The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is the smartest and richest animal rights group around. Unlike PETA, it doesn’t openly proselytize that old animal rights religion, e.g., sentience gives moral value, “a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy,” the quote from Ingrid Newkirk and title of a certain author’s soon to be published book. This strategy has been very effective, allowing HSUS a level of mainstream respectability that other animal rights groups can’t match.
But make no mistake, HSUS is about animal rights–eventually ending all animal husbandry and human hegemony over fauna–and its head, Wayne Pacelle, is a hard core evangelist. He has a piece on Michael Vick today, that, I think, unconsciously reflects the explicit religious nature of animal rights advocacy. It is about fall, repentance, redemption, and altar calls–indeed, it is permeated with a subtle, but distinctly Christian, narrative. From his piece:
A person who committed an awful crime against animals is found out. Prosecutors take the case seriously, and the perpetrator eventually pleads guilty. The judge metes out a stern penalty, given the sentencing guidelines at the time.
Man falls. Of course, Vick acted abominably, but follow me on this. He is convicted of his wrongdoing, confesses, and suffers just punishment. But there is redemption and a public confession of faith:
And then, upon release from prison, the perpetrator comes knocking on the door of the largest animal protection group and says he wants to sign up to do community service for the anti-cruelty team. He makes the pledge public so there is accountability.
You think I am reading too much into this? Then, get the ending:
In a civil society, there must be accountability for grievous actions. But there also must be an embrace of people who are willing and ready to change – even in tough cases, like Michael Vick. We are all sinners when it comes to animals, and we can all do better.
We have all sinned against animals? Substitute God for animals in this piece, and you have a classic Christian message. Yup. animal rights is religion and Wayne Pacelle a high priest of the faith. Hallelujah!
October 16th, 2009 | 1:13 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by J. Robert Howell, Jane Brain. Jane Brain said: Repent! Animal Rights Really Is Religion: The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is the smartest and ric.. http://bit.ly/Ef8×4 [...]
October 16th, 2009 | 2:36 pm
Well clearly, on Biblical grounds, it’s wrong to abuse animals for the same reason it is wrong to smash and trample over a gift given to you by someone you love. But using a gift for it’s purpose, namely eating ethically killed animals, is not abuse. And the claim “We are all sinners when it comes to animals, and we can all do better. ” implies even the vegans and Jains (which view even stepping on a bug as sinful) are guilty and need repentance.
All I can say is that Gilbert K. Chesterton was correct when he stated in Orthodoxy, “They say that we once thought it right to eat men (we didn’t); but I am not here concerned with their history, which is highly unhistorical. As a fact, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat human flesh out of affectation than that primitive man ever ate it out of ignorance. I am here only following the outlines of their argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been progressively more lenient, first to citizens, then to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants. I think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair. That is the drive of the argument. And for this argument it can be said that it is possible to talk of it in terms of evolution or inevitable progress. A perpetual tendency to touch fewer and fewer things might — one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency, like that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children. This drift may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid.”
October 16th, 2009 | 3:25 pm
While I definitely agree that animal rights/welfare is a religion, a cult, actually, I dislike the parts in your post where you compare it with Christianity in particular. Yes, by all means, substitute God for animals and you have animal rights. Sinning against animals, the idea is ridiculous, but it is animal rights. I don’t disagree with your saying that. But please don’t lump Christians in the same lot just because tthe word “sin” is used to describe something wrong, and in the case of animal rights, they judge as being wrong, and they do worship animals. Call them fundies, fanatics, you can even compare their animal and earth worship to that of neopagans, but please, don’t lump ars in with Christians just because they are acting with the same zeal as misguided religious (I won’t call them Christian) fundamentalists.
October 16th, 2009 | 3:39 pm
Dear Dr Smith,
Suppose that Mr Pacelle had written, “We have all sinned against God by acquiescing in the often brutal treatment of sentient animals He created, but we can do better.”
Would that be any better?
Let me also note that despite confession and absolution, the condemned at an auto-da-fe were still burned at the stake. And it was the secular authority to which she was delivered that burned St Jeanne d’Arc for witchcraft. Vigorous punishment by the secular authority is not incompatible with confession, repentance, absolution, and reception among the saved.
Finally, I assume that Mr Pacelle grew up in a Christian environment, as have most Americans, even those who profess other religions, and the Christian conceptual framework comes naturally to all of us.
