Unitarian Universalist Church of the
Lehigh Valley
424 Center Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018
Phone: 610-866-7652
FAX: 610-866-4111
Albert Schweitzer expressed the same feelings over fifty years ago saying, “Every being must be holy to us. We may not destroy anything of it carelessly. Tear off no flower, no leaf! If you see a little plant, even one of the most ordinary sort, in front of you on your pathway, walk so as not to step on it if you can possibly avoid it. If you are walking with children in the out-of-doors, do not let them thoughtlessly pluck flowers. In the first hour they wilt in the children's hot little hands and are thrown away thoughtlessly because they then become inconvenient to them. Rather, dare to teach them reverence for life from their first years onward. Even make yourselves look ridiculous in front of thoughtless people who make fun of such fads, for all I care. But the children will be grasped by the awe of the mystery and will thank you sometime that you awakened in them the great melody of reverence for life. The hecklers themselves will also be more moved than they would like to admit by the elementary truth in that which touches them in such unfamiliar ways.” This is the real importance that we shared with our children our feeling of being blessed by animals. We are sharing with them our reverence for life.
Our Judeo-Christian heritage and tradition has not always felt this reverence. In Genesis 1:28, the creation story in the Hebrew Scriptures states: ““Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” These verses have often been used to give men and women authority to use the earth and all that cohabits the earth in any way that meets our needs. I feel our dominant position on the earth rather makes us stewards of the other inhabitants and therefore does not give us a right to do anything we want with non-human life.
Another aspect of our religious past that harms our relationship to the animal world was brought about by the Greek concept of soul. The Greeks believed that humankind was of two natures: body and spirit. The spirit that they called psyche or soul was a quality that was apart from our physical being. It was this soul that separated us from the beings of the animal world. I feel this dualism is wrong and it is this arbitrary identification that has given us permission to cause untold pain to the other members of the animal kingdom. Look at some of the early church’s rituals of sacrifice to see examples of this. I do not believe we could possibly perform such atrocities if we viewed animals as being the same sort of creatures as ourselves.
Since my younger daughter isn’t here, I can tell stories about her without too much risk of her wrath. When she was younger and living in Britain, she was a member of an organization called Chicken’s Lib. Now you may laugh, but in our reading Schweitzer tells us that children will be grasped by the awe of the mystery that the hecklers will not be able to see. I didn’t heckle her, I was proud of her. This British organization published and publicized the conditions in the agro-factories that keep poultry in confined cages their entire lives. The squalor in which they live is shameful. The processed animal feeds that some of these agro-industries have fed to their creatures have been linked to human diseases. The lives of animals raised in these industries are part of the interdependent web of existence that we as Unitarian Universalists honor. There was great truth in Schweitzer’s observation of fifty years ago. And certainly by all accounts the American poultry industry is, in a word, foul in its methods of handling and raising their products. These practices would not be tolerated if we didn’t see a fundamental difference between human animals and rest of the kingdom.
From a theological perspective Buddhism and Hinduism have a much different and more humane concept, but we don’t have to go vegetarian to expect our food production facilities to let animals live like animals. One Midwest farmer put it this way, "Colonel Sanders wants us to think of chickens only in terms of dollars and cents. They are nothing but little pieces of meat to be bought and sold for food. And so we're supposed to crowd them together in small spaces and get them fat enough to be killed. But that's wrong! The Bible says that God created every animal 'after its own kind.' Chickens aren't people, but neither are they nothing but hunks of meat. Chickens are chickens, and they deserve to be treated like chickens! This means that we have to give each chicken the space to strut its stuff in front of other chickens." I would add that allowing the animal to live its life, as the animal would be more natural. In other words, to parody a line from the TV Series, West Wing, ‘let chicken be chickens.’ I have heard that poultry raised ‘free range’ as they say in Britain; produce different fats in their eggs, fats that have been determined to be less harmful for us. In other words more humane production is healthier for humankind.
Taking this to the extreme, I do not believe as the controversial Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer who maintains that the life of an animal is equal in value to that of a human. He preaches that the use of animals in research to save lives of human beings is immoral. But just because we can use an animal to investigate a scientific question doesn’t mean that the knowledge is worth the cost of knowing. As a dominant animal on the planet, I would make these value judgments in favor of humans, but would choose to ask important questions. This I feel is the center path.
I believe this is consistent with our theological forebear, Schweitzer. He was not a vegetarian and felt that hunting was a necessary evil. For myself I know hunting is a necessity, but I don’t have to do it. More importantly, when and how we as society hunt wild animals is giving important lessons to our children. Among many in our hunting culture it is considered a rite of passage for manhood. As hunting is currently practiced, these are not the lessons I would like to pass on. I prefer that we learn from our Native American sisters and brothers how to hunt and respect the system that the current hunting practices are exploiting. When I lived in Pennsylvania, there was one church in the German Reformed tradition that held a service on the opening day of deer season at 6 AM. It was called the Blessing of the Guns. I found this appalling, but the pastor’s logic was that the church could combine the service with a breakfast for the hunters prior to the blessing. He felt that these hunters at least would start the season sober. This is not always the case. There is a certain practicality with this logic, but I still believe that symbolically this practice is flawed. Certainly the practices hunters teach their children are very different from the lesson we teach our young people when we have an animal blessing. I heard that a researcher once did a study of the population of a state’s death row inmates and determined that none of them had ever had an animal to care for as a child. I wonder how many learned the art of hunting at that same age.
In honor of St. Francis of Assisi and the Unitarian Albert Schweitzer, in October many of our congregations bless the animals that occupy our lives. This is a lesson that is worthy of our species. Schweitzer said, “To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kindness that stands behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.” Our Animal blessing is a blessing of gratitude. For if we fail to act as proper stewards toward our animals, we are broken, we are not whole with our covenant with the earth. We break for animals.
In an ever-evolving and never-ending world. Amen.