cover image Is God a Vegetarian?: Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights

Is God a Vegetarian?: Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights

Richard Alan Young. Open Court Publishing Company, $24.95 (187pp) ISBN 978-0-8126-9393-5

Young, who teaches New Testament at Temple Baptist Seminary, is as concerned with how to read scripture as he is with vegetarianism. As a result, he offers an insightful account of biblical ethics combined with an accessible argument for vegetarianism. Rather than mining scripture for proof texts, he searches for ""directional markers"" that serve as ""flexible guidelines"" for Christians looking to make moral decisions about animal rights and vegetarianism. His argument against cruelty to animals is not grounded in an abstract set of rights but in a narrative account that depicts a God intimately related to the whole of creation. Not set simply on proving that Jesus was a vegetarian, Young describes a peaceable kingdom where harmonious relations among creatures is more consistent with the Hebrew understanding of God than is a world marked by violence. Young returns repeatedly to biblical images of a peaceable kingdom and asks how we can evoke similar images in our own places and times. Each of his 13 chapters ends with two vegetarian recipes, and the epilogue offers a simple but well-documented account of ""going veggie."" As a whole, the book is a practical introduction to ethics made particularly accessible by sustained attention to a single popular issue. It is also an articulate case for vegetarianism that is neither simply a popular treatise on health and diet nor a political treatise on animal rights. Young's book offers a thoughtful reflection on a world of peace and justice in which, though we may not be what we eat, what we eat, and why, is an integral part of who we are. (Oct.)