October 16th, 2009 | 5:28 pm
No, Punditarian: I think he intentionally made religious narrative the subtext of his piece, with clearly Christian allusions.
Animal rights is a religion to some, or at least takes the place of religion, and he cleverly played on the Christian cultural framework you mentioned, in his piece. But he unwisely showed his hand with saying we have all sinned with regard to animals. We all haven’t abused animals, for one thing. And for another, saying we have sinned toward animals shows his worldview.
October 16th, 2009 | 5:44 pm
Dear Dr Smith,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. You may be right about the locution “sinned toward animals.” I am afraid however that if we all do not abuse animals, we all too often acquiesce in animal abuse. You don’t have to be a Nietzsche in Turin to understand that.
October 16th, 2009 | 7:27 pm
If we can sin against human beings (one might argue that ‘only against God’ can we sin) then surely we can sin against animals. They have God-given dignity and interests which we can wrongfully violate. And we do this more often that we think: it happens each time we cooperate with the torture and unnecessary killing of animals in buying factory-farmed animal flesh.
As First Things author Mary Eberstadt has recently pointed out in print, if we are pro-life we should also be pro-animal. Being for animal rights is part of the special consideration pro-lifers should give to the vulnerable who are threatened by the powerful with marginalization, violence and killing.
October 16th, 2009 | 8:45 pm
I don’t think we can sin against people, either, at least as the word is generally used. We can do others harm. We can betray them. But I don’t think we can sin against them.
Mary Eberstadt didn’t write that animal rights and pro life go together, in the sense of animal rights creating a moral equivalency between people and animals. She rejected such an equivalency, and may not understand fully that animal rights is an ideology creating such an equivalency, not a be nicer to animals movement, which is properly called animal welfare.
She wrote, as I recall, that pro lifers should consider the importance of being humane to animals and should consider vegetarianism as a way of reducing suffering.
Human exceptionalism expounds a duty to be humane to animals. It rejects a moral equivalency. I have no argument with people who decide to be vegetarians/vegans. But it doesn’t make them morally superior to those who decide to eat. In fact, choosing to abstain from a natural and delicious food for ethical reasons is an decision that only human beings have the capacity to make, and therefore, is proof of human exceptionalism.
October 16th, 2009 | 9:09 pm
OK, so your point about sin isn’t really about it being wrongfully applied to animals…we can’t sin against humans either.
I’m not sure why you so worried about moral equivalency; only a tiny percentage of the animal rights crowd thinks that all animals are equal. A non-human animal can have rights (that is, just claims on our conduct toward them) without having the same moral status as a human person. Here is a book, written by a former Bush speech-writer, which makes precisely this point:
http://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Power-Suffering-Animals-Mercy/dp/0312319738
Incidentally, given the morally reprehensible state of factory farms in the United States, how would you respond to someone who said that your financial support of factory-farmed animal flesh violates the admittedly exceptional duty you claim exists: that human beings must care for animal welfare? And if it is, in fact, a violation of such a duty then doesn’t it just follow logically that–all other things being equal of course–those who do not support such barbaric institutions are morally superior to those that do?
October 16th, 2009 | 11:44 pm
Charlie, be careful about falling into the G. K. Chesterton scenario outlined above. Let me make it clear, we do have an obligation to not abuse animals as mentioned in the Genesis stewardship command, the Noatic Covenant, and the 1st Jerusalem Council.
However, animals have no rights.
Where would those rights come from? Why would animals have rights but not plants or bacteria or cancer cells or your computer? If rights is such a nebulous concept, it’s meaningless.
Fortunately the concept of rights is meaningful, namely, all rights are balanced by associated responsibilities.
If you look at the U.S. constitution, the key freedoms defined are impossible with such responsibility. Contrary to popular belief, it has nothing to do with all men being created equal. So what? All rocks are created equal. They still don’t have rights. The key foundation of rights has to do with the Image of God, which allows man to be morally responsible to God, and indirectly through the Greatest Commandment, responsible to each other.
Thus people have rights. Even pre-born babies have rights, to the extend that they are capable of responsibility of judgment to God. Further protections are given due to the responsibility of the parent to care for the child due to the right that they have to make children and the great blessing that God gave in giving the couple a child.
Animals are responsible to no-one. Animals cannot be punished for murder or rape or incest, so animals have no rights. The only reason they deserve consideration at all, above plant or rocks, is because of our responsibilities to God as mentioned above.
