I just read an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about how the religious right is suddenly becoming interested in animal welfare. Apparently it used to be something they wouldn’t touch because it was too liberal and touchy-feely (also maybe because the religious right has a certain fondness for guns, which are often used for purposes that I would struggle to call animal welfare) but now respect for animals is en vogue, and is even showing up at far right places like Liberty University:
Among the Liberty faculty — and conservative evangelicals in general — the animal-rights movement is often disdained as a secular, liberal cause.
But activists have been working with increasing intensity to shed that image. They're lecturing in Quaker meetinghouses and Episcopal churches, setting up websites that post Scripture alongside recipes for vegan soup — and using biblical language to promote political initiatives, such as laws mandating bigger cages for pregnant pigs.
On Wednesday, clergy from 20 faith traditions — including Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic — will sign a statement declaring a moral duty to treat animals with respect. At a ceremony in Washington, they will call on all people of faith to stop wearing fur, reduce meat consumption, and buy only from farms with humane practices. The Best Friends Animal Society, which brought the group together, plans to recruit volunteers to bring that message into at least 2,000 congregations nationwide.
Another organization that I was surprised to see jumping on the trend bandwagon (even if it is for a good cause) is the Jewish National Fund, which recently launched a website encouraging you to offset your carbon emissions by planting trees in Israel through JNF. They even have one of those nifty calculators that will tell you how much crap you put into the air and how many trees to buy to offset it. Now, at Jewcy we’ve had some issues with JNF in the past. I’ve written about how their planting practices have been problematic (um, hi, we need more than one kind of tree) and Eli let us know that JNF was auctioning off some gross Playboy stuff (debauchery is fine if it’s done for trees in Israel, I guess). Still, I think JNF’s GoNeutral page is a step in the right direction. Check it out!