faq #7, is not one sparrow part of the animal rights movement?

The next question in our FAQ series is one which I think many Christians wonder about when they look at animal advocacy and care efforts from the outside in, whether not one sparrow or otherwise.  It can be easy to associate anything or anyone involved in the cause with the news bites we hear about animal rights messages and campaigns, which can be quite foreign to Christian sensibilities and values, often for good reason. 

At the same time, it can be also easy to write off the entire animal rights community (and sometimes the entire animal cause by extension) as a result, which would be a shame, both from a collaboration and relationship point of view, not to mention educational.  I've read and met many good people in that end of the animal advocacy community, and have valued much of their passion and heart for animals, even if I disagree with aspects of their perspective or take a different approach in some instances. 

I hope the posts in this series will help you understand a bit better why not one sparrow shies away from using animal rights language, while at the same time helping you understand that approach and those who share it a bit better.  Here's an initial response to the question "Is not one sparrow part of the animal rights movement?" from our FAQ page:

The animal rights movement has been one of the loudest and most intense voices in animal advocacy.  While it has accomplished much good for animals, its ideology can also blur the differences and dynamics between humans and animals, at times compromising both from a Christian perspective.  And some leading spokespersons and groups are especially known for their eccentric and even offensive philosophies and tactics.

As an effort, not one sparrow wants to interact with and learn from the animal rights movement where we can, especially from Christians who represent a more biblically faithful animal rights perspective such as Andrew Linzey and Matthew Halteman.  But we're generally more at home in the animal welfare ethos and a softer mode of dialogue, and above all we're accountable to pursuing God’s perspective on animals and the relationship he wants us to have with them.

Speaking of Andrew Linzey, whom I think would be safe to call the modern-day father of the Christian animal advocacy movement in general, and like Matthew Halteman a good friend of not one sparrow's, his concept of "theos-rights" is a very interesting and compelling one.  You can find it in his thoughtful book Animal Theology, which you can read several pages of online.  He writes in an earlier work, "To put it at its most basic: animals have a God-given right to be animals" (Christianity and the Rights of Animals (SPCK '87), pg. 112).

New Testament and creation care scholar and advocate Richard Young offers a similarly helpful perspective on a biblically rooted concept of rights in Healing the Earth: A Theocentric Perspective on Environmental Problems and Their Solutions (Broadman & Holman '94):

The Scriptures offer the most satisfying basis for the rights of nature.  The Bible recognizes that we are not the final arbitrators of values of rights: God is. ...  Every creature in the community of creation is endowed with certain privileges.  We may call these privileges "rights" in that they reflect a fair and just claim of an individual member of creation to be allowed to live the life God intended.  Nature's rights then are derivative from God's rights. (pg. 227)

But Young also has a helpful addendum to this thought in his book from a few years later, Is God a Vegetarian? Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights (Open Court '99), a qualifier which I think is very faithful to the ethical perspective of Scripture, even while recognizing God's original intentions for our relationship to animals:

Derived rights reflect the ideal.  God is amazingly patient about the ideals being formed in our lives and has even allowed such things as meat eating and animal sacrifice.  We often forget about divine patience when we demand and absolutize where God does not. ...  This cautions us against reducing rights to absolute ethics. (pg. 38)

(photo courtesy The Animals Voice public domain image gallery)