October 17th, 2009 | 4:13 am
Do we have some similar duty not to ‘abuse’ plants or rocks? Of course not. That is because plants and rocks cannot suffer. The fact that we have a duty to not abuse animals (and to stop it when it is happening) means that animals have just claims on our conduct towards them…and this means that they have rights. This is not a nebulous concept. It is one that we can consistently apply to both human and non-human animals–but not to plants or rocks. (Again, not making an equivalency argument here…human animals have more and more sophisticated rights than non-human animals.) Plants and rocks are objects which can be used as we wish, but our current Pope, for instance, thinks that non-human animals have a God-given dignity which rules out such objectification:
http://www.goveg.com/pdfs/PopeAdEaster.pdf
But perhaps rights always have parallel duties as you suggest above and this rules out non-human animals because they can have no such duties. But, like you, I think prenatal human animals have rights–including a right to life. (Which, incidentally, I think most non-human animals do not have.) But it is either absurd to think that such prenates have duties, or, if they do, they need to be carried out by a surrogate. But then notice that non-human animals can also have moral duties carried out by a surrogate. Owners can use resources on them in proportion with the common good, for instance (i.e., no ‘doggie strollers.’ ugh.).
October 17th, 2009 | 11:43 am
Linking morality and rights to suffering is a Buddhist and Jain concept and has nothing to do with the Christian morality and rights derived from them.
Suffering is both too brough a criteria and can lead to immorality. WRT broadness, why are insects excluded? Because they don’t look like us? If you’ve ever seen a bee slowly devour the wings on a living butterfly before eating it, or a spider or praying mantis devour its food alive, you know insects suffer. If you look at the standards of most countries in the world, cereals can have at most 6 insect parts per serving. It’s unavoidable that insects get into grain, even while harvesting. A vegan eating cereal is cheerfully devouring life that suffers. To be true, a true vegan must abstain from all food above algae and completely artificial vitamin pills, since eating anything above that would be causing some form of life to suffer.
WRT suffering reduction causing immorality. If morality and rights were tied to suffering, then the most moral thing you could do is to dope up you baby for life and dope up all animals we eat and we can do whatever depraved thing we want with them as long as they are in drugged up ecstasy. But from a Christian perspective, that is extremely immoral (even if you don’t do anything depraved to them) because we are offending God by blatantly violating the Greatest Commandment and defiling his creation. From the quote you give, the Pope does not mention dignity of animals or that one should go vegan, just that how our meat factories objectify animals playing God though frankenfoods is a wrong.
Why would it be absurd for prenates to have duties? As clearly stated in scripture, God does not give us burdens greater than we can handle and since children are closer to God than adults, it may be that they are *more* qualified to fulfill those duties than we are. I disagree that they can be surrogated since if the surrogate is negligent, one cannot say that the prenate is negligent.
It’s even less likely that it can be surrogated from animals. Do you realize what you are saying? Every time an animal “murders” or “rapes” or “commits incest” or “steals”, the animal would need a surrogate to carry our reparations. This can only happen if we completely domesticate all animals and each person take care of over a million types of animals and insects and fish, since they outnumber us by a large quantity.
As I stated, if morality and rights and duties mean anything at all, they must be definable and livable.
October 17th, 2009 | 4:46 pm
The difference between believing in the rights of animals and believing in “God” is that the former is based on reality and facts, and the latter is all about emotion and wishful thinking. So no, animal rights is not a religion.
October 17th, 2009 | 4:46 pm
Wait… Human beings cannot sin against other human beings? Then whatever is the point of this post if you are merely splitting hairs over the definition of sin (i. e., one can only sin against God)?
And am I to cease supporting the pro-life movement because it goes beyond a mere “be nice to fetuses” movement? I hope not, though fetuses are obviously not “equivalent” to born human beings who have moral agency and complex memories and consciousness.
Part of me wonders if you have ever taken even a moment to talk to an animal rights advocate, given your rather extreme misrepresentation of the mainstream of the movement. But, of course, you ignorantly assume that Mary Eberstadt and others like her merely fail to realize what they themselves believe. One might wonder if such extreme ignorance on your part is, in fact, invincible.
October 17th, 2009 | 7:24 pm
The Christian narrative substructure is what makes the animal rights ideology compelling to people who eschew religion. Proper care of animals is morally compelling (correctly so), but packaging the imperative in a larger structure that recalls the memory of Christian virtue extends the imperative into behaviors that can be woven into an ideology. You called this one right, Wesley.
