The Presbyterian Church USA
The Presbyterian Church USA traces its history to the 16th century and the Protestant Reformation. Much of what Presbyterians believe began with the French lawyer John Calvin (1509-1564), whose writings solidified much of the reformed thinking that came before him.
Number of Members: 2.4 million
Governing Body: The General Assembly, consists of elected ministers and elders
| Official Statements on Animals |
Statement 1
The 208th General Assembly (1996) approved the following statement, "No part of God's creation has value only in relation to human needs and human understanding…"
Statement 2
The 212th General Assembly (2002) approved an item on limited water resources which includes the following statements on animals: "…it helps to see plants, animals, and their communities as having interests that human should respect."
From PCUSA's Environmental Justice Ministries Office:
Call to Restore the Creation: Creation cries out in this time of ecological crisis. Abuse of nature and injustice to people place the future in grave jeopardy.
Therefore, God calls the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to
- Respond to the cry of creation, human and non-human;
The church has powerful reason for engagement in restoring God's creation:
- God's work in creation is too wonderful, too ancient, too beautiful, too good to be desecrated.
- Restoring creation is God's own work in our time, in which God comes both to judge and to restore.
- The Creator-Redeemer calls faithful people to become engaged with God in keeping and healing the creation, human and non-human.
- Human life and well-being depend upon the flourishing of other life and the integrity of the life-supporting processes that God has ordained.
- The love of neighbor, particularly "the least" of Christ's brothers and sisters, requires action to stop the poisoning, the erosion, the wastefulness that are causing suffering and death.
Eating is an Environmental Act
"Just Eating? Practicing Our Faith at the Table ~ Readings for Reflection and Action"
What guidelines govern our consumption of meat? The Jewish philosopher, Philo, believed that God had forbidden pork because it was so delicious that eating it would lead to gluttony. Others see environmental or public health benefits underlying the Levitical code. Whatever the reasons for the food laws in Leviticus, one of the main consequences of keeping them was a limited access to meat. Only a few species could be used as food and these animals had to be brought to the priest to be offered to God. Anything else was bloodshed. (See Lev. 17:1-4)
Ancient Hebrew priests had few opinions about how to cook a turnip, but they devoted extensive regulation to sacrificing the life of an animal. Nearly a quarter of the laws in the Torah deal with animal sacrifice. Today's kosher laws speak to the sharpness of the knife, the placement of the cut, and even the character of the ritual slaughterer. These limits result in dignified treatment of animals and emphasize the seriousness of taking a life. Contrast the kosher approach with the way early European settlers slaughtered herds of American buffalo.
Eating is an environmental act. No matter how insulated we might be in office cubicles and urban streets, no matter how little time we spend outdoors, each and every one of us is tied to the earth by the food we eat. The simple act of breaking bread together in church could link us to erosion problems on a wheat farm in the Midwest or pesticide poisoning among grape farmers in Chile.
A quick pick-up from a fast food restaurant can put us in touch with the shrinking number of potato varieties grown in the U.S. and the excess manure produced by a factory farm. Every time we buy food, we participate in environmental degradation or support practices that sustain God's creation or, perhaps, we do some of each.
Because of the amount of land agriculture covers, the world's farmers play a critical role as land stewards of our current and future well-being. How we raise our food has an enormous impact on the health of our planet, especially now with more than six billion mouths to feed. While less than five percent of U.S. land is urbanized, about one third of our three billion acres is farm or ranch land. Agricultural water usage and waste production also have a huge impact on the environment. While California has its share of homes, golf courses and swimming pools, agriculture consumes 83 percent of its water supply.
Human waste is an environmental problem in some places, but in the U.S. farm animals produce 130 times as much manure as we do. Yet farmers are only one small part of our food system: they receive less than 10 cents of every dollar you spend on groceries, and if you bought a loaf of bread this week, you paid as much for the wrapper as for the wheat in the bread. Farming practices are shaped by the corporations who sell the seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers; who buy, process, package, ship, and market the food. They are also shaped by consumers. Because we eat, we occupy an honorary seat on the Earth stewardship committee.
