not one sparrow is forgotten

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary, about 2:00 AM in the morning, of finishing my capstone project for Trinity Evangelical Divinity School which led into not one sparrow.  Not incoincidentally, it was called "Not One Sparrow is Forgotten: A Biblical-Theological Foundation for Animal Welfare" (you're welcome to download and print it personally).  It reads more like a seminary paper than most of our posts, but it's not too terribly long, and I hear it's not completely unreadable, thankfully.

I remember how relieved I was when I finished, after all the reading and note-taking I did the semester before, and several stops and starts and bouts with the usual writer's perfectionism.  But I was deeply grateful for the groundbreaking Christian animal advocates who did most of the heavy lifting for me: Matthew Scully, Richard Young, Stephen Webb, Robert Wennberg, Stephen Kaufman, Andrew Linzey and others (see bibliography).  I hope to feature more of their writing in the coming months.

In the paper's introduction, I tried to lay out some of the reservations about animal welfare in my home community:

It probably goes without saying that animals and their welfare are not typically subjects ... which surface in evangelical theology or reflection in general, at least not that part of it which is taken seriously.  Aside from token recognition of their place in creation or the role animals may play in biblical illustration or narrative, or flat assumptions of the purposes they serve for human benefit or development, animals are hardly paid a second thought. ...

It even seems understandable from the total thrust of Scripture that the Christian agenda would relegate animals to the sidelines in deference to evangelism, discipleship and other humanitarian concerns, as the bible is clearly preoccupied with the relationship between the human and the divine and the community of God’s people.

I mentioned some of the responses I received from family and classmates when I mentioned what I was working on, some encouraging and others more along the lines of “What exactly does an evangelical foundation for animal welfare entail?” and “I didn’t know such a thing existed?”  And I described part of my own awakening related to taking animal welfare and advocacy seriously:

Less than two years ago I was essentially unfamiliar with and even skeptical of the possibility of a distinctly Christian basis for animal welfare, but found myself increasingly open to animals and affected by their condition.  I wondered if this disposition could legitimately be connected to the larger Christian ethos, or whether it was only a private interest I might have freedom to invest in but couldn’t expect others to be concerned with.   

Despite some of the legitimate questions I faced, personally and within my tradition, not long before I wrote the paper I had been blown away by an amazingly clear and compelling motivation for caring about animals as a Christian:

(It) not only shows that the charge of Scriptural inattention to animals and their wellbeing is misguided, but discloses a more essential truth about animals than the longstanding subordination to human needs and wants suggests, rooted in the work and will of the Trinity itself with respect to its own creation. ... (It's) close to God’s heart and integral to his redemptive intentions. ...

My hope is to present a basic model for considering animals and their welfare, one in which mutually beneficial and affirming relations with God’s creatures can be encouraged, and blatant abuses censured.

I'll leave the resolution of that cliffhanger to your reading pleasure, if so inclined ... (you can catch a condensed version at our motivation page).  In the meantime, thanks for allowing me to remember the paper's completion and share it with you.  Anniversaries of special events were always important to my grandfather, Jay Omar Brubaker, who was also an avid animal appreciator.  I must have at least partly inherited both inclinations from him.

Update on May 15, 2009 by Ben DeVries

I just posted video of a reading I gave from my paper, with some Q&A, at Wake Up Weekend in Grand Rapids this past January.