On a Biblical Justification of Animal Rights

In his Animal Gospel, Andrew Linzey presents a systematic treatment of animal rights from an Evangelical point of view. It is composed of two parts. Part 1 argues that there are Gospel truths supporting at least an equal treatment of animals. The basic argument is that the world is a creation of God and that animals are part of the creation and the voice of God. Any maltreatment of animals is against this Gospel truth that animals as well as human beings are God’s creation. Thus, eating animals, among many other kinds of maltreatment of animals, is theologically unfaithful and hence morally unacceptable to Christian belief. Accordingly, vegetarianism is claimed as a theological conclusion from the Gospels. Linzey adores the power of God exemplified through Jesus as symbolizing God’s will to serve the diseased, the disabled, the vulnerable, and the weak. He compares the states of animals as innocent, helpless, weak, and subjected to human manipulations with similar human situations, which are not morally acceptable. Thus to follow Jesus is to serve the weak and vulnerable animals. He criticizes sharply the unfair treatment of animals by the traditional attitudes of the church, both Protestant and Catholic. In fact, he pushes it further than that. Like the weak and the powerless, Linzey argues that, as the oppressed is granted moral priority than the normal ones among us, by analogy, animals have moral priority, too (39). By this, Linzey means to support a stronger claim than animal welfares or animal protection, and confers animal rights to them (42-46).