Barefoot Vegan Mag Jan_Feb 2017

FAITH
and compassion
By Craig Wescoe
T
o some this may come as a surprise, but not all
vegans deny the existence of God and not all
Christians believe animals are here for us to kill
and eat. In fact, more and more people today are
identifying as both Christian and vegan. There are hundreds
of passages in the Bible that support the idea that living a
vegan lifestyle is consistent with living a life that glorifies
God – and there are thousands of vegan Christians in the
world today proving it!
Christians living a compassionate plant-based lifestyle are
not confined to one type of church either. They can be found
kneeling at Catholic Mass, taking the Orthodox Eucharist,
praising in a Baptist worship hall, celebrating the Sabbath in
a Seventh Day Adventist pew, evangelising on the street
corner, or even giving a sermon in front of their own
Lutheran, Presbyterian, or Methodist congregation. They can
be found anywhere, though they are often the only vegan in
their church – at least in the beginning.
If you ask a Christian vegan for the basis of their beliefs,
they’ll likely have a Bible full of highlighted passages ready to
show you in detail, but the two focal points that tend to
come up the most are from Genesis and from the gospels.
Genesis depicts the world’s original state of perfection and
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its subsequent decline while Jesus represents a return
to that original state of perfection.
The Bible opens with God creating a perfect world
in which animals and humans live together in
harmony, eating all the colorful fruits and vegetation
of the earth (Genesis 1-2). It wasn’t until after the fall
of man that this harmony was broken and humans
deviated from God’s plan and began killing animals
and seeing them as food. Humans were said to be
created in God’s image. Restoring humanity to that
holy image involves no longer deviating from God’s
will and plan for the earth, which means going back to
eating fruits and vegetation and living in harmony
with all of God’s creatures.
In the gospels, Jesus taught that the two primary
commandments are to love God wholeheartedly and to
love your neighbour as yourself (Mark 12). Vegan
Christians extend this love to all of God’s creatures
that inhabit the world around us – not just to our
human neighbours that live next door. Jesus warned
never to seek to justify acts of cruelty (Matthew 23)
and instead to always go the extra mile when it comes
to matters of love (Matthew 5). We have authority
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