscape of our daily
lives. We don’t, after all, declare war three times a day. This same pattern
of denial continues today. As mentioned earlier, the passionate teachings
of Unity’s co-founders, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, advocating the
vegan ethic of kindness to animals have been virtually completely
repressed and forgotten in less than seventy years! While Unity ministers
and congregants avidly and respectfully discuss the Fillmores’ books and
teachings on prayer, metaphysics, and Christian healing, their teachings
on veganism are ignored or passed off as just one of their “quirks.”
An interesting objection to adopting a plant-based way of eating
that many Christians rely on is the saying by Jesus that “Not that which
goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the
mouth, this defileth a man” (Matthew 15:11). 11 This is often interpreted
as giving us permission to eat anything we like and instructing us
instead to be mindful of our speech. By now it should be clear that this
objection misses the point entirely. When we order a chicken or a
cheeseburger at a deli, restaurant, or market, that is the moment that we
engage in violence and cause “murders,” “thefts,” 12 and suffering to