Christianity and Ecology

(also available as an eBook) In this compelling volume in the What Everyone Needs to Know series, Paul Waldau expertly navigates the many heated debates surrounding the complex and controversial animal rights movement. Organized around a series of probing questions, this timely resource offers the most complete, even-handed survey of the animal rights movement available.

The campaign to ban seal hunting in Canada won international headlines and achieved its aims to a large extent. Most observers felt instinctively that the campaigners were "right" but little thought was given to the cataclysmic consequences the ban would have on the way of life and economy of a traditional people, the Inuit of Arctic Canada. This book is both a careful academic study and a disturbing comment on how environmental activity may oppress a whole society, which raises serious questions about the motives and methods of the animal rights' movement in a much wider context than the case here studied.

For most people, animals are the most significant aspects of the nonhuman world. They symbolize nature in our imaginations, in popular media and culture, and in campaigns to preserve wilderness, yet scholars habitually treat animals and the environment as mutually exclusive objects of concern. Conducting the first examination of animals' place in popular and scholarly thinking about nature, Anna L. Peterson builds a nature ethic that conceives of nonhuman animals as active subjects who are simultaneously parts of both nature and human society.

The Bible teems with nonhuman life, from its opening pages with God's creation of animals on the same day and out of the same earth as humans to its closing apocalyptic scenes of horses riding out of the sky. So why are animals so often ignored in Christian moral discourse? In its theological thinking and faith-motivated praxis, human-centeredness typically results in the complete erasure of the nonhuman. This book argues that this exclusion of animals is problematic for those who see the Bible as authoritative for the religious life. Instead, biblical literature bears witness to a more inclusive understanding of moral duty and faith-motivated largesse that extends also to Eden's other residents.

(also available as an eBook) Seeking to awaken Christians to the place and, too often, plight of animals in the twenty-first century, The Friends We Keep gently but astutely introduces the situations animals face today--as companions, as animals in sport, as animals raised for food, and as creatures in the wild--and simultaneously retells a myriad of often surprising and instructive stories from the long, rich history of Christianity. With a guide for group discussion and ideas for how people of faith can respond, this thoroughly engaging and enlightening book is essential for all who desire to live compassionately.

In The Human Animal Earthling Identity Freeman asks us to reconsider the devastating division we have created between the human and animal conditions, leading to mass exploitation, injustice, and extinction. As a remedy, Freeman believes social movements should collectively foster a cultural shift in human identity away from an egoistic anthropocentrism (human-centered outlook) and toward a universal altruism (species-centered ethic), so people may begin to see themselves more broadly as "human animal earthlings."

Animal rights is one of the fastest growing social movements today. Women greatly outnumber men as activists, yet surprisingly, little has been written about the importance and impact of gender on the movement. Emily Gaarder analyzes the politics of gender in the movement, incorporating in-depth interviews with women and participant observation of animal rights organizations, conferences, and protests to describe struggles over divisions of labor and leadership. Gaarder underscores the importance of a paradigm shift in the animal liberation movement, one that seeks a more integrated vision of animal rights that connects universally to other issues--gender, race, economics, and the environment--highlighting that many women activists recognize and are motivated by the connection between the oppression of animals and other social injustices.