Why should Christians be especially passionate when it comes to caring about the Earth and the way their food is grown? The most obvious reason is our affirmation that God created the world and that bats and wombats, tigers and tree toads, are all examples of divine creativity and delight.
This fundamental Christian affirmation takes on a more profound and intriguing meaning if we apply it to our day-to-day planetary housekeeping. Habitat destruction? Species extinction? This is how we're treating God's creation? Should this be tolerated?
Theologian Sallie McFague suggests another reason for engagement with environmental concerns in her book, Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature. She claims that a Christian nature spirituality is simply Christian practice applied to the earth. "Christians are those who should love the oppressed, the most vulnerable of God's creation," she says, and in our times, it is the natural world that is sick, oppressed, and in need. Just as 19th century Christians failed to recognize slaves as worthy people God cared about, so we need help seeing the extent of God's passionate love for other species. If we see rivers and mountains as fellow members of God's choir as they are described in Psalm 98, then earthworms and ecosystems deserve our deepest love and care.
The daily readings in this unit focus on familiar Christian virtues: hope, humility, gratitude, loving your neighbor, and intercession. Probably you see human faces when you hear such words. What would happen if we also applied these Christ-like virtues to our relationship with the earth? To the choices we make about food?
"Just Eating?" [PDF] is an official Curriculum of the PCUSA Presbyterian Hunger Program's Food and Faith Initiative.
We are not the only creatures God feeds; we are part of an intricate web of relationships.
Psalm 104:10-30
Genesis 1 is not the only account of God as creator in the Bible. Psalm 104, Psalm 65, Job 38-40, and Psalm 8 are other examples. While human beings are given a prominent role in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, in this Psalm, as in the latter chapters of Job, humans are simply one species in the vast choir of creation. Psalm 104 describes an intricate system where all creatures are dependent on God for food. Here, the interplay between water, the landscape, and the rhythm of seasons sounds like an ecology textbook, and the human race receives no more attention than lions or wild goats. In the eyes of this hymn writer, the appropriate response to creation is not dominion but humility and praise.
Psalm 104:27-30 reminds us that we are not the only creatures God feeds. All creation is dependent on the breath of God and food from God's hands. Nor does nature exist to serve humanity; indeed most of the creatures mentioned have no economic value. Wild donkeys, wild goats, storks, and lions are all described as part of God's good creation with value independent of how they might benefit human beings. Even Leviathan, a fearsome sea monster, is not a predator or pest; it is God's plaything, formed to "sport" in the water.
Treatment of animals: Maximum production at minimum prices requires confinement of animals, use of antibiotics to keep stressed cows healthy, and bovine growth hormones to stimulate milk production. Under these circumstances, dairy cows have a lifespan between two and three years and spend little time outdoors.
Because of their unusual requirements, cranberries grow in remote areas that provide habitat for eagles, osprey, hawks, elk, mink, porcupines, otters, bear, and other animals.
According to the Oregon Cranberry Network, cranberry farmers preserve two acres of surrounding land for every acre in cranberry cultivation.
PCUSA Presbyterian Hunger Program Curriculum: Just Eating Leaders' Guide, Unit 4 "Food and the Environment"
Just Eating suggests exploring meatless sources of protein as an action step:
Vegetable protein foods are high in fiber, contain no cholesterol and low in saturated fat. Raising meat requires a lot more land than growing plant protein. The meat industry does not always handle animals humanely. See John Robbin's Food Revolution for more information.
From "Just Eating" PCUSA Presbyterian Hunger Program Curriculum
The Presbyterian Hunger Program supports:
- Spreading urban gardening—developing church, school and community gardens
- Facilitating direct marketing of local foods to lower-income communities
- Supporting local processing and coordinating decentralized distribution systems
- Promoting water and soil-saving agricultural practices with decreased chemical use
- Advocating for humane treatment of livestock animals and the workers in processing plants
- Supporting state and federal policy advocacy that benefits farmers who practice conservation and other environmental practices
- Raising the moral, social and environmental concerns about genetic engineering in agriculture.
—"Why Food and Faith?" from the PCUSA Presbyterian Hunger Program's Food and Faith Initiative
Updated Aug. 12, 2008
