What is liberation theology, and what can it teach us about the modern animal rights movement?
While boarding a large, white travel coach, the news finally struck me; despite being named the highest-scoring member of the All-Missouri Academic Team from a potential pool of 100,000 applicants, Prof. Schneider confirmed that I had lost a full-ride scholarship to WashU. After two years of oppressive 80-hour workweeks, this crushing defeat left me feeling so devastated, I fell nearly eight weeks behind in my classes, addicted to the numbing escapism afforded by my Minecraft minigames. After two hours of wailing, I decided to remain on the bus, seeking recognition at the largest conference of all, the only comfort following my small-scale Clintonian defeat. But after losing the Danforth, which through sheer determination had become the crux of my existence, I had to rediscover my purpose in life. Still battling a severe case of “resume mentality,” whereby I embraced the sickly notion I was only as valuable as my achievements were impressive, I had no choice but to reevaluate my life in light of this irredeemable failure, salvaging whatever I could of my former sense of self-worth. Along this abrupt, painful spiritual journey, I rediscovered the passion to forever guide a purpose-driven life, not in the pursuit of just one opportunity at just one top-20 institution, but instead in the rededication of my life to animal liberation, a spiritual recalibration that has coincided with my first theology course at SLU.
Though I am a thorough disbeliever in God and his imputed grandeur, I nevertheless embrace spirituality in the humanist tradition, which affirms the power of humankind to live ethically, lead satisfying lives, and build a just world in the absence of divine intervention. But as I have grown increasingly discontent with the self-aggrandizing nature of human supremacy, by which we oppress trillions of nonhuman animals in some of the most horrific ways imaginable while simultaneously priding ourselves as the pinnacle of all creation, gifted with a supreme ethical conscience, I now identify as an animalist. By rejecting the human supremacy crystallized, solidified, and promulgated by a deeply speciesist philosophical canon, including many fundaments of contemporary humanism, I reject also the despicable legacy of nonhuman animal oppression upon which our present society is inherently founded. As an animalist, anti-carnist, and anti-speciesist, I believe that all animals deserve to live safe, happy, and free from needless harm, exploitation, and oppression. I dream of a world where the horrors, injustices, and atrocities of factory farms and slaughterhouses are no more; where slaughtering trillions of innocent creatures in the name of greed, sloth, and indifference becomes unthinkable; and where animals “dance among the trees,” as my friend Sasha sings in her uplifting ode to animal liberation. In pursuit of a world where all animals live safe, happy, and free, I strive to save as many lives, reduce as much suffering, and do as much good as possible. Because of my relentless focus on reducing the greatest amount of suffering, saving the greatest number of lives, and doing the greatest amount of good, an unobservant bystander might misinterpret my ethics as decisively utilitarian, even though I identify as a “radical” animal rights activist of the abolitionist tradition, demanding not larger cages, but empty cages.
By re-centering my life on the trillions of innocent victims of the largest, longest-running mass killing of all time, I have steadily rebuilt my life, filling the void the Danforth once occupied. Taking my first theology course since grade school has also reinvigorated my commitment to the noble cause of animal justice, particularly through our exploration of the life of MLK and his weapon of choice—nonviolent direct action. As a committed animal rights activist, I believe in the power of nonviolent direct action to effect meaningful social change, a belief reaffirmed by MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” arguably the most eloquent defense of nonviolent direct action ever penned. According to this watershed historical document, nonviolent direct action strives to create such a crisis that a morally corrupt society can no longer ignore injustice, undercutting the culture of ignorance, apathy, and violence that produced the injustice in the first place. After decades of vegan advocacy, mainstream society still routinely supports the rape, torture, murder, marginalization, extermination, and overall oppression of not just billions, but trillions of nonhuman victims every year; as Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer writes, “for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” Given the seemingly interminable crisis in which innocent creatures who just wanted to live find themselves perpetually enmeshed, nonviolent direct action becomes an imperative of the most exigent importance in challenging injustices so profound, our language can hardly accommodate their excesses. Bound by the “inescapable network of mutuality,” nonviolent direct action rattles a profoundly unaware, unjust, and indifferent society to action after a millennia-long carnistic slumber. The words of MLK have only solidified my identity as a “radical” animal rights activist, dedicated to one of the greatest unsung social justice causes of all time.
With an unusual focus on social justice, my theology course has also exposed me to several other texts that embrace liberation as a guiding principle—indeed, the utmost principle. This liberation theology, when contrasted against the backdrop of vast, unnecessary suffering, is perhaps no more stirring than in James H. Cone’s incendiary yet inviting text, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Just as MLK beseeched the white moderate to fully support nonviolent direct action, so, too, does Cone challenge the reader to reconcile centuries of white supremacist violence with our theological presuppositions of a crucified Jesus; as Cone writes, the very credibility and promise of Christianity is at stake. In his attempt to reconcile “the gospel message of liberation with the reality of black oppression,” Cone demands that we view the lynched man no differently than the crucified Jesus. Until that time, Cone proclaims, we will never overcome the moral myopia of white supremacy, racism, and slavery. Like Cone, I proclaim a bold thesis, one steeped even more deeply in “radicalism” than his own. While Cone wishes for us to identify the tribulations of African Americans with those of Jesus Christ, I will venture ever further, arguing that until we identify the cows, chickens, and pigs who we victimize by the billions in modern factory farms and slaughterhouses with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we will never escape the crippling chokehold of speciesism, a prejudice even more deeply entrenched than its equally ignoble counterpart, racism. As I have long confided with friends, speciesism is no more than racism that transcends the species barrier, an axis of oppression by which we marginalize our nonhuman animal compatriots. Invested in the mutual cause of human and nonhuman animal liberation, however, I recognize that all oppression is wrong, regardless of one’s sex, sexuality, socioeconomic status, skin color, or even species.
As Gustavo Gutiérrez expounds in yet another stirring testament to liberation theology, The God of Life, the kingdom of heaven favors the weak, poor, and oppressed. This “preferential option for the poor” only underscores the importance of aiding all those who suffer gratuitous violence, destitution, and disenfranchisement in this life, including our fellow nonhuman animals, who suffer and die needlessly by the billions in modern factory farms and slaughterhouses. Aware of the sheer innocence, suffering, and vulnerability of our fellow creatures, we should feel an even greater ethical compulsion to alleviate their intense, prolonged, and ultimately needless misery. We should assign greater value to their desire to live—to their desire to enjoy their one and only infinitely precious life—than to our desire to eat their dead bodies, and we should bear witness to their profound suffering. While knowledge of their oppression can be painful, this knowledge is ultimately liberating, as it enables us to make informed decisions that reinforce rather than betray our core values of justice, love, respect, compassion, mercy, and nonviolence toward all, nonhumans included; as I now rebuke every time someone tries to suppress the truth behind meat, eggs, and diary, “let the truth be known that all may know justice.”
Armed with my newfound sense of purpose, I have advocated tirelessly for all the victims of our modern industrial-agricultural complex, from the exploited workers, to the abused animals, to our degraded landscape. Through my advocacy for these largely unseen, unknown victims, I strive to build a more compassionate, environmentally-conscious agricultural system, consonant with our core values of justice, love, respect, and compassion for all, nonhumans included. I have even realized that, in the face of oppressive ideologies, the struggle for justice is fundamental. Just as all oppression is connected, so, too, is all social justice; our commitment to animal liberation only strengthens, renews, and emboldens our commitment to racial, social, and economic justice. By recognizing these intimate connections, social justice causes of every denomination can coalesce into an indomitable force for human and nonhuman liberation the world round, achieving unbreakable solidarity. We must oppose injustice whenever, wherever, and however it arises; only then can we realize a world free from tyranny.
