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Although Christianity has a poor record on animals (as it does, it must be said, on the treatment of slaves, women, children, and gays), it is also the case that Christian theology, when creatively and critically handled, can provide a strong basis for animal rights.

Andrew Linzey

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Andrew Linzey
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: February 7
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More quotes by Andrew Linzey

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I do not oppose violence simply because it is counterproductive. I oppose it because it betrays animal rights philosophy. Those who resort to such tactics really have not understood that animal rights is about the extension of moral concern to all sentient beings--humans obviously included.
Andrew Linzey
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For if animals are God's creatures, we have no absolute rights over them, only the duty to look after them as God would look after them. To stand with Jesus is to reject our view of ourselves as gods and lords of creation. We are to honor life for the sake of the Lord of life.
Andrew Linzey
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Familiarity with holy things can often engender blindness, and churches are, for all their merits, institutions that embody, perhaps more than most, the will to perpetuate themselves. In this process, they can easily lose sight of the purpose for which they came into being and, in so doing, frustrate the Spirit.
Andrew Linzey
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I fear theology is--in the words attributed to William Temple--still in its infancy when it comes to animals.
Andrew Linzey
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Despite one or two minority appeals our society is not outraged at man's unremitting use of the animal world. Ecologists and environmentalists may talk of ecological consciousness or environmental responsibility but seldom, if ever, is this responsibility articulated towards other non-human species in particular.
Andrew Linzey
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In God's eyes, all creatures have value whether we find them cuddly, affectionate, beautiful or otherwise. Our own perspective-in a way-is neither here nor there. Theology, at its best, can help to liberate us from our own anthropocentric limitations.
Andrew Linzey
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I would happily, sometimes more than happily, have vacated my role as an animal theologian, if there were others prepared to take my place.
Andrew Linzey
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If tomorrow we decided only to desist from killing and causing suffering for sport and entertainment, the world would be significantly better for animals. Even this we have failed to achieve.
Andrew Linzey
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It took Christians many years to realize that we cannot love God and also keep humans as slaves. It has taken even longer for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and also regard women as second-class humans. Now is the time for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and hate the Creator's nonhuman creatures.
Andrew Linzey
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One cannot get to animal rights by trampling on human rights.
Andrew Linzey
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Christian theology provides some of the best arguments for respecting animal life and for taking seriously animals as partners with us within God's creation. It may be ironical that this tradition, once thought of as the bastion of human moral exclusivity, should now be seen as the seed-bed for a creative understanding of animal liberation.
Andrew Linzey
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Humans have dominion over animals. But that dominion (radah in Hebrew) does not mean despotism, rather we are set over creation to care for what God has made and to treasure God's own treasures.
Andrew Linzey
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The biblical case for vegetarianism does not rest on the view that killing may never be allowable in the eyes of God, rather on the view that killing is always a grave matter. When we have to kill to live we may do so, but when we do not, we should live otherwise.
Andrew Linzey
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Moral education, as I understand it, is not about inculcating obedience to law or cultivating self-virtue, it is rather about finding within us an ever-increasing sense of the worth of creation. It is about how we can develop and deepen our intuitive sense of beauty and creativity.
Andrew Linzey
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If the cross does provide us with a true picture of what God is like, it follows that God is a redeeming presence in all creaturely experiences of suffering. All innocent suffering will be transformed.
Andrew Linzey
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There are only two ways to deal with the media: either elect to take the Buddha's vow of eternal silence, or make one's voice known as responsibly as one humanly can, and take the consequences.
Andrew Linzey
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We can't change the world for animals without changing our ideas about animals. We have to move from the idea that animals are things, tools, machines, commodities, resources here for our use to the idea that as sentient beings they have their own inherent value and dignity.
Andrew Linzey
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It is an unfortunate fact that those people who are most eloquent in their demand for the conservation of animals are often those most eager to violate animal life at the first opportunity.
Andrew Linzey