Search the Community

I came home from the mountains to find this in this weekend's edition of The Daily Star, Oneonta, NY. It speaks for itself. Churches Should Discourage Hunting BY DAVID IRVING Local Commentary The spirit of hunting permeates the Catskill mountain region so deeply that even some pastors and Christian organizations claim that hunting is a good Christian activity. That may come as a shock for many people. How does killing animals coincide with compassion, the central ingredient in Christianity? The great Christian theologian and Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer wrote that “Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to humankind.” The words are powerful and persuasive. Yet, some people are so filled with the thirst to hunt, they insist it is Christian. Moreover, the phenomenon turns out to be not just local but national in scope. One pastor in Minnesota even claims it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus would shoot a deer. The theological basis for these claims is practically nonexistent. The best argument advocates make is that because animals were sacrificed in Old Testament times it is OK to hunt them today. They ignore that Isaiah called sacrifice an abomination and that Jesus said: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Our pastors seem unable to muster any opposition to the Christian hunting hypothesis, leaving their congregations and their children without guidance about the rights and wrongs of hunting. It is not a difficult problem. Can anyone really picture Jesus summoning the little children unto him to teach them how to kill animals? Killing animals is addictive and the cruelty involved cannot be denied. It is cruel to shoot an animal that flees wounded into the underbrush and there in great pain dies alone of starvation and thirst. There, it may also be attacked and devoured alive by other predators because it cannot defend itself. Nor do hunters have a clue whether they have wounded a targeted animal if it dashes into the woods in a flash, nor do they know or apparently care whether the animal may be a female who is pregnant or who has babies waiting who will starve and thirst to death or be set upon by predators if she does not return to protect them. Words scarcely exist to describe the abhorrent practice of putting down steel-jawed leg hold-traps, which are so barbaric that trapped animals break off their teeth and gnaw off their limbs Churches should discourage hunting in an attempt to escape them. The same applies to drowning traps and canned hunts, which are also impossible to escape. Is the environment just described a place where compassion has a home? It is long past time for our pastors and churches who have not done so — and few have — to fulfill their responsibilities to their communities and their congregations by taking a stand on hunting. Are they for it? At least some pro-hunting churches have the temerity to say where they stand. Are they against it? Then let them stop concealing it and speak out loud and clear. Are they in the middle somewhere? Let them define where it is so their congregations know who they are.. Only when the pastors take a stand can their congregations see whether they are being offered the spiritual guidance they require for living the best Christian life possible. To be silent is to acquiesce to the harm that can arise from different aspects of hunting. This includes teaching children that it is OK to kill animals when it is well grounded in the psychiatric literature that killing animals can be a prelude to sadistic and criminal behavior. Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert DeSalvo, and Ted Bundy all got their start this way. Charles Manson said the only thing he ever killed was a chicken when he was a child. The rising consciousness of people was recently on display as 1.2 million people signed the petition Justice for Cecil (the lion) in a world-wide protest against the same kind of cruelty in hunting described here. This is the trend as people become more aware of their responsibilities to animals for the betterment of the world. The pastors and the churches need to give up their resistance to the new consciousness and embrace it for here they will find the answer to their declining memberships and dwindling relevance to their communities. Unfortunately, too often they seem afraid to alienate their members who are hunters and so they remain speechless. The members of the congregations also have their role to play. They can fulfill that best by insisting that their pastors stand up and state where they stand. David Irving, of Sidney, is the President of the Lamb of God Institute Against Cruelty to Animals and the author of “The Protein Myth”; “Is It Christian to Hunt”; “Trappersville USA”; and other books.