October 17th, 2009 | 9:12 pm
Pacelle says: “We are all sinners when it comes to animals, and we can all do better.”
Smith misunderstands: “We have all sinned against animals?”
No, Wes, the two statements mean entirely different things. The former suggests we are all sinners against God for treating his creations as we do. The acts are against the animals, the sin is against God. The latter (yours) twists it to mean we sin against animals directly.
To rest of your diatribe is invalidated when you interpret quotes to fit your preconceptions instead of attacking your targets on what is actually said and meant.
But then even the Bible is really just interpretations of previous interpretations, eh?
October 18th, 2009 | 6:23 am
There are no “leaders” when it comes to animal rights, there is no dogma to follow nor any kind of worship. The weak choice of words by Wayne Pacelle should not condemn a complete movement as religious, cultist or sectarian, however misinterpreted those words are.
If we think about racism, sexism, heterosexism or any other form of discrimination, we can always find a certain pattern: the victim of discrimination has or does not have a certain aspect and is thus “different”. Racism is based on colour of skin or nationality, sexism on gender… and speciesism on species. Because other than human animals are not member of the human species, or lack aspects typical to humans such as form or cognition, they are excluded from the moral community. They are measured in terms of their cognitive nearness to or distance from humans, or in relation to their value. Whenever regarding other than human animals, we do so from a human point-of-view: their intelligence, forms of communication, means of creating and others are compared to ours; and although we are a different species, we judge them according to the outcome of this comparison. This anthropocentric view legitimates and inspires the assumption of human superiority leading to the oppression of others; this way they are objectified and seen as property. Their interest in life is regarded as subordinate to to the interest of humans who gain benefit from their exploitation.
So where do animal rights come from? Well, in the article the answer is given: “sentience gives moral value”. And although my opinions in the approach of animal rights differ from those of Peta (I am not in favour of welfarism or reform), that is the exact truth. The fact that non-human animals are sentient and thus can experience pain, emotions and have a desire to live their life in freedom, is enough to grant them equal moral consideration. Animal rights does not mean they should get education or the right to vote; it means they are not to be seen as “ours” for whatever benefit we could obtain.
October 18th, 2009 | 8:07 am
Ronald, if you are going to respond to someone please attempt to actually do so in way which respects what they actually said.
I never said that suffering was the entire basis of morality (though you’d be hard-pressed to have a Christian ethic which did not have mitigation of suffering play a major role)…I said it is what is the basis of claiming that animals have rights and that plants and rocks do not. Anything that has a just claim on our conduct have a right. You yourself admit that animals have just claims on our conduct. Therefore, animals have rights.
If we should not objectify animals, the reason is that animals have a God-given dignity (‘the mutuality that comes across in the Bible’) that makes them have a moral status beyond mere objects like plants and rocks. (Again, the difference is that objects have no interests and cannot suffer.)
Could you give me an example of a fetus carrying out a duty not done by a surrogate?
October 18th, 2009 | 8:27 pm
Dear Mr Smith,
According to the Bible, (Genesis 1:27) the animals were created with a “nefesh chaya” or living spirit, which is in fact a soul — an immortal soul. The same terminology (“nefesh chaya”) is also used to describe the creation of man in Genesis 2:7. The animal soul is not the human soul, or “neshamah,” because the neshamah and not the nefesh is “the image of God.” Part and parcel of being in the image of God, however, is the obligation to relate to God’s creation in emulation of his justice and mercy. We are enjoined to treat animals decently. To fail to do that is indeed to fall short of God’s expectation for us, and this falling short is, in the original Hebrew language of the Bible, the essence of sin. The sin is not only in the mistreatment of the animal, it is in failing to live up to God’s expectation of the created being who is in His image.
All the best,
P.
October 18th, 2009 | 9:16 pm
Yes, if one believes in sin, certainly abusing animals could constitute sin. But not against the animals. Moreover, Pacelle says we have ALL sinned in our treatment of animals. Why? Because he is an animal rights ideologue who believes that any human use of animals is immoral, and well, a sin against animals. Animal rights, for many–not all–is a religion or a substitute for religion.
October 19th, 2009 | 10:16 am
When discussing this issue believers must be extremely careful NOT to worship the creation above the creator. Proper worship seems to be more relevant to this story than placement of sin.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact