Should Christians become vegetarians?
On tertiary January 2019, a new product hit the British high street. It sold out virtually immediately, precipitating a nationwide launch and extensive media attention. The company was bakery behemothic, Greggs, and the product was the vegan sausage roll. Within weeks, Greggs' sales had increased past almost ten per centum, and annual sales bankrupt through the £1 billion barrier for the outset time.
That Greggs, famed for sausage rolls and cheese pasties, would launch a vegan product might take seemed impossible until recently and, while veganism may not (nevertheless?) be entirely mainstream, it is chop-chop becoming more adequate. In 2022 the Britain launched the highest number of new vegan food products in Europe, with 1 in six food products launched being vegan-friendly.
One in four household evening meals in the UK is meat complimentary, and fifty-six per cent of consumers adopt vegan buying behaviours. This increased vegan action highlights popular concern about animal welfare, the environment and what constitutes a good for you diet. How, therefore, might Christians best reply to this growing tendency? Is eating beast products problematic to our religion? Might there be an ethical and theological case for the found-based diet to exist considered a legitimately Christian choice?
Thus begins the latest Grove Ethics booklet,The Plant-based Diet: a Christian selection?by Mia Smith, Clergyman at Hertford College, Oxford. The exploration begins with setting out the theological groundwork to the ethical questions around constitute-based diets.
The questions raised past veganism are substantially theological concerns, rising out of the human vocation: our God-given duty towards our young man creatures, one another and the planet. Earlier we examine each business organization, we demand to explore our human vocation to understand why our diet is theologically significant.
The starting point is this: our species belongs to creation. We are not to God'south benefit, and we add nothing to his nature. Nosotros are creatures, having more in mutual with our non-human fellow creatures than we do with the creator. God's loving purposes comprehend the whole of creation, not merely the human beast.
Cosmos is an deed of grace on the office of the creator, both for creation's sake, then that cosmos may glorify God. Cosmos is theocentric, and no onecreature exists solely for the ourishing of another. Basil the Great stated that at that place were no creaturely degrees of beingness; everything created has the same ontological status. There is God, and at that place are creatures, and humanity is of the second kind, the 'creaturekind.'12 The whole of creation, not just human- ity, is declared to exist good by the creator, and creatures of all kinds depend on him and on the rest of creation (Gen i.25)…
Animal suffering is therefore problematic to Christians, both because God loves and will redeem creation, and because cruelty diminishes God's image in us. Animals belong to God, Karl Barth claimed, non to humans, and God requires an accounting of every beast killed for food (Gen ix.5). Barth recognized the ethical importance of animal welfare, stating that we must be 'careful, considerate, friendly, and to a higher place all, understanding' in our treatment of other creatures. The killing of animals for food should, Barth claims, just exist done out of necessity, otherwise it is murder.
In one case nosotros begin to have seriously that God wants the whole of creation to thrive, then the demand to respect our fellow creatures gains traction. How animals both live and die matters to God.
Christians should therefore avoid participating in food systems which forestall flourishing. In that location are strong arguments for following a vegan or vegetarian diet, as a protest and a prophetic selection. Christians may, of grade, disagree most the elimination of animal-based products equally a faith-based obligation. Every bit David Clough argues, 'The perfect seems to be the enemy of the better in this area of ideals.' Others may adopt, instead, simply to buy products from farming systems which do not brand united states of america feel ashamed, especially past rejecting mill farming, or to eat less frequently, equally a treat rather than as a staple. If we exercise make utilise of animals for food, and so it must be uncontroversial to argue that we should ensure that our employ of creature-based food respects their status as our boyfriend creatures of God.
Mia Smith then explores, in successive chapters, the upstanding issues not only around animate being welfare, just related to our own diet and health, before looking at issues of the environment and population growth.
The Bible indicates that care of our ain health is important if we are to fulfil our human vocation, indicating that, as the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, God should be glorified in our bodies (i Cor 6.nineteen–xx). We are permitted to eat all foods, but not all foods are beneficial (1 Cor 10.23), and whatever we eat or drink should be to the glory of God, equally part of a life of worship (v 31).
Inquiry by the Oxford Nutrient Programme indicates that a broadly healthy global diet could save five one thousand thousand lives per year; a vegetarian diet, 7 million; but a vegan diet would take the greatest affect, at about eight million. There is an increasingly strong body of testify to support this:
- The World Health Organization has classified processed meat as a class–1 carcinogen, the aforementioned class as smoking, asbestos and radioactive barium. All red meats accept been classified equally class 2carcinogens, indicating that they are probably carcinogenic, based on evidence of links to colorectal cancer. More detailed studies are indicating that risks of certain cancers are significantly lower inthose who avert animal products. These benefits are (more often than not)noticed where animal products are reduced to occasional con-sumption, simply are greatest when they are eliminated; for example, specifically, veganism seems to protect against prostate cancer.
- Animate being products, including white meats such as chicken, take much of their energy from saturated fat, which is associated with heart disease. By contrast, those on a plant-based nutrition tend to accept lower incidences of eye disease and hypertension. Plant sources of protein such as nuts and seeds have been shown to lower cholesterol.
- Non-organic meat and dairy products contain hormones and antibiotics, given to livestock to increment rates of weight proceeds and feed efficiency. These have been linked with detrimental health outcomes.
- Vegans have healthier gut profiles, with an increase in protective gut leaner and a reduction in pathogenic types.
- Vegetables and fruits contain a variety of nutrients, such every bit anti-oxidants, polyphenols, fibre, vitamins and minerals. It is therefore no surprise that increased consumption is associated with a reduced overall mortality risk from any cause.
In relation to the environment, Smith looks carefully at issues of greenhouse gas emissions, noting that the arguments related to livestock are not as straightforward equally sometimes claimed. But at that place are other important environmental issues at pale.
I of the most significant ways in which humanity affects the environment is through the cutting down of forests to create pasture and for arable state to come across the demand for animal feed. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, cattle play a significant role, using lxxx-vi per cent of the free energy from agricultural state, but producing merely eight per cent of the nutrient we eat. Over seventy per cent of the rainforest in South America has been cleared for ranching, and a further fourteen per cent for commercial crops, including soya for animal feed. The marketplace in soya exports is now one of the largest and increasing international commodity flows, with over one-half of the soy in the UK livestock sector feeding poultry. The resultant overgrazing affects biodiversity.
Agriculture uses more water than any other human activity, with about a 3rd required for livestock. On boilerplate, beef uses more than than three times as much water as chicken per kilogram of meat. This is mainly 'green water,' which falls directly onto the state. However, a significant proportion of water used is 'blueish water,' from rivers and lakes, which competes directly with other needs, including that needed to maintain aquatic ecosystems. H2o used to grow feed accounts for 90-eight per cent of the total water footprint of livestock production.
[To summarise:] Evidence seems to betoken clearly that significantly reducing global meat and dairy consumption would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pollutants, reduce deforestation and the overuse of state and enhance h2o security.
Climate modify cannot be sufficiently mitigated without dietary changes towards more plant-based diets. Adopting more plant-based 'flexitarian' diets globally could reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the food system by more than one-half, and also reduce other ecology impacts, such as those from fertilizer application and the use of cropland and freshwater, by a 10th to a quarter. Dr Marco Springmann, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford
Subsequently exploring issues related to population growth, Mia Smith returns to scripture, and engages with possible counter-arguements, including the observation that meat-eating appears to be assumed as by and large elementary in the Bible.
Agriculture and farming in biblical times did not include the intensive raising of livestock. Ellen Davis argues that for the Levitical customs, eating meat would not take been impersonal and private, as it is today. Meat eating was tied up with sacrifice, and was therefore personal and public. Eating meat in biblical times was 'extraordinary, rather than ordinary.' If nosotros stick to the freedom to eat what we like argument, and then nosotros fail to have into consideration the ethical implications of changes in contemporary farming practices, and in dietary habits and cultural norms.
Until recent decades, 'meat equally a treat' would have been a common approach. Given the proven extraordinary demands animal products make on animals, the environment, and on human wellness, a return to extraordinary consumption—equally encapsulated in the flexitarian nutrition—would be a positive step. A more radical solution would exist to eliminate animal products from our diets altogether.
I appreciate that it is a big footstep to come to meet what we take become accustomed to encounter as the ordinary deed of eating animals every bit extraordinary, and to recognize that consuming the beast products of intensive farming may be in conflict with primal Christian behavior near God's ways with creation. I submit, still, that careful consideration of Christian ethics in this area…requires nothing less.
The booklet contains extensive references in 80 footnotes—then all the arguments are very well sourced. (All the information mentioned above is sourced in footnotes.) Whatever your current approach to your own diet in relation to animal welfare, the environment, your ain health, and our stewardship of God's creation, Mia Smith offers some arguments that deserve serious consideration.
You lot can order the booklet mail costless for £iii.95 in the UK, or as a PDF e-volume, from the Grove website.
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